Am having some headaches getting this forum configured so that it will recognize users/user groups. Am unsure if this is a Forum issue or a FE User Login issue...

I have the forum up (see http://www.fbcfamilylife.org/forum/.
Only Registered Users may post...everyone may view...
But when I login, at the My Account page, (and I've set myself up as a Registered User"
and then go to the Forum page, it doesn't recognize my login...says I need to login before I can post.

Would appreciate some direction on what I may be doing wrong here.

Mary Beth,

One thing to check is whether you have set the "Frontend user storage folder PID." If you open up the forum plugin on the page in the backend, there should be a field on the Required Settings tab that asks for this. This is the number of the folder where your Registered Users are stored.

If that does not do the trick, I am not certain, but I believe you might need to set up a Forum Group then give that group access to post on the specific forum Conference. See Steps 2, 3, & 4 on this page: http://typo3.org/documentation/document-library/extension-manuals/chc_forum/1.4.3/view/1/3/

One of those should do it. Check the storage folder PID on the page plugin first, though.

Thanks,

Barbara

whats the differance to the WEC forum and the CHC forum? by the looks they are the same

Regards, Rens Bonhof

Hi Rens,

The CHC Forum allows you to have many categories, and is very structured. You are often have to login to use it. You can see an example at our site here: http://webempoweredchurch.com/community

The WEC Discussion Forum is more of a conversation. It focuses on (usually) one topic. You can require the user to be logged in or just allow comments from anonymous users. It looks and feels more like a Blog (www.blogger.com or check out one of our WEC developers blogs at http://appianway.blogspot.com/).

Which you choose to use depends on the design of your website. If you want all users to come to one place, the CHC Forum works well for that. If you would like conversations in different ministry areas and pages, then the WEC Discussion Forum would likely work better.

One issue to consider is that if you use CHC Forum and not have a lot of traffic on your website, you may not get as much traffic and so your forum looks "dead". Sometimes users do not want to post on a general board. If you put the Discussion Forum on a page, they may be more likely to post IF the page is visited enough. So if you set up Discussion Forums on popular areas or where you are trying to build community, that may help to feel ownership of the discussion and it is in their own area.

-Dave

thanks for your quick reaction dave

Regards, Rens

are there any big differences between those extentions other than wich is good for high traffic and low traffic websites? like functions, bigger admin pannels etc.?

Regards, Rens

Rens,

Maybe others can chime in with their experiences with both, but they seem to both be easy-to-use and have good set of functions. Two considerations with CHC Forum -- 1) it uses BB-Code for inserting and adding images, urls, and other tags which some users may find difficult to use (although you see and use this as you interact with this), and 2) it uses the Smarty-template engine, which if you are trying to customize the look a lot different from the existing look, may require extra work. The CHC Forum does seem to have a very good manual though.

The CHC Forum has more features and has been around for longer and used on many more sites. They both have good manuals and good support, although I did notice CHC_forum has not been updated since 5/2006. Yet, if you do get stuck on either one, you can get help.

As for feature comparisons, I would just recommend going to the manuals:
CHC Forum Features: http://typo3.org/documentation/document-library/extension-manuals/chc_forum/1.4.5/view/1/1/#id2756429
WEC Discussion Forum Features: http://typo3.org/documentation/document-library/extension-manuals/wec_discussion/1.3.2/view/1/1/#id2941785

I do really think it comes down to your purpose and use, and that should be the overriding consideration.

-Dave

Is there an easy way to link a News/Blog post to a forum topic? I use several sites where they'll have articles that are then linked to a "Discuss in our Forum" topic in the forums, specific to that particular post. I figure we'll have to create/re-create part/all of the post in the forum to have that make sense, but the discussions can then be pretty well moderated and the users have an easy way to get there.

My main concern with the WEC Discussion Forum is the need to set up new entries for each news posting when the CHC forums seem better designed for that purpose. I understand the ease of commenting right there on that topic, but this seems like it would be more work for us to do when posting new news items.

Perhaps I'm mis-understanding the way this is supposed to work together, in which case I'm happy to be pointed in the right direction.

-Pete

Hi Pete,

The Discussion forum does not integrate with tt_news at all and you would have to link manually. If there is an extension that integrates with CHC_Forum and tt_news that would be the way to go. I am not sure what it would take to have tt_news add a button/link for the Discussion forum.

It seems like if it were possible, you would want a "Discuss this in the forum" button, and if someone clicked it, it would go to the Discussion forum and try to find a subject with the same title as the news. If it is not there, then the Discussion forum would create it and the user could then comment on it.

I can see that being a nice feature. Right now, we have no plans for something like that but let me know if this is the kind of feature you are looking for.

-Dave

Dave,
That's similar to what I'm thinking of. I think that the main forum I visit is based on Community Server, so it's definitely a different architecture. Something like this would be useful in general - encourage forum participation and discussion of the posts. Perhaps even something that indicates the number of comments made on the post. Anyway, as it doesn't seem to exist at the moment, I'm going to investigate the WEC Discussion extension for that need. I need to read up on that a little more to figure out how best to set that up.

Thanks.

-Pete