Forum module - interest?

[breezer]

Hello all ?

First I would like to say PW is a wonderful CMS and a very helpful and friendly community, which is rare these days.

I was doing web dev as a hobby while I cared for elderly parents but now it's time to move forward and get serious ( it's getting cold here so I'll be trapped indoors lol ). A while back I created a full featured built in forum system for Evolution CMS which I could rewrite for PW if there is enough interest, although it would have to be a paid module. At the moment I only have a working version on my local wamp, I can put it online next week and send anyone interested a link via PM.

What do ya'll think?

I removed the old screenshots as they are not relevant any more ?

[szabesz]

Hello @breezer, welcome to the PW forums,

If you do a quick google search like this: https://www.google.hu/search?ei=JOnpW_G4LIG0kwWxyo7gDQ&q=forum+module+site%3Aprocesswire.com%2Ftalk

then you can see that there is interest in a forum module for ProcessWire, for sure. Whether you can earn "enough" by making it commercial is a different matter. Keep in mind that PW has a relatively low user base, at least compared to other more popular systems out there. Still, paying for a  complex module instead of implementing it can be a great timesaver if the given module comes with proper support.

[breezer]

Thanks for the welcome, I think I will give it a shot and move forward with the rewrite. Since I have so much time invested already it would be a shame to abandon my project. That being said it will take at least a few months or more due to the way I had to work around the previous cms but I feel sure that once I'm more familiar with PW a really nice forum module will emerge. Wish me luck lol and I'll post updates here sporadically ?

[bernhard]

Hi @breezer,

I'd love to see a forum-solution for PW, but to be honest I'd only want to pay for it if it was exactly what I need or extremely flexible. Both is very unlikely.

If you want to get familiar with module development in PW this would be a great opportunity to start with. Easy and I'm quite sure it would be helpful for many of us: A favicon generator helper module:

 

You might also want to talk to @autofahrn (forum bug again... *sucks) from this post:

If you choose to develop your module open source I'd be happy to assist wherever I can to make it great ? 

 

PS: A huge challenge will be all the Frontend Markup Generation of your forum. As every site can be different in PW this makes such modules a pain to develop. I'm working on a Frontend-Theming-Module right now, that might make this a lot easier...

[breezer]

Thanks @bernhard, I'm digging into module creation as we speak. I've been lurking the forums here for a minute and soaking up all the useful tidbits I can to be sure.

As far as front end flexibility goes, the way it works now is all the content sections are templated and language translatable ( template can be switched in admin ). Most sections are set up as blocks to be placed wherever you need. Of course there will be quite a few changes which will be made to bring it into line with PW and hopefully be attractive to most audiences.  

Thanks for the offer to help, if I decide to go the open route I will surely give you a shout ?

[breezer]

Hello all, just an quick update on progress and a question or two. Although rewrite is going slow, I'm pretty happy with the results so far.

The forum admin is working in front end and back end (both areas use the same file but with different tpls and stylesheet).

User account on front end is working, I made it so new features can be easily added when needed.

Front end forum is working, still have to finish the create and edit post functionality and straighten up alot of inline styles in the tpls. I decided to use the built in ckeditor for creation/editing and integrated roxy fileman to insert/manage attachments.

Still a ways to go but I'm plugging along so hopefully there will be a test version out within the next couple weeks ?

Edited January 22, 2019 by breezer
added screenshots