Can I fit Phorum within a WordPress theme? (without database integration)

It would be great if Phorum could be made to show in the center column of this page: [dubaiemploymenttips.com] since within WordPress I have my Ad-Manager and everything else already setup.

What do you think?

I think that this is quite a challenge. It's one of the things that the embedding module (unfortunately only available for 5.1 right now) takes care of. Apart from the fact that this module does full integration (so also user auth), it is still a lot of work to make an application as complex as Phorum fit nicely in some other system. I don't see this happen on short notice, unless you can do the programming yourself on both Phorum and WP.

---

Maurice Makaay
Phorum Development Team
my blog linkedin profile secret sauce

Thank you for the prompt reply Maurice!

Phorum is really fantanstic; easily configurable, very comfortable UI, and just right. I'm glad I found it.

I guess I will just brand the original Phorum a little and in the future I'll look more into full theme integration.

It's a feature that is more often requested and I have already been thinking about splitting up the functionality of the embedding module into multiple functional parts, design integration being one of them. So at a later stage you might be able to switch to such system.

---

Maurice Makaay
Phorum Development Team
my blog linkedin profile secret sauce

Maurice, do you know if the beta of your embedding module works in having the authorization of users handled by wordpress?

No, it doesn't. The embedding module forms the framework that allows construction of specialized connectors. These connectors implement the actual connectivity glue for the main system (WP in this case). Without the connector, the module can't do anything. With a connector, it can work.

---

Maurice Makaay
Phorum Development Team
my blog linkedin profile secret sauce

FWIW, I have recently managed to get a Phorum forum integrated quite smoothly into a Wordpress site, and it wasn't a whole lot of work. All I did was create a new Phorum theme (based on Emerald) with a header.tpl and footer.tpl (and of course css.tpl) that matched the WP site precisely.

It works very well because WP's permalink structure carefully ignores anything that has a physical directory associated with it. So I put Phorum in a root folder called "forum" and WP blissfully ignores it. I created a "page" in WP with the name of "forum" so that my menu would show it, but any attempt to access that page goes to the physical folder of the same name, and hence to Phorum.

I did have to hard-code the top menu in the Phorum template to mirror the WP one, so if anyone adds a menu page, that will have to be changed in the Phorum template. I spent quite a bit of time trying to load that menu from the WP db, in the Phorum template, but it's a boatload of work. So I punted. I believe that's the only hack. Maybe I'll get back to that someday. :)

For simplicity, I put the Phorum db in with the Wordpress db. This allows WP's backup utility to backup everything, and will make future things easier. Next up is a WP sidebar widget that shows the latest "n" posts on the forum. Should be pretty easy.

You can see the result at [pnsca.com]. If you click on "forum", you'll see the Phorum forum.

Nice job!

And thanks for your description on how you handled this integration. This is in fact the type of integration that we normally recommend if no further integration is required between the systems on the website. In the end, this is a lot easier than trying to make Phorum inherit the templates from Wordpress or vice versa, because both systems do have their own ideas on what code needs to be in the header and what not.

---

Maurice Makaay
Phorum Development Team
my blog linkedin profile secret sauce

Hi,

hate to hijack this post, but it leads to a question about the style of the forum.

clwill posted a link to his forum [ [pnsca.com] ] and I really like the threaded view.

But I don't like the way that when you click the view you only get the exact post and have to click thru each successive reply.
I wonder 2 things:
1) can a short tease of the post and reply be shown in the threaded list view, and
2) can clicking on these post/replies actually go directly to the whole expanded view of the thread (is that called flat)

thanks! Love the 'simplicity' and the power of 'Phorum' .
As a developer, it is nice to see others put importance on ui for users, flexibility for the brave integrators, and cleanness in functionality.
So far it looks very well done!

Kevin

The list and read views can be different (thus threaded list and flat read are perfectly fine). If you install my Post Previews module you will get a preview of the message when hovering over the subject.

You can "demo" what I'm suggesting by going to your Control Center on this Phorum site and going to Forum Settings. Choose "All messages in a topic, threaded" for Message list display options and "Multiple messages per page sorted by time" for Message reading display options and you will see a threaded list that goes to a flat read page. You can hover over each message in the list to see a preview of the contents.

---

Joe Curia (aka Azumandias)
Modules: l0Admin Mass Email00000000l000000Automatic Time Zones000ll.l00000Enhanced Custom Profiles0.00Google Calendar0000l.l000000Post Previews
000000000Admin Security Suite000000000000Check Modules for Upgrades0000External Authentication000000Group Auto-Email00000.00000Private Message Alerts
000000000Attachment Download Counter0000Custom Attachment Icons000ll.ll00Favorite Forums000000.00000Highlighted Search Terms0000Self-Delete Posts Option
000000000Attachment Watermarks0l00000000Custom Language Database00l.l.0Forum Lockdown00000.00000Ignore Forums0000000000000Threaded Tree View
000000000Automatic Message Pruning00.llll.00Easy Color Scheme Manager0l.l00Forum Subscriptions0000lll000Moderated User Group
Templates:lGeneric Integration000000000 0000Simple Rounded000000 00000000Tabbed Emerald