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slashdot.org / BLOGS
I have been thinking about adding BLOG to our site. http://www.slashdot.org is one of the more famous BLOGS out there - if you don't know what I mean, go check it out, it's pretty cool... Basically it reads a little like a news site, with users submitting the stories.

Then I started to think, WHY start from the beginning by downloading the free "Slash" code from slashdot, dealing with the install, etc.? We already have 99% of the product in the discussion code, all it needs is a little tweak to *ALSO* do this in the next version.

Here is what I propose as a new feature.

Ability to mark "FORUM" as a regular discussion forum, or as a BLOG.

If it is designated as a blog then going to the FORUM will not only show the titles of the root message, but also the first 300 or so characters of the message. The entire message and all of the replies to it would show up when "Read More / Replies" is clicked.

It could either work so that any registered user could post a root message or only certain, manually selected users could do it (admin could give them BLOG root posting privilidge).

The admin could also have the option to either allow all root posts or selectivelly OK which post can go on it and which isn't good enough so as to keep up the quality of the "news" or articles submitted.


This seems like pretty easy tweak to me and the usefullness of the GT Forum software would drastically increase.

I would love to hear your feedback on this, with possible suggestions and additional ideas regarding the "GT Blog" upgrade.

Additionally, and this applies even for the non-BLOG discussion board... I would love to see a way to (using the admin interface) have sections of the forum separate from the mother forum, so that they don't link to the main one in any way and may not even be visible on the main menu. There are certain forum topics I would like to create for some websites (chess club or what not) where their website would link to their discussion but not the other stuff on the main site of ours...

Last edited by:

Peter544: Sep 23, 2002, 4:22 PM
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Re: [Peter544] slashdot.org / BLOGS In reply to
Here is a link to the Slash code... But again, I think a simple hack to GT Forum would do the same thing....



http://slashdot.org/code.shtml
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Re: [Peter544] slashdot.org / BLOGS In reply to
Hi

I have had a similar idea a while ago, but I have never persued it.... here's the link
http://www.gossamer-threads.com/...rum.cgi?post=196800;

It would not be so difficult, and it would add a lot of value, I think.

Ivan
-----
Iyengar Yoga Resources / GT Plugins
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Re: [Peter544] slashdot.org / BLOGS In reply to
Hi,

One nice way this could be implemented is if we add custom templates per forum. Right now you could hack it in quite easy by just editing the forum view template:

<%if forum_id == 5%>
.. format things differently
<%else%>
.. format things normally
<%endif%>

as everything else is handled by permissions. You could make a single user/group have post permissions, everyone else only has read/reply permissions.

As for hiding it on the main page, this could be done in the templates as well:

<%if forum_id == 5%>
<%next%>
<%endif%>

and it will skip forum id 5 from the list. It's not quite "out of the box", but is reasonable easy to put in.

Cheers,

Alex
--
Gossamer Threads Inc.
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Re: [Alex] slashdot.org / BLOGS In reply to
Alex,

thanks for that tip, I will do that for now :)

I really think you guys should do that GT Slash thing me and Yogi suggested. Check out his earlier post on this, too.

I think this would give GT Forum a **LOT** of bang for the development buck.

Peter

ps: Yogi, the poll plugin I got from you is awesome. Seeing how you can tweak GTForum, how about doing another inexpensive SLASH plugin like you did with the Poll?



UNRELATED TOPIC:

Google now offers (as of yesterday?) an AWESOME news collection service:

http://news.google.com/
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Re: [Peter544] slashdot.org / BLOGS In reply to
>>
Google now offers (as of yesterday?) an AWESOME news collection service:
<<

I'm sure I remember seeing news.google.com a few months ago.
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Re: [Alex] slashdot.org / BLOGS In reply to
Unless I'm mistaken, there would still be the issue of having access to users' profile information. At the moment I have done a mod to stop anybody that is not registered from seeing the "Who is online" page or the "Member Directory".

At the moment this is one area that needs to be modified if any talk of having separate forums while providing the same functionality when doing so.

In my case I would like to have some common areas like guidelines etc. and then forums where users can only see users from that same forum.

John
Significant Media
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Re: [Jag] slashdot.org / BLOGS In reply to
Quote:
Unless I'm mistaken, there would still be the issue of having access to users' profile information. At the moment I have done a mod to stop anybody that is not registered from seeing the "Who is online" page or the "Member Directory".

I don't know what kind of mod you did, but you can easily set permissions on all actions in "Setup -> Actions -> Edit Action". In particular, you can set the permissions in such a way that only registered users can access "who's online" and "member directory".

Ivan
-----
Iyengar Yoga Resources / GT Plugins
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Re: [yogi] slashdot.org / BLOGS In reply to
Thanks Yogi, I didn't know that part of the admin area when I did my mod that was just code around the content of the page to only display it when it is a registered user : <%if current_user_id%>.

But I still feel it would be good to have a system that set it up so that only people from the same group can see each other. This way setting up "external" forums would create any issues with the 'who's online' and 'member directory' parts of the board.

John
Significant Media
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Re: [Peter544] slashdot.org / BLOGS In reply to
Hokay, I like the idea of a Slashdottish function as well. Here's what we did (it's actually more like MetaFilter, in that posts just show up in reverse-chron order, rather than being selected by a human editor):

Created a global variable called hot_threads to grab the five most recent threads from the database (actually the five most recent root messages):
Code:
sub {
my $tags = shift;
my $post_db = $DB->table ('Post');
$post_db->select_options ('WHERE post_root_id=0',
'ORDER BY post_time DESC', 'LIMIT 5');
my $sth = $post_db->select;
my @output;
while (my $post = $sth->fetchrow_hashref) {
push @output, $post;
}
return { post_loop => \@output };
}

created another global variable called chop to display the first 125 characters of the thread's first post:
Code:
sub {
my $post_message = shift;
return substr($post_message,0,125);
}

And added this code to the forum homepage (actually, to an include that's displayed via category_list.html if it's the main_page):
Code:
<p><b>New threads</b></p>
<%hot_threads%>
<%loop post_loop%>
<a href="gforum.cgi?post=<%post_id%>">
<%post_subject%></a><br>
<%chop($post_message)%>... <strong>
<%if post_replies = 1%>1 reply.<%else%>
<%post_replies%> replies.<%endif%>
</strong>
<br><br>
<%endloop%>

You can see it in action at www.nwfusion.com/cgi-bin/forum/gforum.cgi (but please excuse the mess there; we're only *almost* ready for prime time).
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Re: [agaffin] slashdot.org / BLOGS In reply to
very very groovy. How can you modify to include only "select" catagories.
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Re: [agaffin] slashdot.org / BLOGS In reply to
agaffin,

We're in the process of creating a construction content site but have been looking hi and lo for a blogging system to integrate into LinksSQL so the user can add content and/or start a blog. I see that you use GF and were you ever able to integrate a weblog app into your site through any Gossamer products? I visited your site and see you are using a weblogs.

I'm doing my homework and searching the posts before Wink I post for a project request.

Your site inspires me! Super.

Meredith
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Re: [SSmeredith] slashdot.org / BLOGS In reply to
I'd love to use GForum for Weblogs - it would just be way cool to marry the power of the two, since Weblogs are, in general, pretty weak when it comes to discussions (I see WebCrossing now offers a Weblog component with its software).

And I don't think it'd be terribly hard to do, given how flexible GF's templates and globals are (I think the hardest part would be integrating a module to ping weblogs.com every time a new entry was posted, but maybe that's because I'm no programmer). Alas, I just didn't have the time to follow through, so we "cheated" and bought a commercial license for Moveable Type. Maybe this summer when things slow down :-).

I'm thinking what I'd do is give each author his or her own conference, so they could have topic categories (in GF-speak, forums). Then I'd set the category template (via a couple of global variables) to show recent postings and blurbs in reverse-chron order (limit the main category to, say, 25 postings, unlimited in the categories). Then work on the weblogs.com component, and, for added goodness, try to replicate the cool feature MT and Radio have, where you can blog any other site via an IE toolbar button (it's basically a JavaScript that calls up a posting form; shouldn't be too hard).

Thanks for the kind words!
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Re: [agaffin] slashdot.org / BLOGS In reply to
Thanks for the quick reply.

We also were looking at MT-Great little program, actually had it installed, and has a very clean backend interface.

Wouldn't work for us without major mods if even possible. We were looking for a Geocities/Blogger/CMS type of system geared towards serving thousands of users -. All run with our custom templates, but still enabling the user to have a free site. Then there's the adding of new authors manually each time. Imagine thousands by hand [ugh]MT wasn't really set up for that, although I've seen some great sites for recipes with 20 users, but again they are trusted-in-house editors.

We'd need to enable anyone to open an account with content -validation at our discretion. But like you, I'm hot on the idea of the pinging, xml syndication and all that.

I'm not really interested in GF as intended but if it would bring the blog feature and I could tie in Links SQL with the community, that would be awesome.

I posted a very short request for anyone interested here:

http://www.gossamer-threads.com/...;;page=unread#unread

Would be great if you wanted to add your features here as well. I'm a little scattered out at the moment-luckily it's all right here [pointing to my elephant brain]

I'm going to look at Webcrossing now...

Thank you! and have a profitable day Wink
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Re: [agaffin] slashdot.org / BLOGS In reply to
In Reply To:
(I see WebCrossing now offers a Weblog component with its software).
This software reminds me of Typo3 which I also looked into for Content Managment, links,etc. which is cool because they have a Freesite plugin but again, not blog enabled. Maybe I should just run two separate applcations without login integration...No need to reply, just talking out loud.
Quote Reply
Re: [agaffin] slashdot.org / BLOGS In reply to
agaffin, you rule Smile



I used the code you provided and it works great.

EXCEPT Wink

It shows all the misc font stuff in the brackets[/i] in the chopped text from the message. Is there any way you could make it ignore anything that has [ and ] around it? (OR show it correctly, using the markup code in brackets?)



Thanks

Peter



ps: and I hereby formally cast my vote (in case someone is keeping track) for a GT Forum blog plugin so we can have something like http://www.slashdot.com or http://www.fark.com easily

Last edited by:

Peter544: May 27, 2003, 8:36 PM
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Re: [Peter544] slashdot.org / BLOGS In reply to
In Reply To:
agaffin, you rule Smile

It shows all the misc font stuff in the brackets[/i] in the chopped text from the message. Is there any way you could make it ignore anything that has [ and ] around it? (OR show it correctly, using the markup code in brackets?)

Cool, glad it worked!

Yeah, all those nasty markup tags get included :-).

http://www.gossamer-threads.com/perl/gforum/gforum.cgi?post=227747 and
http://www.gossamer-threads.com/perl/gforum/gforum.cgi?post=240609

will point you toward a solution - sorry I haven't actually played with adapting them yet for this specific purpose (since this happens on my forum as well).
Quote Reply
Re: [agaffin] slashdot.org / BLOGS In reply to
ok. Hopefully this is what you were talking about? I found this:

Quote:
sub {
my $tags = shift;
my $review = $tags;
$review = GT::CGI::html_escape($review);
$review =~ s/\n/&lt\;BR&gt\;/g;
$review =~ s/^\s+|\s+$//g;
return $review;
}
I called it chop_stripbut now how do I run the chop through it? Thanks