HOWTO for Group Owners?

[Whistle_Pig]

Whistle, The problem with making it too complicated and dry (overthought and precise) is that it goes over the head computer illiterates like myself. You need to make it clear and very simple. Trust me..my eyes cross when reading anything 'How to"

The migrating or moving thing is when you start your forum (or rather Angus starts it) he pushes a button..or writes a code, maybe waves a wand and the threads in your Social group duplicate into the forum.

Well, that's good to know. An item for inclusion in the howto, and perhaps worth adding to the http://www.e-cigarette-forum.com/forum/announcements-rules/54574-how-join-create-social-group.html

My definition of "really, really right" includes "appropriate to the audience".

 

[rolygate]

WhistlePig,

That Howto you linked to does state that the forum auto-creates the new social forum. However I changed the layout and bolded the subheads to make it read better.

The new, full Howto would be an excellent topic for the CMS, where you will be able to edit it as wished. We're a bit behind on that as our coder was off sick for a couple of weeks, but it will be online soon.

 

[Whistle_Pig]

Actually, it says that the forum auto-creates once you hit 6 members. The behaviour being described here, as I understand it, is that when you do the "create forum" link, your discussions get moved to the forum.

Do you know what markup will be used in the new CMS? I can do HTML, Wiki, BBCode, and probably anything else as long as it uses embedded tags.

 

[rolygate]

There will be a visual editor just like here in vB. No need to know any code. However, you can go into source code view and play with the HTML. Sometimes handy when the wysiwyg editor won't do what you want.

 

[Whistle_Pig]

I generally don't like visual editors. Another throwback to my days of writing code, perhaps, or the problems I've had, off and on, with WYSIWYG not always working that way. But what I had in mind was starting to put something together pretty soon, just in a text editor here at home. Have you decided on Joomla or Drupal? I looked at Drupal once, and haven't played with Joomla at all. I'm assuming that both of those support TinyMCE, which I'm also assuming is the most likely choice for your WYSIWYG editor.

 

[rolygate]

Yes, we'll use Joomla. You will have a choice of TinyMCE or FCKeditor.

You can always do it in code if you like, although the wysiwyg is preferred since we need the formatting to be consistent sitewide. Someone might think large green text is nice, another likes Comic Sans bold in light blue, and pretty soon the thing looks like a fanzine - which is no good.

In general the wysiwyg editors work fine, there are some issues with custom templates though, so we paste them in via raw code if necessary.

What doesn't work is for formatted text to be pasted in. That wrecks everything totally, so either Notepad or a real editor such as NoteTab has to be used. Using Word or RTF etc will completely wreck the code - so if you pre-build a page, it needs to be in Notepad or another unformatted clean editor. You can format the page just fine in the visual editor, it has all the controls you need. Or go to HTML. But a formatted text editor like Word or any .doc output editor is the worst choice of all.

 

[quasimod]

[...] My definition of "really, really right" includes "appropriate to the audience".

I can count to potato! I like shiny things, and cartoon animals that talk. Ooh-ooh! And bouncy rubber balls!

I'll come back when we start talking about clicking buttons and stuff.

 

[jj2]

I'm redoing the description, or at least trying, but keep getting this message "Invalid Title Specific"

 

[rolygate]

Sorry JJ but you'll have to ask an expert. And we all know who that is.

 

[jj2]

Sorry JJ but you'll have to ask an expert. And we all know who that is.

Yep, but I bugged him yesterday so I thought I better give him a day, or two, break. Don't want to be a pest.

 

[Whistle_Pig]

Okay, so I created the forum. Will be waiting to see whether the discussions migrate, or whether I need to ping Angus or someone to do that.

Also, now that I did that, when I go to the e-cigarette-forum.com/forum/groups/ page, under "Groups You Created" it shows me CoVapE, but the counts are off. It indicates 1 discussion, and 1 message. But the 4 discussions are still discussions, and there's a total of I think 20 or so messages among those.

Not trying to be a pest here, but I need to understand and document this stuff if I'm going to write a howto.

 

[Mary Kay]

Now is when you will get the messages to authorize posts. That is because people will post iin the wrong area. I don't understand why Your first 4 threads didn't migrage. Maybe Angus can fix that.
Don't forget to mention to your people not to post in the Social Group page..but to post in the Forum.

 

[trailblazer6]

Well, in any event a "how to guide" sure would be nice. I have threads I'd like to close. Others I'd like to just totally delete the clutter not soft delete. And general group page clean up. Had to find out by trial and error on reducing the number of notifications I had when I excepted ownership of a group page. Still got one I have not been able to find but that sure is a lot better then 80.

 

[jj2]

Here's a little How To Do.

For those threads you have deleted.
Undelete them
MERGE them

After you have merged them, you'll be taken to the merge thread. Rename it (I called it junk), and then delete it.

This will condense it to one thread instead of several.

You can keep repeating this process to keep it to one thread too.

 

[AngusATAT]

Okay, so I created the forum. Will be waiting to see whether the discussions migrate, or whether I need to ping Angus or someone to do that.

The "discussions" will not migrate when you create a forum, nor is there really any way to do it except copy/pasting by hand for each post of each discussion into a newly made thread.

Forums do not "auto-create", either. It has to be done manually via the "Create Forum" link when you get enough members.

Social group forums are actually an addon to vBulletin, so some quirks are expected. I need to check and see if there is an updated version of this addon to load. Perhaps that might solve a few issues.

 

[Whistle_Pig]

The "discussions" will not migrate when you create a forum, nor is there really any way to do it except copy/pasting by hand for each post of each discussion into a newly made thread.

See, this is why I need direct access to the underlying database, and documentation of the schema. Then I could write the necessary update queries to re-parent the posts, and do whatever else would be required to make them into forum threads/posts.

Thanks for the info, Angus. I'll pass on the manual copy/paste, since I wouldn't be able to create a reply as the original poster anyway.

 

[jj2]

Here's a tutorial I found.
Vbulletin Forum Moderation Explained SERPentus

 

[Whistle_Pig]

Thanks, jj2. Now all we need is a sandbox to play in.

 

[jj2]

Thanks, jj2. Now all we need is a sandbox to play in.

YW
AND just by chance ECF has one!!!

Bet you knew that.

 

[Whistle_Pig]

Well, slap me with a wet noodle, I don't see it. There's the Sandbox forum, but it doesn't allow playing with moderator functions. I have this real reluctance to practice on live data. Maybe I should just not worry about it .