MODX SMF Forum Integration Question

Before I go on, just noticed that on one load of the modx.com home page in Google Chrome v11.0.696.68 under Linux the "About" menu item that normally appears on the far right, displays under the main menu on the left, and when you hover the "Revolution" menu the About menu is visible underneath. Only happened once, but there you go.

Just was interested to know (before I go ahead and download MODX), how tightly integrated SMF is with MODX. Is the integration just at the authentication/access level (plus being able to include snippets from SMF in your MODX pages)? Or can an MODX theme/skin be used on your SMF forum? How are SMF modules/addons affected?

I’m new to php etc, and have been looking preferably for a CMS with it’s own core forum capability (Drupal has this, but I don’t like the way it looks and haven’t the skills to make it look better), or one that fully/tightly integrates to a third party forum system.

I’m seriously considering MODX right now, simply because it looks so darn good!! (being a bit obsessive I like my interfaces to make me feel comfortable)

Thanks in advance.

Guess mine was a bit of a silly question. Obviously I would have to theme SMF seperately, and SMF can seemingly fit between a MODX header and footer as on these forums. The MSF integration module obviously exists for the main part to handle the authentication side of things.

Bit of thought and I answered my own question

Am going to download and give MODX a try, frankly it looks like one of the sexiest CMS’s I’ve seen (well, compared to Drupal and Joomla! anyways). Having played with the demo site, the only thing that scares me is the apparent amount of raw php coding involved.....need to get the books out methinks.

Regards

MODX is all about HTML, really.

If you endup doing stuff that hasn’t been done (or at least released) before, yes you will need to play around in PHP. But roughly 95% of what people want MODX to do, it can easily be achieved without touching a single line of php.

Not sure if the SMF link falls in that 95%, but I do think therés a plugin available that pretty much does all the hard work for you


Enjoy playing with MODX and don’t hesitate to ask questions

To the best of my knowledge MODX forum is running on SMF that is why we have separate logins for MODX and forum. I think at one time before I joined and before ’modxcms.com’ changed over to Revolution there may have been some integration not sure though.

I have read about integration but am not sure if it was Evo or Revo or how successful people have been.

SMF was themed to look like the old MODX site.

The MODX team are at present testing their own in house forum with some members.
The team is planning to have their own native forum using MODX in the near future. http://modxcms.com/forums/index.php/topic,64453.0.html

Thanks for the comments Mark H, I’ll be sure to ask plenty of questions.

AllanB, there is an SMF Link (bridge) module available for Evo and I’ve read somewhere on these forums that it works with Revo also (can’t remember where I saw it...sorry).

I’m really much more excited that the MODX team are looking into a native forum module, will pop over to the link you’ve provided and sign up. TBH although Drupal does have a forum module in core it’s pretty much hopeless unless you add the Adv Forum contrib module, and even then you need to be a css wizard, and install a dozen or so other contrib modules to make it function like the standalone forums we all know and love.

Outside of Drupal, the only other CMS I’ve come across that has built-in forum functionality is Umbraco, and it looks pretty darn good too.....only problem is it’s Windows based.

Basically if the team can get a forum module into core that looks and functions as well as MODX itself does......I’ll be a MODX junkie for good, I nearly exploded with happiness when I saw it was built around the ExtJS Ajax framework, and the smaller number of contrib modules (ie. less confusion and hopefully better quality) is fantastic.

We’re going to be switching to a native MODX forum solution, including importing all our existing topics/users from SMF. It’s working now and avaiable to play around with if you’re curious. The new skin is coming along quite nicely and should greatly facilitate a ton of usability enhancements, including an amazing search powered by Solr that rocks.

Give us a MODX.com username (not the current SMF username) here to get a sneak peek: http://modxcms.com/forums/index.php/topic,64453.0.html

Resurrecting an old thread just to keep things in one place...
I've been using SMF for years and have been quite happy with it. When I started using Drupal, I found they were trying to bully a forum into that CMS and it failed horribly. Some folks in the community created a SMF/Drupal interface but it never worked well.

So now that I'm starting to use ModX... I'm wondering if there will ever be a way to sync the user/login tables between these environments. I really don't like the idea of a CMS trying to be everything to everyone, so I don't believe a CMS like this should try to do forums, blogs, FAQs, or surveys. People spend years coding dedicated applications that do just those things and plugin developers for a given CMS can't realistically hope to be able to achieve the quality of those dedicated environments.

So I'm hoping to see something for ModX that will seamlessly integrate these fine applications. Of course I'd also hope to see the same for WordPress, Mantis, Piwigo, and other environments.

What do you think of this forum we're using for MODX?

Thanks for asking, Ryan.

Um... In short, it's got all of the basics. I'd be tempted to dump SMF and use this if it was available and if I could figure out how to transfer data. Heck, this forum could be based on the SMF core for all I know.

I'll preface by saying your work on this forum is much appreciated. Most of my notes are about making current and/or relevant content easier to find, whether someone wants an education on some topic, if they want to keep up with the latest info on some feature, or if they want help or have a bug in some specific area. The forum is the Marketing vehicle of this community, and right now it screams concepts like old, cluttered, not-maintained, difficult, etc. Say that's all wrong and I'll accept it - but that's not what the Marketing here says.

I could say the same for the wiki. ( RD&C )

Forum Bugs:

- If you attempt to post but forgot the to set the Discussion/Question flag, the entire post is lost. It's a good thing I ctrl-a/ctrl+c frequently and before every click.

- In the Welcome Back header, clicking the down-arrow next to our user name, the dropdown list has an awkward transparency over other text.

General:

- Personally I prefer threaded discussions rather than top-down by age.

- I like the ability to get RSS per-board, as well as the ability to subscribe to threads.

- I'd like the profile option to auto-subscribe me to all threads in which I participate. Currently next to Reply, the Email Me checkbox is unchecked. I never know if I need to subscribe manually.

- Not sure what smileys are supported, or max attachment size. Where are these things documented?

- There are lots of 404s from off-site links. Sometimes the offsite links just go to a page (no 404) that no longer has the content. It would be nice to have a button where people can flag bad links, which others in the community can then correct (with proper verification of course). As a newcomer I could find it highly discouraging to find so many dead links - it makes the platform look antiquated and in disrepair.

- Forget off-site 404s... There are dead links for onsite docs, FAQ, wiki, and other resources. It would be nice for a cleanup routine to be run on the database to redirect references from modxcms and the old forum here. Again, at least publish the bad links so people in the community can correct them as time permits.

- RE links like this: /thread/12345/name-is-here?page=3#dis-post-9876
If there is a different number of rows per page, won't that break?
Can't change the pageSize? Sounds like another possible enhancement.

- Need ability to do more complex searches. Searching is painful. How about documenting the kinds of searches that are possible and not possible so that we have an idea about how to craft the query? I already suggested to Mark H that the start date default to something like 1/1/2011 to eliminate old and useless data from polluting requests for info about the current platform.

- Related, it's too easy to stumble on a thread where someone asks a question, they get a good answer, but it doesn't apply to the current platform. It would be nice to have a simple dropdown by individual postings (not threads) for visitors to flag the content as Evo or Revo. Then in the search we can restrict searches to "Revo and Not Categorized", "Revo only", "Evo", etc. Sure, errors will be made. I have ideas on how to fix that, will share off-line.

- And still related - I know you're considering board merging. How about just using Board sub-groups like "Evo", and then "Revo", and allowing a Board setting which just selects under these groups. In short, selection of multiple boards for a search would be good.

- Would be nice to see better organization of addon sections. Maybe add a section for each addon? I administer a tiny SMF forum, it's not tough to manage board structure after the boards all get added, and it's not like they cost anything. Only issue would be navigation through too many boards. I'm just thinking it's tough to find a stream of postings on any given addon - we can't subscribe to threads that include specific addon names, etc.

- Many users mis-categorize their threads. People should be able to volunteer to do nothing but move threads to different boards. Again, sure, errors will be made. I have ideas on how to fix that, will share off-line.

Um, you asked...

Thanks again!

Thanks for the feedback. This is our own forum after getting frustrated with SMF maintenance and poor integration and no other options that worked even after paying other forums vendors for work. We had to take things into our own hands. Formal announcement coming, but this forum software (Discuss) is now available and we're looking forward to contributions from the Community to make it even better. We agree there's lot still left to do! (Want to get involved?)

P.S.
We have some SMF migration code, too. But I'm not sure if it's still up to date since we migrated ourselves years ago. Discuss also supports threaded discussions.