I really like both the simplicity of the Vanilla forum and wish someone smarter than me could integrate it with ModX.
Some users of Vanilla have blogified the software such that the first discussion ’item’ is presented as a post and other contributions to the thread as comments. Comments have the same visibility and first-class status as the first contribution to a thread. While that is an extension/hack (see linked example below), the default Vanilla forum flattens (makes equivalent) the visibility of all contributions to a thread. I know, so do ModX forums; you’ll have to check it out to see what I mean.
I am wondering whether it might be possible to mimic this in ModX. Specifically, is it possible to elevate the visibility of comments to weblog posts so that:
1. Once a first comment has been made to a post, it and all other comments display with the post itself (not when a comments link is clicked).
2. The comment can be styled to look just like (indistinguishable from) the post, only, of course, in its sequential position within the stream of contributions.
It’s been a while since I worked with Modx but intend to try a couple of simple site concepts this week. I may then try the same thing in Expressio Engine for comparison. As I recall, comments are not first class posts in the ModX database, alas. Does that get in the way of this? Is there some way I could have multiple-authored posts (instead of comments) where the posts were associated together so they could be displayed as discussed here/Vanilla?
Check out the main Vanilla forum
here.
The blogified hack by a Mr. K is
here. Note that his hack is 99% ’just’ a Vanilla forum.
One intriguing aspect of this interface trick is that both a Vanilla ’blog’ and ’forum’ share the same content, posting conventions, etc.
MODX Staff