I can't believe there's no working forum solution

I was looking forward to trying out MODx on a community website I’m building, but it looks like I will have to pass and use perhaps CMSMS or *gasp* Drupal. Reason: a discussion forum will be an essential part of the site, and I was astonished to find out after much searching that not only does MODx not have a native forum module, it also does not have any currently usable bridges to third-party forum software. How is this possible? MODx is supposed to be the nex big thing in CMS, but I don’t see how that’s going to happen if every other potential user skips it because there’s no forum solution. So many sites need discussion forums, that should be an essential part of any CMS.

There’s plenty of threads here about bridges to SMF that are filled with questions in the vein of "so anyone got this working yet?" Vanilla integration is also in the works, but sadly, I need to start building now. If even skilled developers are hard pressed to find a working solution, I have no chance at all. I’m a designer, not a programmer.

So goodbye MODx, maybe next time...

I do feel your pain! I have tried everything listed on the forums for an integration and nothing worked for me. I am still hoping something will appear but as I understand, it’s a fairly complex process to get working.

I have had discussions with several people on the forum to see if it is possible and it seems that it just might be beyond modx. Not to forget that that 99% of the work done on here is free and done in people’s spare time.

After I wrote the post above, I went to my CMSMS installation and installed some modules that enable separate front end users, add forums etc. I now have what I want, in 3 hours (took a while because I run into some trouble adding the FEU login forms). CMS Made Simple, indeed! I guess I will stick with it.

I understand that MODx is quite a new project, and it may be too much to ask for all this functionality at this stage, but still... "Might be beyond modx"? Maybe they need to rethink their marketing, then. Toss the "it frees you to build sites exactly how you want and make them 100% yours. Zero restrictions and fast to build" hype and all that (taken from modx front page).

The lack of solid forum integration is a buzz kill for some (I have never needed it so it has not bothered me personally). It is by no means beyond MODx. I am sure what keeps it from happening is that it requires some effort and those who are looking for it are not the ones who have the ability or time to build it. It is definitely not mission critical at this point, IMO.

I would like to have a native forum add-on (not a bridge) to a simple modx native forum. That would be a great starting point.

MODx is a developer tool, and we’re not really targetting the click-and-install crowd at this point. That means it won’t be the right tool for everyone, but we’re OK with that. There isn’t anything in MODx that prevents you from building such a tool.

That said, there is in fact a community-led effort underway for getting a native (simple) forum working under MODx. The forum bit works great, but the admin-side tools aren’t there yet (they’re non-existant). If you’re a developer with some spare cycles, perhaps we could organize a few folks to work on such a project, keeping in mind what’s coming in Revo and the immediate availability in Evo/096x.

Register your interest in this thread, please.

I had an interesting chat with AHHP regarding a forum for modx...

SMF is a great forum software, it would be great to have a seamless integration... but saying that, a native forum would be bloody good. The modx manager is great, I like how I can create custom pages or login forms in the modules area only for admins so being able to control a forum form within the manager would be great. Modx already has the whole usergroup management system in place which is important to a forum, using webloginPE for the user registration for the forum and profile options would work well.

Hopefully someone has something working that is willing to share... I would pay for a solution but I can’t afford to bankroll a custom job. Full time student limits my funds but if someone made something and sold the solution for $20 a pop or what ever, the total amount from interested users would be a nice bit pocket money!

I am interested in helping but my time budget is very limited.

The forum bit works great, but the admin-side tools aren’t there yet (they’re non-existant).

I am not too familiar with forums, having had little interaction with the management side. What tools are needed beyond the post moderation stuff?

Let’s just be clear about this - yes CMSMS comes with a forum but it’s a really simple implemention of a threaded discussion list. For a real community it simply wouldn’t do the things that people expect. Profile management, board access management, personal messaging, moderation, email notifications, thread subscriptions, rss feeds, sub forums, search, etc etc. Forums just aren’t ’simple’.

I still think that the best forum for modx (evo or revo) would be a bridge to an existing best-of-breed open source forum that fully integrates modx user management and templating. The SMF bridge works right now for evo - you’re looking at it - but I agree it’s not ideal. From what I understand integration could be much easier and more complete in Revo.

There is no bridge on the MODx CMS site actually, as we’ve not had a compelling reason until now to bridge the website and the forum users. On the website, we did do a simple SMF SSI call to check for a logged in SMF session to enable commenting though. We did have a common looking theme though.

Now however, we do need an integration to bridge to our bugtracker and confluence wiki, and we’re working on making the SMF DB act as an identity provider for Crowd-based authentication that drives everything else in the project.

I like the bridge idea. I think a visual forms manager is far more of a priority for a web site CMS (and am using MachForm within MODx as a module) but real Forums are a whole other beast. This one: http://getvanilla.com/ looks interesting. Anyone have any experience with it. We run into similar problems of bridging with eCommerce applications and newsletters but have decided to build some custom inter DB elements to get these things done.