Extension Key: mm_forum
Copyright 2008, Mittwald CM Service, <umsetzung@mittwald.de>
This document is published under the Open Content License
available from http://www.opencontent.org/opl.shtml
The content of this document is related to TYPO3
- a GNU/GPL CMS/Framework available from www.typo3.com
The mm_forum extension aims to be a full-featured discussion board plug-in for TYPO3 users. The first version was created for the German TYPO3 bulletin board typo3.net and it is designed to serve large groups of user. The version you downloaded is a beta version, so although this version should be stable in most aspects, it is possible that still some bugs might occur. For more information please take a closer look at the To-Do list on page 42.
See http://www.typo3.net/mm_forum for the official mm_forum bug tracker, the source code documentation and to get the latest SVN snapshot.
The mm_forum is a frontend plugin that adds a discussion board to your TYPO3-based website. The extension was written to be used for discussing questions about TYPO3 by Mittwald CM Service. The extension currently consists of six different plugins and one backend module. These plugins provide the following features:
Message Board – The mm_forum : Forum plugin offers all the basic functionalities of a full-featured discussion board, e.g. the display of different message boards as well as threads and posts contained in these message boards.
User registration – The mm_forum : User registration plugin contains an own form for user registration. The mm_forum extensions extends the user table by several new fields such as various new contact data (ICQ, MSN, AIM, YIM, Skype), interests or occupation.
Private messaging – The mm_forum : Private messaging plugin implements a messaging system allowing users to write private messages among each other.
Indexed Search – The mm_forum : Search plugin contains an own indexed search engine allowing very fast search queries.
User details – The mm_forum : User settings plugin offers functionalities for the user to edit his/her own user information.
Portal information – The mm_forum : Portal information plugin displays a complete list of all users that are currently online or have been recently online. Furthermore, it shows interesting statistics, like the amount of posts written in the forum.
Backend Administration module – The backend module of the mm_forum extension offers a wide range of functionalities allowing the administrator to easily configure the mm_forum extension. The administrator is able to set up all message boards and categories, he/she can edit the mm_forum template files, configure the smilies and BBCodes used in the forum plugin and even import data from an already existing phpBB message board.
The first step to install the mm_forum extension is – of course – to import it into you TYPO3 environment using the extension manager. To do so, go to the extension manager and select “Import extensions” in the drop-down menu on the top of the page:
Then select the extension file you downloaded from in the select box labeled “Upload extension file directly” and click on “Install”:
Before running the mm_forum, you need to tell the mm_forum where to find and to store its data. For this, you should first create a new page where your forum data are to be stored. The probably best solution to do this would be to create a SysFolder for this. You will also need an additional SysFolder for the user data. If you have already a login system working on your site, you will probably already have a user SysFolder somewhere in your system, so in this case you will not have to create another user SysFolder.
Now it is time to configure your extension. You will have noticed that an additional menu item appeared in your TYPO3 navigator that is labeled “mm_forum”. If you do not see this button, reload the page once.
This menu item will take you to the mm_forum backend module, which will allow you to properly configure your mm_forum. The first thing you will have to do is to specify the mm_forum data storage page (that you have just created) and the TYPO3 frontend user page:
Hit the folder icon next to the input field to open a page tree where you will be able to select your mm_forum data storage page. In the next installation step, you will be asked to specify the user page. You can do this the same way as you did with the storage page.
In the next installation step, you will be asked to specify three groups, the default user group, the moderator group and the administrator group. These three groups will be used by the mm_forum to distinguish different user authentications. Lateron you can add more groups, but these three are the only ones that are really required.
If you have already some user groups existing, you can select these using the folder icon next to the input field. Just like in the steps before, you will have a page tree where you will be able to select the regarding group. Notice that all groups have to be located on the user storage page that you specified one step before.
If you do not have any groups at all yet, you should hit the plus icon which will allow you to create a new group right now. When you hit this icon, a form will be displayed where you can input all necessary options for the new user group. When you have specified everything, just click on “Save and Close” and you will get back to the mm_forum installation. Now you can select the newly created user group using the folder icon. The new user groups was stored automatically on the page you specified as user storage page.
Do so with all three groups.
After having set all these values, the basic installation of the mm_forum extension is complete. After installing, you will see the complete mm_forum configuration tool, where you can set a lot of properties. As you can see, most of these fields are already filled out with the values you have specified during the installation or with default values, so regularly you do not need to change anything to run the mm_forum.
However, one value you must set is the Board page property in the Forum category. This is the page where you have placed your main mm_forum plugin (too see how to do this, read the following chapter).
Now you have successfully configured everything that is necessary to get started with the mm_forum extension.
All you have to do now is to create some pages and insert the required mm_forum plugins on these pages.
As you will notice, the mm_forum extension contains six different plugins, all with different functionalities (and different importance). The central plugin is the mm_forum : Forum plugin. Since this plugin offers plenty functionalities, you will have to specify what the plugin has to show, by specifying a value in the “What to display” field. Consider the following table to get to know which plugin uses which configurations:
Plugin | What to display | Displays |
mm_forum :: Forum | Message board | Displays the basic functionalities of the mm_forum extension. This means the display of categories, message boards, threads and posts. For these options, you will not have to specify anything, the extension handles this on its own. This option also offers forms to create new entries and so on. |
Latest posts | Displays a list of the latest topic, meaning the topics that was last written in. | |
List the user's posts | This option shows the post history of a mm_forum user, i.e. presents a list of all posts this user has ever written. | |
Email subscriptions | Shows the threads that are tagged as observed by the user that is currently logged in. | |
Favorites | Shows the threads that are tagged as favorite by the user that is currently logged in. | |
Reported posts | This options shows a list of all posts that were reported by users. A page containing this plugin should be accessible only by the administrator and moderator group. | |
List post queue | This option lists all posts and topics that still have to be published by a moderator. This is only the case if the mm_forum is used as „moderated board“, i.e. if moderators have to confirm all postings. | |
mm_forum :: User registration | [no configuration possibilities] | Implements a user registration form. |
mm_forum :: Private messaging | [no configuration possibilities] | Contains the private messaging system. |
mm_forum :: Search | [no configuration possibilities] | Offers a indexed search function. |
mm_forum :: User settings | [no configuration possibilities] | Displays form allowing the user to edit his/her own user settings. |
mm_forum :: Portal information | [no configuration possibilities] | Displays general information about the mm_forum. This includes a list of users that are currently logged in and useful statistics. |
If you select the item “Message board” in the “What to display” field, you will see another configuration item named “Show special page”. Here you will be able to select a special sub page of the “Message board” configuration to be displayed. This may be a listing of unread posts or posts that have not yet been answered. Setting this item on a separate page will create a shortcut to the actual “Message board” plugin (where the “Show special page” field is not set) which will be called with the regarding parameters (see Administration ► Special listing).
It is recommended that you set up each of this plugins on a single page in the page tree. However, it is not necessary to implement all of these plugins. This may be useful if an administrator does not want to have a private messaging functionality implemented.
See the screenshot below in order to see how you to set up the different plugins.
Finally, you have to specify the page where you have placed the main mm_forum :: Forum (with “What to display” set to “Message board”) plugin on in the mm_forum configuration tool. The regarding property can be found in Install ► Forum ► Board page. In this field you can open a page tree where you can just select your main mm_forum page.
If you decided to use the mm_forum :: Private messaging plugin as well, you will also have to specify the page this plugin is placed on in the configuration tool (Install ► Private messaging ► Private messaging page)
Now you have inserted the message board on your page. However, at this moment, there are no categories at all. To change this, go to the mm_forum backend module in Tools ► mm_forum
In this module you have the opportunity to do all the forum administration. You have access to the following administrative settings:
User administration: Offers functions for administrating the mm_forum users.
Board Administration: Create categories and message boards.
Templates: Edit the HTML Templates
Tools: Add new smilies and post parser functions
phpBB Data import: Import all your data from an existing phpBB board
In this form you can edit the forum users which are created in the user storage folder.
This option allows the administrator to configure the message board structure. The mm_forum is divided into categories and boards. So first you should set up a category and then add some message boards to this category.
See the screenshot below to see how to create categories and message boards. You can read Administration ► Categories and Boards for more information on how to administrate the forum structure.
In this section you can select a design set and edit the templates contained in it. This should be used only by experienced users. You can read Configuration ► Change Look and Feel of mm_forum for more information.
In the Tools section you can add new emoticons or post parser options. Core emoticons and post parser functions are available from the very first.
The mm_forum backend module offers the functionality to import all data from an existing phpBB message board or a CHC forum that is already installed as TYPO3 extension. The data import is classified into several steps.
In this step, you can choose, which forum data you want to import into the mm_forum. You can import data from a phpBB board or an instance of the CHC Forum, a TYPO3 extension. The CHC import brings also an import possibility for private messages used in the CWT Community extension.
Here you can select the database connection. You can use this feature to import data from an external database server. In most cases, you should just be able to select “Use local TYPO3 database”.
All MySQL tables used by the phpBB board are prefixed with a certain prefix. So the names of the phpBB boards follow the general pattern [prefix]_[table name], for example phpbb_posts.
In the first step, you have to define the used prefix:
After having entered the table prefix, the import tool will check if all phpBB tables actually exist in the database.
NOTE: The import tool uses a list of phpBB tables that is used in phpBB version 2.0.22. Is is possible that in older phpBB versions some of the tables used by 2.0.22 do not yet exist. In this case, the import tool will present a warning that one or more tables do not exist. Nevertheless you can continue by ignoring the warnings:
Only if some essential phpBB tables are missing, you will not be able to continue to the next step.
If the import tool has found the phpBB tables, you can proceed with step 4.
In step 2 you can select, which data will be imported from the phpBB tables. If you have just installed the mm_forum extension, it is recommended to import all data.
If you have selected the data you want to import, just proceed with step 5.
In this step, you will have to configure some further options that are necessary before the import is accomplished.
The import tool will recommend default values for most of the fields (in this case mostly the page UIDs you specified during the installation).
In the majority of cases you should be able to leave all these values just the way they are.
If everything is correct, hit “Continue” to proceed with step 6.
In step 4, the data import will finally be performed. You will see a list of what records are imported from the phpBB tables and where necessary also a list of errors that occurred during the data import.
Here you may select what data you want to import. You can choose between importing the CHC Forum data or the CWT Community data, or – of course – both. If one of these two extensions is not installed, you will not be able to perform this import process.
After hitting “Continue” the CHC/CWT data import will start automatically. Please notice that all existing mm_forum data will be deleted before importing the CHC/CWT data.
