Extension Key: wec_discussion
Copyright 2005-2007, Foundation for Evangelism, http://www.evangelize.org
Author: Web-Empowered Church <discussion(at)webempoweredchurch.com>
Support Community: http://www.webempoweredchurch.com/support/community/
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 Discussion Forum extension allows you to create a simplified forum, blog (a.k.a. weblog), or comment system on your site. The forum, blog, and comments are geared for one-page only, yet you can easily create discussion pages on multiple topics. This extension was created to support a forum system, and we added the blog and comments on top of it because we saw the similarities in functions.
While this extension is not intended to be the best forum system or best blog system, we think it can work well for many web site needs. While this extension is “simplified”, it does have many powerful features. You can easily change the look and feel, as well as turn on or off features. You can have moderators for your discussion pages, and allow users to subscribe to get e-mail updates. You can have multiple-person blogs. Comments can be added to the page. Entry and comment forms can be hidden and shown only when a person wants to enter information.
This extension promotes community. We have found that on a site with diverse interests, when you have a large forum like CHC-forum that has many conferences and topics, users were less likely to interact in that kind of forum. However, if they have a forum page that is customized to their needs and their look, they feel like it is their own private area and more likely to start and sustain more personal conversation.
This extension supports:
Discussion page: allowing any users to post messages, and then reply to those messages
Blog page: allowing a given user(s) to post messages, with optional replies
Comment section: allowing any user to post a message.
Preview discussion page: allowing you to show the last #N messages left on a given discussion page/blog/comment
Features of this Discussion extension include:
Easily customize colors, layout, and look.
Support users to subscribe and receive all new posts by email.
Filter messages for bad/obscene/spam words.
Moderate the messages (optional).
Spam protection of comments and posts by Image Captcha, Text Captcha, links removed, HTML tags, etc.
Can hide the entry and comment form until you want to post a message.
Search discussion messages.
Preview of last #N messages posted. You can add this to any Typo3 page.
Archive by month.
Actionbar or sidebar or both supported.
If you want a simple but powerful bulletin board / forum system or a blog system or a comment system, we recommend considering using this extension. This extension helps build community on your website, and allows customized look and feel per discussion forum. This discussion forum is geared for small to medium websites that would have discussions with up to hundreds of people. For large websites, we would recommend using chc_forum extension or an external forum system.
We created this extension for our On-line Transformational Journal (see wec_devo extension) to help build community as users would go thrfough Bible readings and questions, and they can personally share what they are learning. You can see the example here at: http://www.ginghamsburg.org/tj/
The following are screenshots to show you examples of the Discussion Forum working:
The TJ Forum at http://www.ginghamsburg.org/tj/
An example of the Preview of a forum:
See more of the features with sidebar and/or actionbar and entry form:
The Web-Empowered Church (WEC) is a ministry of the Foundation for Evangelism ( www.evangelize.org). The mission of WEC is to innovatively apply WEB technology to EMPOWER the worldwide CHURCH for ministry.WEC will help churches around the world expand evangelism, discipleship, and care through the innovative application of Internet technology. WEC web-based tools and training will help make church ministries more efficient and effective, and will extend ministry impact to a world in need of Jesus (See www.WebEmpoweredChurch.org/Jesus). We want to fuel a worldwide movement using the Internet to point the world to Jesus Christ, to grow disciples, and to care for those in need. Our desire is to use the web to empower the Church to become a truly 24 hours per day 7 days per week ministry that is not constrained by walls or distance or time.If you would like to find out more about WEC or our tools, or support us in any way, please go to our website for users: www.webempoweredchurch.com and for software/web developers: www.webempoweredchurch.org
