how to add icons to forum containers?
flap,
I am wondering if you can help me with this one. I am setting up a B/S/T forum for my city, and i want to have a default icon beside each forum, in the container of that forum.
anyway, i have been propsed with adding taxonomy terms and stuff, but i really cant figre it out, no matter how i wrap my head around it. so, i started digging into the forum page (pages,) in hopes to change the administrative fields when editing/creating forums, to add a field which would allow for the upload of a picture in the container at the time of creating said container.
blugh, i am exhausted going over it. this description might need some revising, but if you think we can bump heads a bit to figure it out, let me know!
I assume that's you ;)
Be careful about adding fields to a Forum content type. A Forum topic is a not just a node - it's a special type of node. It's existence in the Drupal core has been debated since Drupal 6. Technically, you can build a forum with standard Drupal nodes and comments with a lot of customization. That's what the Forum module is. So you can think of the Fourm content type as a content type that extends the functionality of a standard node. To complicate this, there is the Advanced Forum module which extends the Forum module which extends the node.
First, take a deep breath and digest this.
Now, understand that a web page in Drupal consists of it's content (the node and associated fields, etc), its layout, and its design. The content is managed via the Drupal admin interface. The layout is managed by a template file, and the layout via CSS.
From what it sounds like you are doing, you have the appropriate content created. You just need a means to have access to it. This is handled via template files.
Now, keep in mind that template files and CSS files are part of a site's theme. You don't ever want to modify any module's template files or css directly. This should be overridden in files with the same name that you either have or create in your theme folder. For template and CSS files, Drupal looks first in your theme folder, then in the module's folder, then in the core (in that order). So any overriding you do in your theme's folder takes precedence over the others.
In the case of Forum content, the theme takes precedence over evertthing in the styling of the Advanced Forum Module which takes precedence over evertthing in the Forum module which takes precedence over the core node module.
If you are using the Advanced Forum module and you want to add images all nodes of the Advanced Forum node type, you need to make a copy of the node.tpl.php (adv-forums_x_.tpl.php where 'x' is the state of the forum form). If you're with me so far, you'll kill me when I get to this one.
The Advanced Forum module contains themes of it's own. in the folder for this module, you'll see a folder called 'themes'. Each one contains a full theme or skin for a forum. If the changes you want to make are golbal to all subsequent themes you might make for the Advanced Forum module, then you could add them to your theme folder (ie all color variations of a forum will all contain the new image you created). What you might try doing is to make a copy of one of the themes delivered with the module, rename it to whatever you want to call your new forum theme, and play around with the template files and css contained within the folder. Once you create this folder, I believe you can select your new theme from within the Advanced Forum admin (or maybe there's an xml file you need to add the name to - I forgot since it's been a while).
Let me know if any of this makes sense and ask away from there. Also, 'VM' seems pretty cool.
it all makes perfect sense, flap. i just got booted from drupal again after starting a discussion about the quality of the tech support forums. it looks like they deletd that thread as well.
needless to say i am very frustrated with drupal. i am having a rendering problem with panels, which involves content added into a panel (in this case, a view,) not "sticking" after i press the update button or the update & save button. i cant get any damn help in the drupal forums, and i got so frustrated i started toyig with joomla again, which i hate more than i could previously imagine.
i put a lot of time into learning drupal, and it really pisses me off to wait around for help in their forums for weeks at a time, sometimes. my last thread which booted me, talked abut how there are only 4 guys who seem to ever answer me. yes, VM is really cool. we have buttd heads before but i have a respect for him which i dont think he knows. other guys in there though, namely "worldfallz" are useless. that guy in particular is such a stuck up elitist piece of trash that he makes me want to say to hell with drupal all around. anyway, i digress, i could go on and on with all that.
I never thought of having to work in the inlucded themes of the advanced forums module, which i use. its too bad you dont drop into the drupal forums that often, theycould really use you over there helpin people out. you could even point people to the site here.
i waste literally my whole day troubleshooting drupal, i am exhausted with it all. i want to keep moving forward, but man, i dont even know where to start anymore.
The problem with Open Source projects is that they have definite life cycles. They start off slow and then gain attention. Once they have attention, their community grows. Then it gets large and inevitably, there's a split in the opinions of what direction it should head. Then there's a lot of head banging which is usually followed by the creation of two factions. Development and support screech to a halt while the two butt heads. Interest wanes, and people move on.
This pisses me off because, like you, I really like Drupal - especially Drupal 7. There's apparently a lot of 'discussion' going on about what Drupal 8 will be. That's all well and good, but there's still Drupal 7 to complete (from a modules perspective).
The discussions about Drupal 8 (aside from making it completely HTML5 compatable) seem to be heading it in a minimalist direction. This is all fine and good, but the more module-like functionality that's removed from the core, the more support is required to create the modules that simulate functionality available on prior releases.
Attitude in the forums is another problem. I'm really sick and tired of the 'Google is your friend :)" replies. There are a couple of groups that have evolved who support some sort of custom theming as well as packaged distributions with paid hosting options. These people seem to be running the show.
For this reason, I look for Drupal 7 as a platform to use with minimum 3rd party modules since support is spotty. It pisses me off that some of the keystone modules are still in some form of beta or dev state and the modules that we'd all like to use depend on these non-complete components.
This is why I like to not rely on modules like panels. It's not ready for prime time, there is functionality that is unpredictable, and it puts too much themeing functionality in the database. I prefer to have this functionality in files that I can reference and troubleshoot.
Panels is an interesting module, but its overhead is large and it's byproducts are unpredictable. That's why I like to theme the old fashioned way - modifying template and CSS files. If I make a change and don't get a result I anticipate, I can just run a 'diff' on two versions of text files (instead of troubleshooting the effect of data changes and the way they are handled passed through multiple modules).
flappy, you nailed every - point - perfectly on all of the problems with drupal.
it is a WONDERFUL framework, but I tell you this, I miss SP more and more as my frustration grows with drupal.
i *want* to know how to not have to use panels, but themeing in drupal seems like a maze to me. sure, there is documentation at drupal about it, but it's not structured for the novice. what i create with artisteer helps me establish how my colors, images etc. look and then i was going to use panels to tie it all together.
i also dont like panels because its more crap to inflate the database with. all teh time you can spare on server load/strain counts, and there is a *lot* of modules in drupal which rely on the database. really, all of them do, some of them for things that you dont even need; case in point is the statcounter module. whats it do? it provides an admin page for users to enter a statcount username and password, then it is supposed to add the data to the footer of your site. after having problems with the module, i quickly found that its all it did, so i just added the raw code into my footer and called it a night.
if i could just have the skills i need to theme drupal myself then i could save myself a lot of time f'n with modules that aren't ready to go yet, which also comes to something you brought up: talking about starting on v.8!
why!? why do open source projects love to push ahead into new shit when the foundation laid out isn't even ready to go full force? there are a lot of linux duistributions that release new, every 6 moths! thats twice a year, (obviously,) and web forums FULL of people who are stuck with problems that advanced users may have the answers to but will not release them.
this is bad for any operating system, but especially bad for a web framework. especially as drupal gains popularity; not to be redundant on "especially,"
skyportal, in my opinion, made sense. it was efficient, it had (at one time at least) dedicated developers behind it, it was POLITE to newbiesl it was EASY to learn as block building was almost entirely based on little include files, something i miss a lot. sometimes i just want to install ASP and pick back up with SP. i really want to learn drupal, but the frustration in finding help either on the internet or at drupals main forums is ridiculous. even third party websites who offer tutorials rely on these uber polished sites and complicate the tutorial by jutting off into other directions of drupals source one should already understand. i have found some great video tut's for drupal, but more often videos i find are short and really arent tutorials at all but a quick "what it does/about," made by some guy kissing some developer butt. the haughty pretentiousness of it all turns me off so much.
blugh! i'm frustrated! i have this site drawn out and i don't know how i'll make it happen. oh, don't you just love as well, when you find people in the forums suggesting people to keep working with v.6? i don't want to degrade, i expect a framework to evolve in unison with it's users needs, but that won't ever happen for drupal.
Spot on all of the above. Me too got into a "discussion" with some of the "helpers" at the Drupal forum, and I'm not likely to get back in there to either ask a question nor to help answer questions. Not while those very unpolite and blunt individuals are still there.
I'm using Drupal for a couple of production sites so anything newer than Drupal 6 is completely out of question. I refuse to use components that is still in beta for a production site, and very few of the components I need have reached released status for Drupal 7.
The main problem that I'm facing is given the apparent slowdown in development on critical modules for whatever reason, what is out there that is open source, better, and actively supported?
In conversations with Maggie, we both agree that Wordpress, while a more mature product, is developed primarily as a blogging tool and CMS functionality is an after thought. I've not gotten into the level of detail that she has, but she tells me that Wordpress doesn't hold up well with multiple content contributors. This is what Drupal does very well.
I'm steering clear of Joomla because of the change in direction making most usable modules 'paid modules'. I'm also not a huge fan of the Joomla architecture. I stopped using Joomla for basically the same reasons that I stopped with Dot Net Nuke. If I'm not charging back a client for the cost of modules, I'm not paying for their use on non-commercial sites.
So the question is, what is out there that is better? Is there an open source project with momentum that I'm just not seeing at this point?
"what else is there," this is the key question i have to ask myself. not much seems to be the answer. there are many open source, php based alternatives, but none of them have the spine/lasting power that drupal has.
joomla: not only am i bothered by the fat that it is properly spelled as, "joomla!" but i also hate that it is geared towards paid modules. i also DO NOT like the structure of the system. a default install of joomla looks like a newpaper, and managing the content is considerably different than drupal. i had a lot of "fun," trying to add a home link to the main menu, for instacne. little things like that rutn me off from it. i did not get started into joomla because it was structured as if monkeys designed it, and i continue to stay away from it for the same reasons. i also don't like how they break modules into 2 separations, and now that i understand taxonomy, i don't like that it doesn;t have that, either!
basically as i said before, i have worked with drupal for too long to simply turn away from it, but there has to be a change in the forums over there, and if that doesn't happen then there needs to be a real solution for a third party support forum. if we had more drupal users here that would help.
after a week or so now of leaving my drupal development at a stand-still (because of panels/pages not updating when i would save them/having white pages for panels where i should have had content,) suddenly my drupal work is coming along nicely again. the panels/pages is now working for some reason, and i don't know why. very frustrating, to say the least, but that said, i am now presented with a working solution and i want to look into pictures for forums again. you tell me, because i have no idea, and the dickwads at drupal wouldn't offer any ideas. i fuckin hate that the same 4 people are the pnly ones who ever offer help there. those guys are the shittiest site admins i've encountered in a long time. even the elitists at phpBB made those guys look like saints!
one thing i do like about drupal is that it continues to push me to think outside the box, as there is no stock or universal way to get a desired effect. all developers with drupal will likely come to their own means to an end.
case and point on Forum Icons/pictures: since my ultimate goal is to have a VIEW which will then aggregate and display the pictures in a tabular format (think of album covers on facebook pictures,) i should be able to edit the forum "PAGE" (via pages,) to allow me to upload a picture to it (which i did earlier and discussed in the drupal forums,) then simply create a VIEW which will look for "forum picture," or whatever I name it.
the pictures will not necessarily display on the MAIN FORUM DIRECTORY, but I want an entire rewrite of how the forums are laid out eventually anyhow. further, the VIEW created will be the primary jump off point. if I create the VIEW as both a BLOCK & PAGE i might be able to link BACK to the PAGE as a main forum directory, even, with a bit of code tweaking in the right places.
ideas welcome.
damn. i can't remember how i added an image field to the adin zone of forum editing...
^^solved:
STRUCTURE >> TAXONOMY >> FORUMS >> MANAGE FIELDS
Just a quick brain fart, but there's nothing that says that you need to incorporate your 'album' images into the actual forum content type. One of the problems with views was that blocks were not allowed to be passed parameters. ie have a block displayed on a forum page whose id is used to filter the contents of the 'album' image block. But since you have panels working, this becomes possible.
In other words, you can simply create a block of images (from wherever) and, as long as there is a connection to content in your forum (node id, author, taxomony, etc...), you can create a panel for the view that is actually aware of that 'connection' as a parameter and it will filter and display the correct 'album' images.
OK, so now that I have added the ABILITY to add pictures to forums/containers when CREATING them, i am now at the same problem i had before: i cannot access them in VIEWS.
for the example i called the field "container_picture" but "container"-anything is never displayed as a result when adding fields to a VIEW.
i don't know how i missed that tip last night. i was thinking i could probably do what you are saying, create a node of images, display them with a view - BUT - i didn't know how i could tie the images as links to the forums.
you are saying i should be able to tie it all together with panels, essentially, correct?
I'm late to this party and I don't wanna spam everyone by replying individually to each post so here goes...
The Drupal Forums are Crap...
... and everyone in the Drupal community knows it. It used to be a really great place but as Drupal has become more popular the amount of "newbie" questions like "How do install Drupal?" and what not have driven most people who used to provide support out. The upside to this is there was a large movement to improve the documentation on Drupal.org. It worked fairly well but it's hard to sustain momentum on documentation (no one likes doing it after all).
If you can't find what you need at http://drupal.org/documentation your best bet is to ask in IRC (there is a webchat client available too). You can find me in #drupal-austin most of the time. The next best place (IMO) is http://drupal.stackexchange.com/. I'm also an active member there and if you ping me in IRC I'll try to pay special attention to your question.
Drupal 7 is Ready for Primetime
It's been alomst a year (Jan 5, 2011) since Drupal 7 was released. Most of the upgrade path problems have been fixed and a lot of edge case bugs have been discovered. Drupal 7 is stable and I've been developing sites with it for six months. The obvious concern is with the status of contributed modules. There are still 19 of the 60 most popular modules that don't have a "stable" release. That's just semantics though. In my mind, Calendar may be the only module on that list that doesn't work well. There are no stable releases because some maintainers are just irresponsible.
Which brings me to panels. Panels is awesome. It is both stable and efficient. After building all your panels and exporting them to code, it only add 2 sql queries to pages that use it. If you opt to completely disable the core block system, it's actually more performant.
Forum Images
... have been built-in to advanced forum since 7.x-2.0-alpha3. Unless I misunderstood what you want. Here's an example of what I think you want to do (using stock drupal 7.10 and advanced forum 7.x-2.0-rc1). If this is what you want, I'll write up a how to so we can put it on Drupal.org docs.
Batty! great to see you, man!
sounds like you have some good working experience with drupal out there, thanks for all the links you posted in here.
yes - what you are showing is essentially what I am looking for in drupal forums! i have been busting my brain for over a month on how i can make it happen on my own, and i treid asking at drupal forums, even had the girl behind advanced_forums chime in and she didn't offer jack about it herself. dude, if you can help me get my forums setup in such a way, i'll be a happy guy over here. I am using AF v.7.x.-2.x-dev
ideally i would like to add an Image to the forum container. For example, if i have a forum container called, "Clothing," with offspring forums called "mens," "womens," Childrens" i wouldnt mind not having an image for the offspring, so long as the parent container had an image. this would allow for less clutter as my boards will have several forums divided into containers/classifications like that.
OK, I am attempting to redesign my Forum Topics so they don't look like crap when they display pictures users upload to them.
You can see the work at http://120178.tk/phswap/node/2
Alright, so there is a View at the top which displays the Images from the selected Forum Node. There is a problem, however: when clicking the Next Page in the pager, it takes the user to only the next images in the View, redirecting the User away from the Forum Topic.
How can I keep users ON the FT while the VIEW changes the content to reflect whats next in line?
I have Views Slider installed, and I am going to test that in the meantime.
Here's how to add images next to forums on the forum list. This method requires no code changes or theme overloads.
- Add an image field to taxonomy terms in the Forum taxonomy
- Structure > Taxonomy > Edit Forum Vocabulary > Manage Fields
- Add New Image Field. Specifics don't matter as long as it's an image field
- Upload images to the terms you want
- This should be done using the taxonomy interface at Structure > Taxonomy > Forum > List Terms > Edit Term
- Select this newly added field in the advanced forum settings
- Configuration > Advanced Forum > Image Field: Should be the field you just added to the taxonomy. I chose thumbnail as the Forum Image Style
- Reload your forum page you should now see images next to forums
Here's how to add images next to containers on the forum list. You must follow the above steps first.
- From the advanced forum module directory, copy advanced_forum/styles/naked/advanced-forum.naked.forum-list.tpl.php to YOUR_THEME/advanced-forum-forum-list.tpl.php
- If you're using a stacked theme, copy the template from naked_stacked instead
- Edit the file you just copied into your theme directoy and add the following on line 55
<?php
// Display forum images using Field API
$entity = entity_load('taxonomy_term', array($table_info->tid));
$field_name = variable_get('advanced_forum_forum_image_field', '');
if (!empty($entity[$table_info->tid]->$field_name)) {
$field = $entity[$table_info->tid]->$field_name;
global $language;
$langcode = isset($field[$language->language]) ? $language->language : LANGUAGE_NONE;
if (isset($field[$langcode])) {
$display = array(
'label' => 'hidden',
'type' => 'image',
'settings' => array(
'image_style' => variable_get('advanced_forum_forum_image_preset', ''),
'image_link' => '',
),
);
$output = field_view_value('taxonomy_term', $entity[$table_info->tid], $field_name, $field[$langcode][0], $display);
print(render($output));
}
}
?>I've made the file available as a public gist https://gist.github.com/1492521
Make sure you continue to add containers and forums at Structure > Forums, but add images at Structure > Taxonomy. Simply delete any images from container or forum terms if you don't want any to show up.
Batty!
wow, well, so far, i still don't have pictures displaying back along side my containers, but i think it has to do with the file you told me to copy into my theme folder...
OK, by default I am using "silver bells," i copied the naked...tpl file into my "silver bells" advanced forum theme.
i added the snippet of data you provided at Line 55. line 55 was initially an "ELSE" statement. i pushed the ELSE statement down and pasted the data you provided ABOVE the else statement.
EDITED: after looking at your file, i changed the snippet to be UNDER the else command, /edit
OK, so that said, how is this file supposed to ever be called or used, since it is still named "naked...tpl"? i think this is why nothing is changing for me.
update: so i copied the file over to the NAKED theme and switched to that. it looks like ASS - but works!
Now all i have to do is call the file or data in Silver Bells.
OK, so i got it! I renamed the theme_tpl file to match the name of my theme, so went from _...naked...tpl to _...silver_bells...tpl and it works!
SO FAR it looks bad though. I am going to look into why, it could just be that i'm using too small of a picture to start with. either way, this is a HUGE step forward, batty, and i wouldn't have got here without your help! no matter what i would have done, i don't know if i would have ever been able to code the PHP to call the images into play!
EDIT:
it only looks bad for Containers. i tested an image next to a forum and that looks great. i'll poke thru the code you provided and see if i can tabulate the container display similarly to regular forum output.
UPDATE; SOLVED!!
SOLUTION: after line 55, i crated a simple no-frills HTML Table with TD valign=top align=left properties,
in the case of my code at this stage of the game,
78 print(render($output));
79 }
80 }
81 ?>
82 </td><td valign="top" align="left">
83 <a href="<?php print $table_info->link; ?>"><?php print $table_info->name; ?></a>
84 <?php endif; ?>
85 </div>
86 <?php if ($collapsible): ?>
87 <span id="forum-collapsible-<?php print $table_info->tid; ?>" class="forum-collapsible" > </span>
88 <?php endif; ?>
89 <div class="forum-table-description"><?php print $table_info->description; ?></div>
90 </tr></td></table>ok, refresh time... at this juncture containers are now not spanning to the full length of the forum...
**EDIT**
Just cleaned up your post a bit.
When I said YOUR_THEME I meant sites/all/themes/YOUR_THEME, not advanced_forum/styles/YOUR_THEME, sorry.
You can keep the file in the silver_bells folder, just be sure to remember it when you update advanced_forum module in the future.
I looked at your site and the category image looks fine to me. Unless you want it to be vertically centered with the category name?
well, I want the picture to be aligned top-left, and then the link (name) and description to be aligned top-left next to it as well.
currently i have solved the problem, but the table i am using reduces the span of the initial layout, wich is visible at this time and can be compared by looking at the "Kitten" container and then looking at other containers, where they all are encapsuled in a table which spans only as far as the data within them. setting a width of 100 percent has no affect on this.
the table is thick black (5 border) intentionally for now to see how it is being drawn for troubleshooting purposes.
I wouldn't use a table for this. Moving the image out of the forum-table-name div and giving it a left float works well.
I've updated the file at https://gist.github.com/1492521 with these changes if you wanna try it.
yeah, i was thinking the same thing - not sing tables and using DIV, but i never properly learned the DIV tag. it's quite powerful but i still don't understand it.
Batty! wow, man! it works!
my god, man! i knew it could be done, and i knew it was easier than what everyone at drupal said! i still don't know why the girl behind advanced forums told me to look into AFv6 and all kinds of other crap!
I had setup the image field in the taxonomy, and you gave me what i needed to tie it all together! man, this is going to help A LOT.
I cannot begin to explain to you how grateful i am for your help. leave it to the boys of old-school MWP/SP to come around and make it happen in the drupal world! i reckon you realkly know your shit with drupal, and i feel very fortunate to still be connected to you here on these forums for the help you gave me on this.
seriously, i banged my brain around for MONTHS trying to get help in drupal OR figure it out on my own. i was metaphorically knee deep in drupal PHP files from the core, to modules, to anything in between. man, it was ridiculous. THANK YOU - so much for helping me on this!!
flappy needs soem more smilies on here for when a plan comes together. i'd use the "beer" smiley about now. we all know what it is.. smilies clinking beers.
When you are doing any theme changes, you have to remember that IE only allows around 25 CSS files to be included when a page loads.
That's why Drupal provides a means to cache your CSS. But you have to remember that when it caches these files, it creates one great big file that is different than the individual CSS files in your theme folder.
If you have made theme changes, but don't see them appearing, it might be because you changed the CSS files, but those changes have not yet been cached (included in the cached CSS file created when the CSS is cached).
To force the recaching of new CSS (o javascript files), go into Settings -> Performance.
Near the bottom is an option to Optimize CSS Files and to Optimize Javascript Files. If you disable both, save your settings, and then enable both, it forces a recaching of both CSS and JS files into the one big CSS and one big JS file.
I'm not sure if the latest and greatesst IE has removed this limitation, but if you're developing using IE, you will run into this.
On the other hand, Firefox does NOT have this limitation. So when you are doing any development with a theme, you should leave the optimization for both CSS and JS disabled so that you can work 'real time' with the source CSS and JS files in your theme folder. Then, when you are done, you can turn on the caching so that people using IE will see all of your changes.
Final note...
If you are using IE, and there is a limitation, remember that if the caching is disabled, IE won't read in all of your files (if the number exceeds the maximum). This can drive you crazy because you have CSS code and/or JS code that never makes it into the browser even though they exist in your theme folder.
Bottom line. If you're doing any theme work with IE, you must make your changes to the source files, force the recaching, and then test. With Firefox, it becomes more WYSIWYG.
Glad you got it sorted. I'll try to check back here more often, and you can always reach me at the places I mentioned previously. Or shoot me an email and I'll try to help as I have time.
After making it through the Drupal learning cliff myself, I understand how frustrating seemingly simple things should be to complete. I hate it when people get turned off of Drupal for these reasons. A little knowledge goes a long way in keeping people happy.
Microsoft has stated that IE 10 will finally remove CSS limits. This includes the total number of files and the max @import depth. Unfortunately it still has a file size limit of 288KB, so even concatenating all your files may screw up IE 
This is another great reason to use Drupal 7. When CSS Aggregation is turned off, Drupal 7 uses @import rules instead of <link> tags which gets around the IE limitation. Since using @import for everything is considered bad for performance (in IE only of course), CSS Aggregation is still recommended for production use (http://drupal.org/update/themes/6/7#css-ie-31-tag-limit-workaround)
Drupal 7 also has native support for adding browser targeted CSS files using drupal_add_css() (http://drupal.org/update/themes/6/7#browser-targeted-css)
Glad to see you back, Batty. I'm in the process of putting a migration plan together for this site to bring it to 7. After all this time, I'm finding that a lot of the modules that will be problematic to move to 7 aren't really critical. I wish Drupal 7 was closer to HTML 5 standard, but it works fine on my tablet.
--off topic--
I'm using a Blackberry Playbook for when I'm not at my computer. Someone just released a version of Putty for the Playbook that is pretty good. Between the amazing browser and tools like that, I can do just about any Drupal admin on the go. Similar tools are available for the iPad and in the Android market. But the Playbook is marked down at Best Buy right now for 199.99, 249.99, 299.99 for 16, 32, and 64gb models. With the 16 priced the same as the Kindle Fire, you can't beat it for a stocking stuffer.
http://drupal.org/node/1355754
the story so far