Gauging Interest : phpBB3 style fully integrated OC forum

Hi, guys. Thanks for all your attention and sorry for dropping off the map for almost 3 years. It has been almost 3 years since the previous login of this marcelwoo account. When the disaster in my life struck, I was so sad that I gave up everything, including this marcelwoo account and my oc forum project.

I was almost dead, mentally dead and even thought about quitting the world. I finally get over it after a really long time. I am now, in 2014, thinking about continuing this project and open a new thread under a new nickname, uNeverNo. Yes, a new nickname means a new self. I will not use marcelwoo again in the future.

Link to the new thread:
http://forum.opencart.com/viewtopic.php ... 8&p=494274

I have been looking for a decent forum module developed with opencart's framework for ages , without luck. Well, there have been a couple of forum modules out there in the extension store, but... either it is not developed with oc's framework(a Cakephp one), or it is not decent enough to fit my need (I think I would rather call it a guestbook, not a forum ) So I have started to developed one (yeah, it is gonna be decent enough and will be called a forum, not a guestbook ). It is gonna be a flat-style forum, that means it's gonna look like a phpBB 3 forum yet developed with opencart's framework and is fully integrated with opencart(yes, customer only need to login once ).

Some parts have been finished and I am still on the go.
Basically it will have the most common features and functions a "decent" forum should have(by saying decent, I mean it should have the most features and function a phpbb3 forum has, 'cause I try to get inspiration and ideas for development from phpBB3). It takes a lot of thinking and coding, and I strugg

Interesting!

Let me know how you get along as I could do with one.

Sure, I will keep updating as I go on. Now I am on a several-day holiday in another city. Will get back to development after I get back.

UPDATE

Finished Features:
##Posting:
--posting
--topic view and reply counts(views will increase once if user keep refreshing the same page).
--topic read/unread status tracking
--topic reply email notification.
--post & topic editing, deleting.
--post, reply and topic draft saving and loading.
--BBcode
--smilies

##User:
--user siganature
--topic subscription (or we can call it "topic rely email notification")
--avatar upload & proportional resizing

marcelwoo wrote:UPDATE

Marcel, Wooooooo!

forgot to say "topic read/unread status tracking" has also been added. Now I am working on the user control panel, soon pm function will be added.

UPDATE!!!

Changed:
A better-looking theme
Ok, the old one was just ugly and unbearable, but I was then focusing on the php part of the project
And then I decided to better it after the majority of the normal member features had been finished.
I use a cozy light gray color as the basic color of the forum module theme, so it will fit and look at least not too bad with non-default opencart themes.

I have had 31 screenshots to show you guys how the forum module looks now, CHECK IT HERE!!!! :
http://s983.photobucket.com/albums/ae31 ... ?start=all

Finished:
##Posting:
--topic quoting.
--topic bookmark
--forum subscription
--topic and forum subscription new post/topic email notification.
##system ----UCP(user control panel).
--pm system
--manage subscription
--manage bookmarks
--manage drafts
--edit profile, signature, avatar and other account setting options.
--board preference

I am considering building a improved version of friends and foes system than that one of phpbb3, so this part(belongs to the ucp) has not been touched yet. That one of phpbb3 sucks!!! and it is almost useless. I want to improve this system and more better interaction between members.

Next, I will be working on member's profile page, forum locking, user rank, user group and the user permissions System(gosh may have to work on the moderator control panel at the same time.... the panel thing drove me crazy with lots of time on and layout and styling...)

I will add a "forum questions" tab in the product page which lets visitors post questions or comments about a product and send the post to the forum while the post remains in the tab. Just a lil bit like amazon's "standalone" forums for every product page(not very good.....you gotta be lucky to have someone to reply, isn't it? ). BUT for this forum module, EVERY post made on the product page will also be sent to the forum, so everybody can see it in the forum and posts replies.

AND I am also thinking about adding a cache system(html or other type of things?) to make this forum run fast enough. But it will not be touched before the basic structure of the forum is finished.

Yeah, if you use this forum, you are able to integrate everything of opencart with it and I think it is gonna be a forum module decent enough for opencart

update:
What's finished up to now:

--set topic as normal, sticky, announce or global and set how long you want to keep it (moderator)

topic locking, editing locking

--topic tags filter system
can be disabled or enabled. User can pick a topic tag when posting a topic. There is a list of topic tags listing on the top of the view forum page in one line. By clicking one of the tag, you can narrow down the number of topics by types in the view forum page

Featured topic
moderator can set a valuable topic as featured. Once set featured, the topic has a little blue "featured" icon appending it is title on the view forum page. BTW, "Featured" is one of the preset topic tags

simple pagination links for each topic on the view forum page
With this, you can easy jump to a certain page of a topic on the view forum page. Take a look at the opencart forum and you will understand how it works

--poll!!!!
single-option and multi-option poll. ip voting time limit to prevent members from cheating. utilize a count down jquery plug-in the poll voting page, so we get the count down animation visual effect!!

--member's profile page

--forum locking and hiding

--user rank
we got lovely user rank icons-star, moon, sun and crown icons and we got a "Process to Next Rank" bar on member's profile on the view topic page

--user group
Admin, Global Moderator, Moderator, registered member, unverified member, banned member, guest. You can specify badges for a certain user group. Wanna have a look at the preset badge? This is one of them. --user permissions System
God, I think this is one of the most basic yet vital part of a forum system

--thanks for posting system
User can give posters a thanks with just a click, "thanks recieved" is shown with each post, "thank received num" and "thanks given num" displayed on member's profile on the view post page

--Best answer/Post solved system
User can choose one post as the best answer and mark the topic as solved. Once marked as solved, the topic will have a nice-looking green "solved" ribbon on the view forum page. On the view topic page,there is a "jump to best answer" link and little "solved" icon appending the title of the question-asking post; The best-answer post will have a little "Best Answer" Icon appending its title. The "Who is online" and "Forum Statistics(total posts,Total topics,Total members, newest member)" part? Ok, they could be done very quickly. I will finish these two features very soon.
Now, what to work on is the MCP(moderator control panel), searching, "forum questions" tab in the product page and the caching system.

The final thing I will work on the caching system. Once other features finished, I will set up a demo!!!!

Gosh, it takes months to finish this project and I am exhausted Hopefully all features of this forum could be finished within the next one or two weeks!!!!

Congrats!

Great job you are pulling off!

shanealbertt wrote:Forget to say "The theme of read / unread status tracking also increases. D Now my user control panel features will be added soon when.

Wat do you mean? only copying and pasting?

how is this coming along, I could really use this - what has been done so far by the screenshots look great!

"Who is online", "Forum Statistics", searching, "forum questions" tab in the product page have been done.

I am now working on the MCP(moderator controller panel). Now the final part to finish is the caching system.

After all that finish, I still will have to optimize some sql queries with not very good performance and try to spot the possible bugs.

As for the forum question tab feature, after the topic is sent to the forum from the product page, that particular topic will have a little product thumbnail( small thumbnail of the product you post topics for) appending its subject in the viewforum topic lists. And in the viewtopic page, a bigger product thumbnail and some product info are displayed at the top of that topic.

here are some more screenshots:

]

This is looking like a FANTASTIC extension for OpenCart !!!

I assume one will be able to theme the Forum to compliment the core site - yes?



Also, if you're thinking about what (if any) additional "best of all worlds" features to include with this OC Forum integration, you might also want to check out/compare the features of vBulletin - which is also widely utilized by many top-notch organizations.

Some of the additional features that would be VERY cool to include are:
- Video Embedding (YouTube, Vimeo, Hulu, Dailymotion, Google, Metacafe)
- Post Rating
- User Reputation
- Polls
- Photo Albums
- Events Management
- Blog (possibly)
- Article-based CMS Publishing
- Post Reporting - report posts to moderators
- Admin tools: edit, delete, move, etc.
- Templates / Skins
- Design independent - can support any web-page design
- Create a Matching Themes across Articles, Blogs, Forum
- Full CSS layout and design
- Capacity for future Add-ons and Plug-ins
- Multiple Languages Supported
- Editable FAQ for your own boards
- Paid Subscriptions Capabilities (PayPal, WorldPay, NOCHEX and Authorize.net)
- Google AdSense Integration
- Calendar Features
- SEO Friendly URLs
- Custom META keywords/description tags
- Compliant with the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) of 1998.
- Any Others you think you might be able to program in to make your OC Forum app/extension as robust as possible

vBulletin also has a pretty cool Facebook Integration App for further marketing/promotion of one's site/forum. I am not a programmer by any stretch of the imagination, so I have no idea how such an integration works and/or how difficult programming/developing such might be for YOUR OpenCart Forum extension. Just thought I'd offer it up as a cool idea/thought, though.



Bottom line, HIGHEST KUDOS to marcelwoo for taking on this project for the OC Community.
I am VERY MUCH looking forward to the ultimate release of this extension !!!

Yeah, you can theme the forum module to fit your site. I improved the way css style is written a couple of days ago(it took a whole day for this improvement), because I realized people might want to change the way it looks. So I made it easier to change the css style.

Thx for your ideas,Tom. But I think I have to finished the planned features first then release it for bug finding and fixing.
This is not a small project and it takes so long to finish it. It is not something like some of the extensions sold on OC's extension store, most of which(not all of them, do not take it too personally ) could be done in a couple of days.
Dude, 4 months or so on it now and this really make me feel a lil bit exhausted

But I might add some of the features you suggested above into my forum extension in the future

Thanks for your quick reply and additional comments, marcel !!!

I hope you didn't (and don't) think for a single moment that I am thinking that this is in any way/shape/form a simple undertaking or project - let alone for someone with the obvious advanced skill level as yourself. You are creating things I could only ever imagine in my head .... my personal "skill" level being limited to intermediate-level CSS design and novice-level PHP comprehension.

Please know that I have the HIGHEST RESPECT for you and what you are working on for the OpenCart Commnunity.

I only offered the list of suggested additional features to/for you because I see the exciting potential - and anticipated popularity and very positive reception amongst OpenCart users - of your project .... and I only wanted to offer some additional food-for-thought for you as you continue with this awesome project.


KEEP UP THE EXCELLENT WORK !!! - Can't wait to see the (initial) version when you are ready to release it.


TOM

Finally, the most likely unused part of the MCP, moderator log has been finished. I thought it would be a headache, 'cause you need to insert so many insert sql queries where moderators do something and I was thinking that maybe I could be lazy and just ignore this feature But what if you are unlucky and run into a weird moderator(I do not mean moderators at this forum, no offense ) who loves mess up the forum by doing crazy things like deleting lot's people's posts, banning people etc. You gotta have a way to monitor and find out who is playing the prank

The deleting action on this forum module will be "soft deleting", it means a topic or post is marked as "deleted" in the database, it is actually not deleted and gone forever. I will develop a cron job like function(have to think carefully about how to implement this, as scripts implemented purly in a cron job way(ever running) will be a killer to server performance...) in the back end for some cleanup jobs-deleting some out-dated data, like deleting topic read/unread record, deleting "soft-deleted" posts in the database on a monthly basis.
That means you can restore posts deleted incorrectly by accident.

I will now start coding the Deleted Topics and Posts part in the MCP, which you can set who have access to it.
After that, I will add the ability for admin and mods to moderate the forum in the viewtopic and view forum page('cause I found in phpbb3, you often need to go to the MCP to do things like bulk-delete. That's a lil bit inconvenient. So I want to improve it). And then sql and html cache will be coded.

I finally decide not to set up a demo until the whole project is finished, 'cause I realize bugs reported for an uncached version is a lil bit complicated to fix in a cached version. Dude, sorry about the delay in setting up the demo.

Hi Marcelwoo,

This is looking like a great extension indeed!! I was wondering if you were planning on releasing it any time soon since I would be really interested in buying an extension like this.

Good luck with the 'finishing touches'!!

Kind regards!