Post by smsmarketeers » Fri May 21, 2010 2:49 am

Hello everyone. As my journey continues with building my website, shopping cart, and community, I have now started building a custom forum for OpenCart. You can see the current workings of it here: http://www.12voltsupplyhouse.com/index. ... forum/home

Right now it just displays the forums, topics, and posts, there is no way to post or anything right now. I have the foundation done, now just to add the goodies. If there is enough interest, then I will release a beta version of it that will be very lite when it comes to features that most forums have. The beta/lite release would not have smilies, bbcode, or anything special like that. It will be very basic. Let me know how many people are interested by posting here in this thread/topic.

Edit: Also, what kind of features would you want to see for a lite/beta release?

Requested Features List
This is a running list of requested features. If you request a feature, I will add it here to the list. Eventually I will create a project page on my company website but for now, this will do.
  • Posting (i2Paq)
    Post Editing/Deleting (i2Paq)
    Topic/Forum Locking (i2Paq)
    Topic Hiding (i2Paq)
    User Groups (i2Paq)
    Moderators (i2Paq)
    Avatar Upload (i2Paq)
    Private Message System (i2Paq)
Last edited by smsmarketeers on Tue May 25, 2010 2:38 am, edited 1 time in total.

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Post by Norrad » Tue May 25, 2010 1:06 am

I'd definitely be interested in a mod like that. The products that my store sells often require a lot of communication with the customers, so a forum would be great. Please put me on the list for beta testers.

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Post by smsmarketeers » Tue May 25, 2010 1:12 am

Thank you for the interest. Development is constantly ongoing and I will let you and everyone here know when the beta will be released.

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Post by i2Paq » Tue May 25, 2010 1:14 am

Looks great, I'm interested!

I would start with the basic features like posting/editing/locking and hiding of topics.
User groups and moderators.
An avatar upload and a PM system.

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Post by smsmarketeers » Tue May 25, 2010 2:35 am

That's a lot to start with. Haha! We will see how far I get in the next week or two. As of right now I am hoping to get a basic posting system done. From the User perspective this would include creating new topics and posting in topics. From the Admin perspective this would include: Creating Categories and Creating Forums. Very basic. I will probably add a way to delete posts as well. I am a developer and am quite comfortable with the framework however, I do have a full-time job so I don't spend all of my time developing. Here is what we will do. I will add the "feature requests" to the first post in this topic and we will keep a running list. Eventually when I get my company website done (www.smsmarketeers.com) I will add a section for OpenCart modules and contributions and I will keep project development information there.
i2Paq wrote:Looks great, I'm interested!

I would start with the basic features like posting/editing/locking and hiding of topics.
User groups and moderators.
An avatar upload and a PM system.

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Post by i2Paq » Tue May 25, 2010 3:33 am

smsmarketeers wrote:That's a lot to start with. Haha! We will see how far I get in the next week or two.
I think that they are basic features as editing posts is something you can't do without.

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Post by smsmarketeers » Tue May 25, 2010 4:44 am

I wasn't disagreeing, I just don't know how long that is all going to take me to implement. That's all. I am a very busy individual. Hence the reason I was "Gauging Interest".

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Post by SteveSherry » Tue May 25, 2010 5:01 am

I'd be happy to beta test it, I'm particularly gifted at breaking a programmers pride and joy ;D

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Post by Xsecrets » Tue May 25, 2010 6:02 am

you know what they say it's only foolproof till you put it in front of a fool. ;D

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Post by smsmarketeers » Wed May 26, 2010 8:20 am

Ok, well so far the basic functionality except editing posts and creating new topics is done. In other words, you can post! Hahaha! bbCode functionality is being implemented using markItUp! with the PEAR HTML_BBCodeParser plugin. This will be directly linked into the OpenCart framework. Probably not a good idea, but you can always install it yourself and adjust my code.

More to come soon.

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Post by i2Paq » Wed May 26, 2010 2:35 pm

smsmarketeers wrote:More to come soon.
Can't wait!

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Post by Norrad » Sun May 30, 2010 2:41 am

I'm looking forward to the first release.

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Post by smsmarketeers » Fri Jun 04, 2010 5:44 am

Latest Update

Ok, so I have been very busy with work and the Memorial Holiday weekend (we went camping for four days to get out of the heat here in AZ). I have been working on the Admin side of things since I got back and I am proud to announce that I have implemented and have begun tweaking the Add/Edit/Delete functionality for the forums within the Admin section. Everything works for the most part, I just need to add the form validity stuff and that will be done.

Work To Do
I still have quite a bit to do. Here is a small list:
  • Private Message System Integration
  • Enable/Disabled Functionality (built into the Admin section but not the main forum)
  • Topic/Forum Locking
  • Topic/Forum Hiding
  • User Groups (going to use the OpenCart based groups)
  • Moderators (again, going to use the OpenCart based groups)
  • Avatar Upload
Once these items are done then the initial beta test will be ready to go. Unfortunately I am developing using my custom template on my site so I will also have to install OpenCart again with default settings and do my own implementation so that I can write the installation guide as well as the default template structure.

Not sure when this will be ready but I saw someone else on here that has a small company/website that has started building modules and contributions and has plans for a forum so hopefully I can release mine before he/she/they release their initial build.

Wish me luck!

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Post by cmebd » Tue Jun 08, 2010 12:44 pm

Looking really good would definitely be interested.

A couple of questions:

Styling: Will the forum integrate with the css file or will it come with its own?
Assumption: Forum will integrate with OC install based on "customer" being able to use their customer/login details that will automatically give them access to the forum???

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Post by jdog006 » Wed Jun 09, 2010 1:22 am

Hello to a fellow Zonie.

A native forum will be an awesome addition to opencart. The absence of any simple forum integration has always been a bit of a downside for me.

This is coming along nicely and it's looking GREAT. Last time I checked it out, there were a few problems with your (custom?) template that I see you have gotten ironed out.

I am VERY interested in trying this out.

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Post by cyric118 » Fri Jun 25, 2010 1:44 am

Add me to the list of people who are interested. This is exactly the kind of thing I am looking for!

Possibly Stupid Question: Would it be easier to simply bridge an existing forum option like MyBB or phpbb with OpenCart?

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Post by celestial » Fri Jun 25, 2010 2:45 am

Add me to the list of people too.

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Post by smsmarketeers » Mon Jun 28, 2010 2:47 pm

Hey everyone, I apologize for the lack of updates of the last few weeks. I recently started a new job as an Engineer in a local data center and have been getting my ass kicked with work. I am hoping that things will settle down soon so I can get back to developing the forum contributions that I have been working on. The forum itself is functional on my site with very basic functionality including creating posts and editing them. It has been awhile since I have done any work on the site that it is active on. Let me answer the most recent questions:

Question from cyric118:
Possibly Stupid Question: Would it be easier to simply bridge an existing forum option like MyBB or phpbb with OpenCart?
Answer
I highly doubt this due to the fact that OpenCart uses an MVC framework and none of the existing forums do, at least not that I am aware of. Not that the framework would stop you from integrating it, but it would definitely make it a bit difficult. You are potentially talking about writing an entire bridge to "integrate" the sessions between the two pieces of software and this can be very difficult to do. Personally, writing a native forum into OpenCart is the best solution because it conforms to the MVC framework and will be relatively easy to install.

Question from cmebd:
Styling: Will the forum integrate with the css file or will it come with its own?
Assumption: Forum will integrate with OC install based on "customer" being able to use their customer/login details that will automatically give them access to the forum???
Answer
As you can see right now, my OpenCart installation is not using the default template. My store is a very heavily modified template that I custom designed and integrated writing all of the XHTML and CSS by hand. Once I feel that I have enough features in an initial test/beta release, I will install the latest copy of OpenCart and integrate the core code into the fresh install. I will then go through and modify the forum template files to match the default template. This will make it easier for those who have not changed their templates to actually install the forum contribution. For anyone else, you will definitely have some tweaking to do but if you are able to modify the default template, you should not have any problems installing, modifying and configuring my forum contribution. As for having a separate CSS file: I could definitely make this happen and I probably will just because it would be much easier if someone has modified their default template.

If anyone has any questions, comments or suggestions, please let me know. I have begun work on the admin part of the forum contribution. Once I get that up to speed with the front-end itself, then I will begin adding more features. Hopefully within the next two months or sooner we will have an initial test/beta release.

Thank you again for everyone who is interested. The more people that we get interested, the faster I will get the development done so I can get this released.

Cheers!

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Post by JAY6390 » Mon Jun 28, 2010 8:56 pm

Hi Adam,
Sounds good, and a separate stylesheet would definitely make sense
Keep us posted :)

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Post by darkestar » Tue Jul 13, 2010 3:31 pm

Hi Adam

Please please put me on your list as well

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