Products.SilvaForum 2.4.2
Forum for Silva
License: BSD
Keywords: forum silva zope2

==========
SilvaForum
==========

What is it?
===========

SilvaForum is an extension for Silva that provides a classic
discussion forum environment. Site visitors can create topics
(subjects or questions) and add comments to existing
topics.


Using Silva Forum
=================

After enabling the Silva Forum extension you can create a *Silva
Forum* content in the Silva Management Interface: this will be the
forum. The public interface of the Forum allows site visitors to add
topics (subjects) to the forum, and comments (messages) to the
topics. The topics and comments are accessible from the management
interface by site editors for editing and moderation purposes.

Managing Access
===============

Consulting the forum
--------------------

By default, the forum, topic and comments are viewable by
unauthenticated people like any other Silva content. If you wish to
restrict this, you can use the default access restriction feature of
Silva to do so (located in the management interface, in the access tab).
For more information about this, please consult the Silva user
documentation.

Posting new topics and comments
-------------------------------

By default you need to be authenticated to be able to post a topic or
a comment.

For unauthenticated visitors, a link on a forum or a topic will let
them authenticate in order to be able to post.

A site manager can, per forum or per topic, authorize unauthenticated
people to post. This is configured in the management interface in
the settings screen of the properties tab). If this option is
activated, unauthenticated site visitors will be able to post new
topic or comments after filling in a Captcha.

The ``silva.pas.openid`` package can be installed in order to provide
authentication via OpenID. This authentication will be sufficient to let
site visitors post on forums and topics.

Another option, anonymous posting, can be activated by site managers
on the same screen as the unauthenticated posting. It will permit
authenticated visitors to hide their names on the topic or comment
they posted.

Notification
============

A site manager can, per forum or per topic, activate a subscription
feature. If activated, this will allow visitors, after subscription, to
receive notifications by email when a new comment is posted on a topic.

If you email is known (i.e. you filled it in in Silva, or it was provided
by your OpenID provider), you will have the possibility to directly
subscribe yourself to a topic when you post it, or to a topic when you
post a comment in it.

Of course people can cancel their subscription when they wish to.

This feature is provided by ``silva.app.subscriptions``. To have it,
you need to enable subscriptions for the forum, just like you would
do for other Silva content. For more information about the
subscription feature, you can consult the Silva user documentation.

Credits
=======

Many thanks to Bas Leeflang and the Bijvoet Center
http://www.bijvoet-center.nl/ for the assignment to build the forum.

Thank you Mark James of http://www.famfamfam.com/ for the great icons,
which we used in the forum views! And the theme of JForum for emoticons
icons.

For Silva 2.2/2.3 the forum was refactored and vastly improved, with
the generous help of the Schweizerischer Erdbebendienst (SED, or Swiss
Seismological Service) and ETH Zurich: http://www.seismo.ethz.ch/

Questions, remarks, etc.
========================

If you have questions, remarks, bug reports or fixes, please send an
email to info@infrae.com.

History
=======

SilvaForum 2.4.2 (2010-02-07)
-----------------------------

- Improve CSS.

- Fix content priority for SilvaForum and SilvaTopic.

SilvaForum 2.4.1 (2010-12-20)
-----------------------------

- Some CSS changes in the public UI.

- Forum content is indexed.

SilvaForum 2.4 (2010-10-27)
---------------------------

- Forum and topic templates have been redesigned.

- An option have been added to let anonymous people to post. If
  activated, they have a Captcha to validate their post.

- Subscription now works on topic. You can subscribe to a topic
  and will receive a mail each time a new comment is posted. This
  feature is based on default Silva subscriptions.

- Code have been refactored to be completely Groked.

- Tests have been improved.

SilvaForum 2.3 (2010/07/16)
---------------------------

- Compatibility fixes for Zope 2.12, Python 2.6 and Silva 2.3.

SilvaForum 1.0 (2010/01/29)
---------------------------

- Refactor some tests.

- Don't use anymore get_metadata_element as this is a script of the
  old layout system.

Ported from 0.4:

- Refactor all the views, and use silva.core.views now.

- Add functional tests.


SilvaForum 0.3.2 (2009-02-09)
-----------------------------

- Fix link in view_comment

SilvaForum 0.3.1 (2008-11-18)
-----------------------------

- Fix documentation format to ReST.

SilvaForum 0.3
--------------

- Re-wrote dtformat.py

- Added i18n support

- Removed SilvaTestCase.py.

SilvaForum 0.2-beta1
--------------------

- Added condition on forum table to not display when empty.

- Adjusted presentation code so the forum works with Silva Layout.

- Refactored pagination code so defines are grouped.

SilvaForum 0.1-beta-2
---------------------

- Changed regex in format_link to not include parenthesis, or periods.

- Removed the priority (was -4) in light of the
  ``doc/priority_settings.txt`` recommendations.

- The Include Comments code source includes icons for comments, these
  could be added to the forum view.

- Changes to make near-complete customization of the Include Comments
  code source possible with css.

- Move all the include checking in view_topic.pt into one define.

- Add id and topic_url to the comment object for constructing more
  sensible permalinks, going to the topic with an anchor that's the
  comment id.

- Add permalink to "[user] posted"; this links to the comment in the
  topic with an anchor, not to the comment object (which is not very
  useful because there's no context).

- Add a parameter field to the SMI to add a topic, which by default is
  the document title.

- Put in javascript toggle button for a comment form.

- Checked in Marc Petitmermet's code source to the
  SilvaForum-CodeSource branch and added it to Silva Forum code. Added
  a view_include.pt, and include.css to handle the styles of a Silva
  Document with comments. Added to the FiveViewable class a switch to
  check for an 'include' parameter that gets the code source template.

- Fixed text formatting to include links, moved replace_links call
  from the view_topic.pt to the format_text method in view.py.

- Put replace_links method in the view.py for searching and
  replacing links in text area of comments. Also made tests for the
  method.

- Put back subject field check in view.py. Somehow it got cut in
  recent changes.

- Changed the topic and comment addable priority to 4.

- Changed the configure.zcml priority setting for Silva Forum to 4,
  to send it to the bottom of the addables list in the SMI select
  pulldown.

- Fixed the _generate_id method which would return 'already used id'
  with id's ending in '___2'.

- Removed old security code triggered with the Ajax version of the
  forum.

- Fixed the pagination links to not can the add messages. Tweaked
  the the pagination code to be more efficient.

- Put in jump for the preview form on a comment. Now when previewing
  the comment will jump to the last page, the same page as where it
  is added.

- forum.css changes, added emoticon preview support to
  view_forum.pt, view_comment.pt subject fields.

- Ah, after reverting to static forms, unicode issue persists. Found
  the error on the preview hidden inputs, and re-wrote those to
  support unicode.

- Reverted to static form in view_topic.pt view.

- Reverted to static form in view_forum.pt view.

- Reversed order of topics newest to oldest. Added jump
  functionality. Found IE issue with Ajax forms.

- Pagination right/leftdouble.gif are not included in Silva 2.0, so
  put them into the www/ of SilvaForum.

- Took out all required switches from edit comment view.

- Unicode problem with textareas in view_topic.pt. Did ugly hack
  doing the unicoding in the tal expression.

- Took out required subject in the edit comment view by switching
  the required tag in form.form to 0.

- Made datetimes smaller.

- Removed emoticons directory again, only this time from svn.

- Finished Adding alt tag text to emoticons.

- Changed Silva Forum Thread to Silva Forum Topic and refactored
  code to use topic rather than thread.

- Put jump to last and first page pagination in the view_forum.pt

- Changed the topic functionality to only take topics. Opted to take
  out messages because they can't be edited in the SMI without some
  considerable changes.

- Configured the view_forum.pt and view_topic.pt to get emoticons
  added in the subject field.

- Added support for emoticons.

- Added nice date/time formatting.

- Several layout fixes.

- Small code fixes and cleanups (see individual checkin messages for
  API changes).

- Added preview button functionality.

- Added javascript to hide the form, however this isn't implemented
  yet.

- Added Several layout styles.

- Added pagination, and sorted list orders newest to oldest.

- Workout out a solution to authoring issue in the SMI.