Hosting forums on Drupal too, have some questions

Hi watbe,

Welcome to TWF (I'm not an admin, just a member like you )

There is a thread about modules used on TWF you might find helpful.

Meanwhile, why don't you post an Introduction (kind of a rite of passage here) and let us know more about yourself. (It's not the same as the getting to know your fellow members thread)

And don't be a stranger!

Welcome to the Forums! Thanks for linking to that other post decibel.places. Just to answer the other questions:

2. If you do just use the core Forum module, is it heavily customized? (Would it be hard to get a similar configuration)

Except for the theme, we haven't changed the core forums at all. But the theme is very different, that's the one thing you're going to need to get a good grip of. Here's the documentation you'll be needing. Tip before you start: don't worry about any theming engine other than PHPTemplate, it's the one everyone uses. The documentation has a lot of stuff about the other theme engines available, but just skip past that stuff.

If you get stuck on how to do something, post a new topic here, we'll try to help you out. One thing you'll certainly be asking is: how can I theme a forum node differently to any other type of node? The answer is to theme your forum nodes in a file named: node-forum.tpl.php

You'll also need to know how to override theme functions. We override forum_display and forum_list to theme the forum front page and topic lists. The originals of these can be found in /modules/forum/forum.module (just do a search for forum_display or forum_list in that file to see what I mean).

Sorry if most of this makes no sense at the moment. It should become clearer as you go along.

3. What version of Drupal are you using?

Five. When all the modules are ready, we should move to six.

4. Is there anything else that I should know before hosting forums on Drupal?

There is a bug/feature which makes Drupal forums, particularly if you have hidden forums, very resource intensive. If you have a medium-large size forum, you'll need a decent server to run it on. We get along alright using a VPS.

Hope this helps.

Thanks for your help guys, I really appreciate it.

I will try and do something similar, but I have no experience with themeing at all... Where is a good place to start?

Also, is it necessary to theme the forums separately?

By medium-large how many users are you looking at? For my forums at the start,I'm looking at around 20 on at any one time and around 100 active users.

Thanks for your offer of help, I'll definitely need it

Hi watbe,

Have a look here http://drupal.org/theme-guide

Mostly theming requires a basic understanding of PHP and good knowledge of CSS

I would recommend installing the devel module (with krumo), and use Firefox with the Firebug, Web Developer, Colorzilla, and MeasureIt addons!

And this might seem obvious, but have a look under the hood of themes you like.

When I am adapting a PSD for Drupal, I generally start with the Framework theme and build it up with PHP and CSS

Others like starting with one of the Zen themes, I think there might be a couple more "starter" themes.

Is it possible to make a similar configuration like this site without modifying too many theme files? I'm seriously inexperienced when it comes to PHP and CSS... I have installed a custom theme that can be modified to suit needs, but I don't really know much at all.

Thanks for the help!