Category Post Count & Other Feature

ShareWorx

Alright, so I have gotten everything setup on my forum except for one thing. In the list of categories it shows the total number of topics started in the category. How can I change it so that it shows the total number of posts per category instead?

Also, I see that here the topics show how many views, replies, and people are following a topic. What plugin allow you to have that feature?

Lykaon

@ShareWorx: To your second question, the plugin you're talking about is the Voting plugin. It's not just showing those things, but also enables the upvoting and downvoting of comments.

http://www.vanillaforums.org/addon/583/voting

The Voting plugin is a curious beast because it necessarily changes to the sorting of posts to bubble the highest rated to the top. That's great for a forum like this, but a bit odd for forums that are more conversational.

But I assume it also enables the little tabs that let you change the sorting. Perhaps you can tweak the default or even remove one of the tabs. Though I'm not sure what good upvoting is if there's no way to sort by them.

ShareWorx

@lykaon Thanks for the response Lykaon! Any suggestions on my first question?

ShareWorx

Any updates?

I have been working on this for awhile now and can't seem to find a solution...

Please and thank you

Lykaon

@ShareWorx: To your first question, I don't know how you'd go about changing that. My guess is that you'd have to write a plugin that basically replaced that panel. As far as I know, there are no configuration options for it.

If you can find where it retrieves the data for that panel, you can change vanilla's code but I don't think that's a generally good idea because it will break every time you update vanilla.

I think it's just a request that no one else has made or needed and thus the capability does not [yet] exist.

ShareWorx

Alright and here is my last question:

I am using the default Vanilla theme. I like it but would like to replace the ""Start a New Discussion" button with the one from this community. I don't want it to say "Ask A Question", I just like the background.

How can I download that button and add it to the default theme?

Lykaon

@ShareWorx: I don't think that's strictly possible in the way you describe. The button is just text styled by css (in this case there seems to be an underlying blue image as well).

In order to get your button to look like this one, you'll have to modify the default theme such the css for that button matches this.

I haven't seen this theme available for download anywhere, so you'd have to use something like Firebug to get the css parameters and then go modify the default theme accordingly.

It's probably a better idea that you make a copy of the default theme before you do any modifications, effectively making your own theme.

Are you familiar and comfortable with modifying css by hand?

Alternatively, you can see if there's a theme that better suits your needs that already exists. I wrote my own, but the joie theme is particularly nice.

http://www.vanillaforums.org/addon/browse/themes/recent/2

ShareWorx

@Lykaon I am somewhat familiar with CSS, but not familiar with the Vanilla framework at all. I just don't see what is so hard about changing that one image from being the default one to being the blue one used here...

ShareWorx

For future reference to anyone else interested in this, I did find an easy fix.

I simply replaced this file with a different color scheme:
applications/dashboard/design/images/buttonbg.png

One thing that I just noticed that I am not sure about is this:

When I am creating a new topic and go to preview it then a box appears showing the preview. However, the X button to close it is the same color as the background so my users won't be able to close out the box (since they won't know the X is there). Where in the CSS is the X color located?

Lykaon

@ShareWorx: It's not that it's hard to do; it's that it's hard to do right. For instance, the change you made by swapping out the buttonbg.png is going to be overwritten whenever you update Vanilla in the future. Making changes to the core of Vanilla will inevitably break your site every time you have to do an upgrade.

If instead, you make a new theme and take control of that button then it won't matter what happens when Vanilla gets upgraded to a later version.

The X problem that you're having could also be fixed by having your own theme and then adding the appropriate css to fix the X. If you alter the internal files to Vanilla to do it (or even the default theme), then you're just going to have redo that every time you upgrade.

I'm not trying to dissuade you from customizing your forums. I'm just trying to help you do it in the best way possible.

ShareWorx

Well I got everything else worked out now except for the displaying replies+topics instead of just topics.