Custom Discussion Types

yusufarslan

Vanilla forum has only 1 type of discussion type. The two default fields are: "Title" and "Body".

I would like to define custom fields for a discussion like: "Intro" and "Link". Is this possible?

judgej

Could you give some examples of what kinds of properties of these discussion types would be different?

Assuming you would like to assign arbitrary input fields, of arbitrary types, what other things would be different? Different statuses perhaps? Completely different display templates for each post type? Different types of actions perhaps?

Would each one be able to handle a title an body at a minimum, or is even that too restrictive? Perhaps the body could be hidden from view, and contain structured data derived from the additional fields you want, making search capabilities function as normal.

Just thinking out aloud....

yusufarslan

@judgej: yeah, you explained exactly my thoughts.

The bare minimum is that I can add "text field" and "text area". Title and body fields can be the minimum required fields and this would not be too restrictive.

But deriving multiple fields to the body field is really not an option. Because I need to style and display the various fields differently "on the front-end".

I just analyzed Vanilla and I really like the user experience of it. I was just curious if someone already developed something like this.

yusufarslan

An example usage:

Title: My car is broken
Description: The engine doesn't start when it is cold

Brand: Ford Mustang [text field]
Engine specs and car details: [text area]

in this way, users of the forum are forced to think about their questions and the discussions can be focused without getting too general questions.

Fields types like: dropdown menu's or radio buttons would be cool but are not essential in my case.

yusufarslan

I guess nobody is interested or knows about such a feature in Vanilla