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Featured Threads

rgbmanrgbman
edited March 2009 in Vanilla 1.0 Help
I was curious if anyone had developed a "featured threads" add on which would be set by an admin? I have seen this on a few other forums and think it might be a nice addition to the all discussions front page. I also was wondering if there was anything for certain categories to show only on the front page as well. For example... if your forum is a car site. You have a category "transmissions". I think it would be nice if a user could pick transmission category and it would add it to the front page and show the most recent post from that area. I figure there are many users which are more "into" certain categories and it would be good to get those on the front page. This I am sure would have to be log in related. I really like the idea of the "all discussions" front page. Do these make sense or are they kinda going against vanilla's feel?
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Comments

  • MinisweeperMinisweeper New
    Explain your featured threads idea i'm not sure i understand you...?
    Users can choose to 'block' categories, which will stop them showing up on the discussions list (they can still see them by browsing the category itself) - i think this covers your second question?
  • OldmanpantsOldmanpants
    good idea! I would use this extension on my site... perhaps if nobody builds it first, and i find some time, it will be my first extension.. minisweeper - take a look at lwg3d.com/ to get an idea of what it would be... its basically just some of the threads, that an admin selects to be shown on the front page, or somewhere else prominently i suppose. In my case, i would put them on my homepage, separate from Vanilla, but i guess you could put them in the top of the discussions list like sticky's or in the sidebar or something.
  • rgbmanrgbman
    Oldmanpants is correct. It is selected threads which are picked by an admin to be placed on either the home page or the front page of the forum. Another website to see its use would be www.sitepoint.com The reason why this is wanted- Many site admins want to promote threads because of how good the question was, how relevant the topic was to the forum, or for whatever reason believes it should be in a location where many will get to see it (front page). Structure- I think the way sitepoint has it is pretty good. Where each thread only has the date, subject, small bit of text (this should be optional for those who want to compress its space). With each of the threads grouped by date. Allow them to pick how many will be shown , 5,10,23 etc.
  • ithcyithcy New
    i was thinking of something similar to this last night... more like a "thread hall of fame" though. there'd be a link in the panel on comments pages - "nonimate for hall of fame" or something like that, and then the hall of fame would just be a custom search.

    or just make a hall of fame category and move threads into it :)
  • MinisweeperMinisweeper New
    edited May 2006
    //--
  • timberfordtimberford
    featured threads sounds like stickies to me. however i would like to be able to make a sticky only a sticky in a particular category. i just think it would be useful to be able to have stickies that are only relevant to that category.
  • c-unitc-unit
    Another example - http://www.sitepoint.com/forums/ At first I didn't like them, but now I really like the featured discussions.
  • WallPhoneWallPhone
    http://www.webmasterworld.com is another example. They have regular threads in the categories, but featured discussions pop to the homepae.
  • MarkMark Vanilla Staff
    Hmm. This would be super easy as an extension. I might give it a shot after 1 is released. Neat idea.

    What would be really cool is that unlike stickies, they wouldn't get shoved into the rss and atom feeds. Also, it would be an easy thing to also pull into other parts of your site like your homepage highlighting the "Featured discussions"

    Okay, now I'm just being redundant.
  • rgbmanrgbman
    Great idea Mark. It would be nice for users to subscribe to these allow other sites to benefit from great forum discussions. On a side note is this the proper location to give suggestions? I have many more but dont want to be making anyone upset. Thanks
  • MarkMark Vanilla Staff
    You don't make suggestions with Vanilla.

    You request add-ons.
  • MarkMark Vanilla Staff
    And yes, this is the right place :)
  • rgbmanrgbman
    Ok I will refer to them as add-ons. Great I will do more testing and suggest a few more.
  • droppyaledroppyale
    Bump for this extension... Any chance you can release this with version 1? That would be awesome, cssbeauty needs something like this... it displays "recent discussions" accross all other pages of the site.
  • 3stripe3stripe ✭✭
    This would be a good extension idea for Swell as well I reckon for sites running blog/forums
  • bugsmi0bugsmi0
    this would be nifty to select cool discussions and give them the spotlight
  • bugsmi0bugsmi0
    i strongly encourage that stickies be set up per category instead of all of them showing up at once in discussions,I think stickies are best used via a category because each will have its own purpose. when you have 10 or 20 stickies that would crowd up the disucussions, better to see 2 or three inside a category of dicussions only.
  • timberfordtimberford
    bump for this extension
  • tthmaztthmaz
    Cool idea! Seconded.
  • ADMADM
    Yeah I'd love this.
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