No support for sticky discussions? (converting from SMF)

rmkleemann

I searched and found a few discussions regarding sticky threads/discussions. It seems that v2.1 would support it in the form of an "Announced" discussion?

My problem is I'm converting from SMF 2.x to Vanilla 2.1 and I have quite a few fixed/sticky discussions but none of that converts over to Vanilla. Any way to maybe get this done manually via mysql?

thanks
Ricardo

peregrine

If you have that many announcements - how will people actually see the other discussions.

I don't know what others think, but more than a few announcements is over-kill.

in the discussion table is a field called Announce or something like that.

when it has a 1 as the value in the field it is an announcement.

rmkleemann

@peregrine said:
If you have that many announcements - how will people actually see the other discussions.

What I meant is that overall (over multiple categories) there is a good number of sticky discussions. In the main discussion forum that I have there are 5 sticky threads that always show up on top, but that forum in itself has more than 80k discussions over almost 10 years of postings

I don't know what others think, but more than a few announcements is over-kill.

I agree, here I'm talking about 5 on the main forum. But in any case I do need to understand how to manually convert to sticky

in the discussion table is a field called Announce or something like that.

when it has a 1 as the value in the field it is an announcement.

great... do announcements in Vanilla also show up at the top as fixed postings? I guess I'll play around with it to see what it looks like

thanks for your help
Ricardo

peregrine

great... do announcements in Vanilla also show up at the top as fixed postings

yes. there are options to make it stick in category or everywhere. at least in vanilla 2.1

you can easily edit a discussion and make it an announcement. if you have announcement privs set for your role.

rmkleemann

thanks. I did get a discussion to appear up at the top by setting the announce field to 1 in the database

SMF has a notion of sticky and also locked discussions. I don't quite understand the difference (maybe the locked ones can't be modified or deleted?). Any guess what the difference might be and how that would translate to Vanilla?

peregrine

this may be silly reasoning. but if you don't know what the purpose was before, why would you care. or are you doing this for a client and they don't have a clue what was what.

your forum (especially announcements) are what you make of it today, not what it was in the past.

iirc

• A category announcement (announcements that stick when viewing a specific category,

  have a value of "2" in the announcements field in discussion table

  these don't stick in the main discussions page (discussions from all categories)

• But primary Announcments that are announcements in main discussion page (all categories)

  have a value of "1" in the announcements field in discussion table

rmkleemann

@peregrine said:
this may be silly reasoning. but if you don't know what the purpose was before, why would you care. or are you doing this for a client and they don't have a clue what was what.

your forum (especially announceements) are what you make of it today, not what it was in the past.

I'm the administrator, I host the forum. I also do participate in it. Although I'm the administrator I'm not one of the moderators, for example. So I'm not really the one taking care or deciding whether certain discussions should be made sticky or locked down. I guess you could say they're "a client" although this is a free service, we've been using this forum for almost 10 years now and I'm looking for a better software

So what I am doing is "in the background" working to improve the forum by moving from SMF to Vanilla. I first have to make sure everything works before even attempting to do it "in production"

peregrine

see my previous edited comment it may help.

rmkleemann

@peregrine said:
see my previous edited comment it may help.

that's great, thank you.

would you be able to help with a related question? I now have the announcement fixed on top - that's the first step.

Now I'm trying to have the announcements shown with a different background color. However I don't see a way to differentiate the discussions. Both the discussion with announcement and any other discussion are within a class block of

div class="ItemContent Discussion"

I don't see anything else in the source HTML distinguishing them, so I don't know how to customize the background via CSS. Do you think there's another way?

peregrine

that's great, thank you.

one possiblity is you could add this via js

jQuery(document).ready(function($) {
$("span.Tag-Announcement").parent().parent().css("background", "yellow");
    });

you could look at various plugins to see how to add js and there is also something on the wiki as well.

to see it in action. cut and paste it in your console and run it on this page.

http://vanillaforums.org/discussions

peregrine

actually this would be a better script

jQuery(document).ready(function($) {
$("span.Tag-Announcement").closest('.Item').css("background", "yellow");
    });

peregrine

here is a sample jquery script plugin

http://vanillawiki.homebrewforums.net/index.php/Adding_Some_JQuery_to_a_Plugin

you could also do it via adding to CssClass with php and a css element to change background based on class.

when you have an entirely different question.

better to start a new discussion with the title describing what you want and a new descrription of what you want and the version number of vanilla you are using in that new discussion, it will help other people aside from helping you.

the folllowing are worth the read.

here is a roundup of some other tips that may help you or other posters.

I also added these I am sure they will be useful.

http://vanillaforums.org/discussion/18015/how-to-ask-questions-on-the-internet

when-asking-a-question http://vanillaforums.org/discussion/25115/how-to-how-can-a-new-user-better-help-the-community-

and a few other helpful links:

http://vanillaforums.org/discussion/23130/forum-post-ettikett-etiquette

http://vanillaforums.org/discussion/17954/food-for-thought-forum-etiquette

http://vanillaforums.org/discussion/23483/advice-for-all-those-just-starting-out-with-vanilla

troubleshooting tips: http://vanillaforums.org/discussion/20231/how-to-become-somewhat-adept-at-modifying-vanilla-

click here: #etiquette to determine posting etiquette

rmkleemann

@peregrine said:
here is a sample jquery script plugin

http://vanillawiki.homebrewforums.net/index.php/Adding_Some_JQuery_to_a_Plugin

you could also do it via adding to CssClass with php and a css element to change background based on class.

when you have an entirely different question.

Thanks for the pointers. Since all of these questions are related to the Announcements, and the css (or js) question is also related to me trying to make the announcement work in a proper way, I didn't consider this to be an "entirely different question"

If you would like me to abandon this thread related to Announcements which I did create separately and create a new one to talk about how to customize the look&feel I can do that, but to me it seemed appropriate to continue on the thread.

In any case, I did follow your js query script suggestion (created a plugin) and enabled it, but that didn't work. I'm not sure how to debug it.

If it's best for me to create a new discussion to talk specifically about the plugin, I can certainly do that and apologize if this is somehow violating the etiquette, I'm simply just following up on the discussion that I created...

peregrine

rherorical question:

lets say someone sees the title..

No support for sticky discussions? (converting from SMF)

would they assume it has anything to do with changing background color of an announcement.

to answer my own rhetorical question. no I wouldn't think to look at the discussion.

so in my mind the more clearly the title relates to the discussion question, the easier it is for someone to determine by the title of the discussion what the entire discussion is about.

you decide for yourself by reading your own title!

the gist is making it easier to see for everyone, not just yourself.

but since we started down this road. I will continue here. and you can link your new discussion to here.

peregrine

 <?php if (!defined('APPLICATION'))  exit();
    // Define the plugin:
    $PluginInfo['AnnouncementColor'] = array(
        'Name' => 'Announcement Color',
        'Description' => 'Change Announcement Item to a different Color.',
        'Version' => '1.0',
        'Author' => "Peregrine-nonsupported"
    );



class AnnouncementColor extends Gdn_Plugin {

     public function DiscussionsController_Render_Before($Sender) {
          $this->AC_Attach_Resources($Sender); 
        }
     public function CategoriesController_Render_Before($Sender) {
            $this->AC_Attach_Resources($Sender); 
        } 

     public function AC_Attach_Resources($Sender) {
     $Sender->AddJsFile($this->GetResource('js/ancolor.js', FALSE, FALSE));
        } 



   }

put the above in plugins/AnnouncementColor/default.php

---

    jQuery(document).ready(function($) {
    $("span.Tag-Announcement").closest('.Item').css("background", "yellow");
    });

put the above in plugins/AnnouncementColor/js/ancolor,js

tested and works.

rmkleemann

I've created a separate question/discussion

peregrine

well your answer is here. and the code I posted works.

all you have to do is cut and paste it in the appropriate places without making any changes and giving the foloders and ifles correct permissions.

you could also update the wiki and replace the code with the above code as an example and you could also make improvements to the wiki if you want, since the link related Adding_Some_JQuery_to_a_Plugin that I provided above is old code that may no longer work in 2.1

rmkleemann

I've created a new discussion, please use this:

http://vanillaforums.org/discussion/27006/how-to-debug-a-simple-jsquery-plugin-which-attempts-to-change-background-color-of-a-section?new=1

peregrine

 jQuery(document).ready(function($) {
$("span.Tag-Announcement").closest('.Item').css("background", "yellow");
});

put the above in plugins/AnnouncementColor/js/ancolor,js

should not be comma but a period before the .js

put the above in plugins/AnnouncementColor/js/ancolor.js

rmkleemann, glad the code and plugin worked for you. despite the need to change the comma.

rmkleemann

rmkleemann, glad the code and plugin worked for you. despite the need to change the comma.

thanks to you.

I am playing around with other things right now as well, trying to learn as much as possible.

Currently trying to find where the appropriate "T(" string is for view and comments in order to translate. For example, where it says below the discussion title,

"90 views 34 comments"

The captured.php does have $Definition['comments'] for example, but changing that hasn't worked.

I tried setting both

$Definition['comments'] and $Definition['%s comments']

as found in the locale captured.php but that didn't work. So I'm searching for the appropriate "T(" string in the various php files in order to do the appropriate substitution.

peregrine

you can't fool me this time because now one should really start a new discussion or we can play duelling discussions

but this has been answered a few times before. How come you don't search the forum for answers.

#Plural   click to the left of me on the hashtag

#views    click to the left of me on the hashtag

   or  you could searchcomments definition

I also believe it may be in the tutorial I suggested as well

or here

http://vanillaforums.org/discussion/26597/tutorial-how-to-change-wording-how-to-change-text-how-to-change-language-how-to-change-locale

see if you can spot it