FilterDiscussion - How do you use it?

phreak

Hi all and @rbrahmson,

That is really another amazing plugin from you. I like your approach of your plugins to allow various use cases, because they are build in a very complex and generic way at the same time. Meaning, you don't actually solve one specific thing, you more or less add an add-on to the repository that could solve different needs.

BUT I'm sometimes lazy and while I actually would need to sit down and think of some use cases for my parenting communities I don't take the time to do that (people will boo! me now).

So I wondered what functionalities you and other forum managers created with it for their communities.

Thank you for some advice,
phreak

rbrahmson

In our intranet we added several items to the side panel (through the Side Panel Links plugin), each one displaying a different filtered discussion list. We also use the Prefix Discussion plugin so many discussions have prefixes. We also use the Discussion Alert plugin to mark selected discussions as worthy of extra attention.

So with this in mind, here are some saved filtered lists we use (I changed the parameters to remove our intranet content):
1. /discussions/filterdiscussion/?Prefix=EQ:Cars&!msg=Cars%20Discussions Saved as Cars
2. /discussions/filterdiscussion/?Alert=NN&!msg=Alerted%20Discussions Saved as Alerts
3. /discussions/filterdiscussion/?DateInserted=d>:-7&!msg=Last%20Week%20Discussions Saved as Latest

And these are the definitions we put in the Side Panel Links:
1. Text of Link: Cars Link: discussions/filterdiscussion/?!filter=Cars
2. Text of Link: Alerts Link: discussions/filterdiscussion/?!filter=Alerts
3. Text of Link: Of Last Week Link: discussions/filterdiscussion/?!filter=Latest

We also use the Module Sort plugin to place the Side Panel with these links on the top of the side panel

Last but not least, we use the Add Menu Item to add few of these to the menu bar as well.

So indeed, the combination of plugins creates the gestalt we wanted.

Now, if you are unsure as to the Discussion table column names you can use to filter on, just enter a wrong column name and the displayed error message will give you brief syntax information with the real-time names of columns currently defined in your Discussion Table (since some plugins add columns you may find this useful).

Hope this helps.

phreak

Thanx @rbrahmson. I'm currently playing around with it. In my case it seems to be useful if you have certain rule-sets or a set of recurring discussions in the community which then can be "grabbed" by the Filters. I'll look into it what could improve community dynamics based on that. Thank you for the info.

Actually "What type of community improving dynamics did you build on top of Vanillaforums" might be an interesting discussion going beyond the regular forum use. My users for example like to play "Silent Post" which means they have a parcel with 10 things inside and send it to the next user given in a list. Everyone takes as much things out as he or she wants and adds the same number of things. Then they send it to the next user. Around this Silent Post thing they organize it in the community, post pictures when the post man brought the parcel and so on. It's improving my community a lot.

Currently I use the hashtag plugin to link all this Silent Post discussions to each other. They are discussions for sharing book, DVDs, games, baby stuff, ... I don't know what all.

rbrahmson

Hi @phreak , just reread this thread and I was wondering what had you settled on using the plugin in your forum? Perhaps you can share some examples