Rotate Discussions

Farid_A

Hi everyone,

I was wondering if it's possible to automatically change the position of discussions in the home page. What I mean by that is that I automatically sometimes want discussions on a page other than the first one to suddenly be in the first page.

I am using Vanilla version 3.3

donshakespeare

If you announce the discussion it gets a prioritized sort position

Farid_A

https://open.vanillaforums.com/discussion/comment/259058#Comment_259058

I know. What I am basically trying to do automatically, like every half an hour, is take all the discussions in the first page, put them in a different page. Then, take ten other discussions from a different page, and put them in the first one.

I believe changing the time of the last comment in a discussion page will get me what I want. The only problem is that I do not know how to do that.

I am gonna try adding some Php code using HTMLEdit to randomly select discussions, and change their time of last comment.

donshakespeare

Ah!

I had a mind to make me a plugin that does similar: to feature some 6 or so of my discussions in whatever order I chose ..

I will share when I flesh this out. Hopefully someone will get to it faster.

Cheers

R_J

My opinion as a forum user on that: I would feel tricked and annoyed.

If the idea behind that is to put some discussions in the focus of users, why not create some "Featured Discussions" module or a "Recommended Discussions" below or above normal discussions?

rbrahmson

Take a look at the DiscussionAlert plugin and see if it already works for you (haven't tested it on the recent version)

phreak

Hi Farid,

I know you are looking for a plugin but here is our take on this. We have community based rule that asks user to dig up older but helpful discussions on every friday. It became a good habit, it makes sense to work on specific community habits or engage particular users like moderators with this job.

There is also a plugin called “BUMP” that you could open to specific user groups to shoot discussions to the first page without a comment.

Although I read Vanilla will abandon it if I recall correctly.

Farid_A

Thanks phreak about the BUMP plugin.

https://open.vanillaforums.com/discussion/comment/259067#Comment_259067

The reason for this endeavor is because my site is very new and I am afraid of users leaving it due to lack of activity.

rbrahmson

Please be aware that Bump changes the discussion dates (you get the bump effect because of the default sorting order by dates).