A few beginner questions

lambda

Hi! I'm evaluating various different pieces of forum software for a community, and I'm checking out Vanilla. It looks pretty nice, but there are some customizations I'd like to make, and I'd like to know if any of these are already available as extensions or if I'm going to have to hack them in myself. I would like users to be able to filter the main discussion list by category. It would be great if there were a list of checkboxes in the sidebar, one per category, which were checked by default, but a user could uncheck the categories he wasn't interested in and those discussions would no longer show up in the discussions tab. Is there an extension which can do this, or something similar? Or where would I start if I wanted to add this functionality myself? Also, I would like to have one tab per category on the top, rather than a Categories tab. This would make it quicker to switch between categories. I've seen the extension that gives you a drop-down menu in the sidebar for categories, but I'd prefer separate tabs at the top. Does this exist as an extension, or should I write it myself? Finally, the community that I'm creating this forum for already has a MediaWiki set up. Is there any good way to keep account names and passwords in sync between the forum and the wiki, so people don't have to create two accounts?

Minisweeper

Have you checked out the addons site? #1 for sure is on there...try searching just for 'category' and checking out the list it comes up with.
#2 could be done manually with pagemanager, I'm not sure if there is a specific addon though. I'm not sure why you'd want both of the above though..
There is a WordPress linking document in the documentation wiki which can probably give you some ideas about integrating mediawiki. I think if you search the forums someone linked between docuwiki and vanilla too.

Stash

#1 and #2 are both best solved exactly as Mini said - of course, if you want to create an extension that automatically creates tabs from categories, be our guest, I'm sure other people will find it useful.

If you can come up with a guide for integrating with MediaWiki that would certainly benefit the community a lot

lambda

I want both because there are some people who like to see things as a big list of all discussions in all categories they are interested in, and some people who like to see one category at a time, so I want to support both types of users. I have searched through the add-ons, but I found it was hard to find the particular extension I needed. I've found the one for my first question now. I'll check out page manager to see if it does what I need for my second question.

lambda

OK, the Category Filter plugin is doing exactly what I want, but the Page Manager doesn't do quite what I want. If I create a page, with a url like /test/vanilla/?CategoryID=2, it goes to the right category, but the "Discussion" tab is highlighted, not the tab for my category. I'm assuming I could put in the appropriate PHP code to display the discussions in that category in the HTML setting for a page, but I'm not sure what I would need to include.

Minisweeper

Hmm..interesting. It would probably be easier to just make the correct tab be highlighted - though I'm not sure how. I guess you could do it with a bit of playing around with the menu.php theme file where it checks which tab it's on - but for some reason even trying to think about that in depth is giving me a headache. Man I wish I still had something day-to-day to keep my brain active... Have you tried turning on Friendly URLs and calling the tab by the exact name of the Category? It's a long shot but it may work.. //can anyone see where CurrentTab gets a value in either Vanilla.Control.Menu.php or themes/menu.php?!

lambda

I tried your Friendly URL suggestion, but it doesn't seem to do help (well, it gives me prettier URLs, but doesn't help with the tab highlighting).

WallPhone

Mini's on the right track with it having to be set in code by CurrentTab. I think it can be set where you define the tabs.

i.e., if memory serves correctly:$Menu->AddTab('Category 1', 'Cat1', blah blah); $Menu->AddTab('Category 2', 'Cat2', blah blah); ... if (ForceIncomingInt('CategoryID', 0) == 1){ $Menu->CurrentTab = 'Cat1'; } elseif (ForceIncomingInt('CategoryID', 0) == 2){ $Menu->CurrentTab = 'Cat2'; } ...

Stash

I've asked SirNot if he can add this functionality to the Page Manager extension as it would be nice I agree

NickE

ok what I've done is added in support to highlight a tab if the url it represents is accessed, so if you redownload it it should work properly now.