Link forum with community site

[muffinpeddler]

I was thinking about this and just wanted to share my ideas.  I believe that the forum isn't integrated enough with the rest of the community site, or the crystalspace3d.org site for that matter.  It seems so separate, and indeed it looks much different.  Being a user of crystal space, the forum is very helpful, however I find it troublesome to navigate to the rest of the CS content that I need, and that I believe others like me need too, such as docs and tutorials.  Forums draw a lot of people, and I think it would be a good thing to make it seem like the forum is actually part of the project, not just some side thing.

What do you guys think?

[jorrit]

I was thinking about this and just wanted to share my ideas.  I believe that the forum isn't integrated enough with the rest of the community site, or the crystalspace3d.org site for that matter.  It seems so separate, and indeed it looks much different.  Being a user of crystal space, the forum is very helpful, however I find it troublesome to navigate to the rest of the CS content that I need, and that I believe others like me need too, such as docs and tutorials.  Forums draw a lot of people, and I think it would be a good thing to make it seem like the forum is actually part of the project, not just some side thing.

What do you guys think?

But how would you achieve that technically? We use tikiwiki for the site and the problem is that the tikiwiki forums are not good.

Greetings,

[muffinpeddler]

Well, as for the integration, something as simple as embedding the standard CS site header in the header template (if this forum system uses templating, I don't really know) so that it at least looks like part of the site.  Granted, it wouldn't have the menus on the sides and whatnot, which would be a little more annoying to get working, but at least having it customized to look like it's a subsection of the site would be a great thing for the community.  You wouldn't have to mess with Tiki at all, just put in some header divs and whatnot into the template of this theme for this forum.  Of course, I am assuming this forum is similar to phpbb, but I am probably off in some way.

It is possible to theme the forum so that it looks like the community-site (and/or the official site). However that requires somebody having time and will to work on it Any volunteers?

-Marten

[muffinpeddler]

I would do it, or at least make a test theme that could be voted on or considered...