catch and merlin talk D7 forums

SESSION OVERVIEW

Drupal’s core forum module is much maligned. Some of this is unjustified - people expecting it to replace standalone solutions by itself and ignoring the nature of Drupal’s modular framework. However, it also has some limitations which are a result of its age and require many workarounds for large community sites.

Many of the forum module’s limitations are down to its dependency on the taxonomy module (making it hard to integrate with organic groups etc.) and on comment.module, which is itself in need of a rewrite.

So we’re proposing a ground up rewrite of forum.module using nodes.

TRACK
Community and core.

AGENDA
* Current issues with core forum architecture
* What does the core forum module need to support?
* What are the prerequisites (views, node load optimisation)
* What will the architecture be like?
* What do we need in contrib?
* How can you help?

GOALS
We plan to map out some concrete steps to take for a ground up rewrite of forum module for D7, identifying current issues and proposed solutions. We hope to gain useful feedback on our intended approaches and consolidate forum related development during the new release cycle.

RESOURCES
Familiarity with the core forum module and views would probably help. Also take a look at Michelle’s Advanced forum module - see it in action right here!, and the DruBB group at: http://groups.drupal.org/drubb