Design issue Forum node issue

[beerForo]

Affected version

2.1

If you have a Forum node as the parent, and one as the child, the child does not act as a sub-forum, it acts as a forum in the same list. It should follow the sub-forum display rules you choose but it does not, it acts as a forum with same size row size and descriptions, like parent forum nodes. Thanks

 

[imno007]

Yeah, looks like any new nodes are being added as basically sibling nodes, despite creating them as child nodes. I happened to notice this yesterday when setting up a couple of test nodes for something else.

EDIT: On second thought, maybe you were doing what I was doing yesterday, setting up the nodes without a category...? That just occurred to me, so I just tested it and they do appear normally as soon as you put them under a category. I never had any reason not to in the past, so I guess I just never noticed. I assume they're supposed to work that way....?

 

[beerForo]

Correct, no category, but that's intended on my end. I don't use category headers.

 

[Paul B]

Can you provide a screenshot?

Child forums appear as expected for me.

 

[beerForo]

With display style as: Listed below node, Description: Inline

 

[imno007]

Here's a pic, since I happen to have not deleted these test nodes yet (all the test "Subforum" nodes are sub-nodes of "Test Forum:"):

 

[Snog]

@Brogan this is how the nodes are display in the default XF style if the parent node (forum - in this case Test Forum No Category) does NOT have a category assigned as the parent for the forum...



The dropdown for the the 2 children is not displayed in the parent forum. Instead the children are listed below it.

Screenshot of nodes in admin...



Partial screenshot of the DB entries if that helps...

 

[imno007]

Right, thanks, Snog. That is indeed the default. I just arranged mine in a grid.

 

[Chris D]

This is kind of expected, and not particularly something I feel we should change.

The reasons for this are fairly difficult to explain, though essentially it's because we do not have any visual distinction between forum nodes which are at "depth 1" in the tree and "depth 2". The "Sub-forums" display only appears at "depth n" (depth 3 and above).

The only way to make a change here is to change the appearance of "depth 1" forums, but I'm not exactly sure which styling, if any, would make it clear. Any changes we made to "depth 2" forums would affect the usual children of forums within a category, and the appearance of child forums at the top of a thread list within a forum.

Ultimately, I think this would be a fairly rare use case. If you want to do something like this, you might as well just create a category for them to sit in which then gives you the "Sub-forums" display as you seem to expect here.

Worth noting this is the same in XF 1.x too, and to my recollection it has taken this long for it to be brought up.

 

[beerForo]

Hopefully this can be fixed in the future. I don't use category headers and XF allows this, it's not like a code hack. I choose forum nodes as my top and I set my sub-forum display style but it does not take effect. So they appear as nodes at the same level. This should be looked into for those wanting the cleaner look of no category headers, which can tend to look more legacy to some, and since XF allows this setup, it should work. I've been told I can use CSS to hide the category and then it "works" but then we have to remove from "Post thread", etc. and we're creating something just to hide it, we shouldn't have to do these workarounds when it should work in the first place. Thanks!

 

[beerForo]

@Chris D, since this was not displaying properly I decided to just turn them off:

Sub-forums display style
Popup menu
Listed below node
None

But they still show! As a full node, even if using None.

 

[Chris D]

The sub-forum display style only applies to depth 3 of the node tree and above. So it won't apply to the parent node, and it won't apply to the child nodes that you say you don't want to display, it would only apply to the children of that node.

Usually you have a category at level 1, a forum at level 2, and then the sub-forums display as sub-forums because they are at level 3.

There is no solution to this other than using category nodes.

 

[beerForo]

Category nodes are not required. Your solution is as if they are required. So if someone chooses not to use them, they are just out of luck with the expected display style not applying, even "None". Please consider for the future, thank you.

I have had to remove the nodes from displaying at all now with:
Display in the node list: No
Which is not ideal, but I can code some hyperlinks to them in the forum description, mimicking a sub-forum display. But then they still don't show in the actual forum. But I guess that's the workaround since display style does not apply at all.

 

[Harvey]

Category nodes are not required. Your solution is as if they are required. So if someone chooses not to use them, they are just out of luck with the expected display style not applying, even "None". Please consider for the future, thank you.

I have had to remove the nodes from displaying at all now with:
Display in the node list: No
Which is not ideal, but I can code some hyperlinks to them in the forum description, mimicking a sub-forum display. But then they still don't show in the actual forum. But I guess that's the workaround since display style does not apply at all.

Can you explain this workaround a little more to me? I also don't want to add categories... in our forum it's structure with no reason or content.

 

[Abraham54]

Almost every forumsoftware works with categories to establish a forum section.
It beats me why you wish to neglect this, because you think it is not needed.
Not using categories, then be not surprised when things go different.

 

[beerForo]

Can you explain this workaround a little more to me? I also don't want to add categories... in our forum it's structure with no reason or content.

What are you trying to do exactly?

 

[Harvey]

I actually like the way the subforums look when they have categories.

But if I can't get that look without categories, I'd like to hide the subforums on the main forum index page, and still have them show when you click into the top level forum.

 

[Harvey]

Almost every forumsoftware works with categories to establish a forum section.
It beats me why you wish to neglect this, because you think it is not needed.
Not using categories, then be not surprised when things go different.

Abraham - I'm not surprised that my unique issues aren't addressed. Just doing the best I can to produce the best forum I know how to.

 

[beerForo]

I actually like the way the subforums look when they have categories.

But if I can't get that look without categories, I'd like to hide the subforums on the main forum index page, and still have them show when you click into the top level forum.

So what I meant was yes hide them with:
Display in the node list: No
Then, in your actual forum description create HTML links to them.
I will give you a loose example, you could format this how you want.

Cars
This is the general cars forum.
--Muscle Cars

Muscle Cars is a actually a hyperlink you create in the forum description with HTML. Put a line break after the forum description and just add your sub-forum as a link, etc. Style how you want. You can put them in a column, in a row, or use them conversationally as part of the main forum description; "This is the Muscle Cars forum," etc.

 

[Harvey]

I will try to figure that out.

I would also pay a modest fee to have this resolved if that was a possibility.