Building a Drupal Forum at
AASHE.ORG
Julia Kulla-Mader
juliakm.com
@juliakm

Project Mission
Provide a central place where those interested in
campus sustainability can ask and answer
questions, share knowledge and expertise, and
contribute to the growing body of knowledge on
campus sustainability.

What can the core forum
module accomplish?

Basic Forum Module
Functionality
Create forum posts
Respond to forum posts via comments
Mark posts as sticky
Organize posts by taxonomy
RSS feed for each forum

What can the core forum
module not do?

Part I: Requirements Not Met
By Forum Module
Look and feel can be customized to match main
AASHE website.
Ability for users to sign up for email notification (by
email or RSS) of replies to a thread (this should
default on their own posts).
Individual topic areas can be co-branded with
partner associations. For example, the ACUPCC
sponsors the Climate Forum.

Part II: Requirements Not Met
By Forum Module
Sponsors recognized on the main forums page.
AASHE staff logo and AASHE member logo
accompanies appropriate posts.
Non-members posts are not automatically
published. Moderators receive an automatic
notification.
The "Real Name" and not the username should
show up everywhere for users.

Part III: Requirements Not
Met By Forum Module
Users can “quote” one another in forum threads
Display recent posts categorized by relevant
taxonomy term throughout the site

How can we build more
functionality into the forum
using contributed modules?

Look and Feel
Objective: Look and feel can be customized to
match main AASHE website.
Problem: Basic forum module makes forum
design difficult to customize.
Solution: Advanced Forum

Email Notifications
Objective: Ability for users to sign up for email
notification (by email or RSS) of replies to a thread
(this should default on their own posts).
Problem: Users need a way to receive updates via
email. This is not a core feature.
Solution: Notifications + Token + Messaging
Framework

Co-Branded Forum
Objective: Individual topic areas can be co-
branded with partner associations. For example,
the ACUPCC sponsors the Climate Forum.
Problem: There’s no section-sponsor setup out of
the box with the forum module.
Solution: Create a block that only appears on
specific taxonomy pages.

Sponsor Recognition
Objective: Sponsors recognized in random order
on the main forums page.
Problem: Non-technical users need to be able to
upload logos and have them appear on the
homepage.
Solution: Views + Imagecache

Staff and Member Logos
Objective: AASHE staff logo to accompany staff
posts. AASHE member logo accompanies
member posts.
Problem: Need a way to automatically assign
“badges” to posts.
Solution: User Badges + Author Pane

Auto Staff Notifications
Problem: When non-members submit posts, they
are not published and the AASHE moderators
receive an automatic notification.
Objective: Need to not public posts and
comments with a specific role and to send AASHE
Staff notification that it’s time to review a post.
Solution: Rules

Real Name Only
Objective: The "Real Name" and not the
username should show up everywhere for users.
Problem: We don’t use “username” on the
website to ever identify users.
Solution: Real Name

Quote
Objective: Users can “quote” one another in
forum threads
Problem: It can been difficult to teach users that
the appropriate way to quote one another is with
<blockquote>.
Solution: Quote + patch

Recent Relevant Posts
Objective: Display recent posts categorized by
relevant taxonomy term throughout the site.
Problem: Recent posts forum block doesn’t allow
you to filter depending on the page you are on.
Solution: Views (not implemented on live site)

Bonus Problem:
Deploying is Hard
Objective: Find an easy way to transfer required
modules, Views, CCK fields, imagecache presets
from development to staging to live site
Problem: It’s hard to keep track of all of the
required modules and settings and downright
annoying.
Solution: Features

Drumroll please...

Block for
anonymous
users only Sponsor
View
Description/
Sponsor Block
Real Names

Member
Badge
Subscription
Options
Quote
Button
Recent Posts View

Forum Questions?