SimpleForum theme

[Bigin]

SimpleForum theme

SimpleForum theme script is just a simple theme example to show you, how you can use ItemManager framework to create a small flat-file Forum.
SimpleForum theme consists of only 2 .php files and includes very minimal CSS, just to keeping the layout together.
SimpleForum theme is deliberately kept very simple (procedural code, especially for developers with procedural experience) in order to give you a better overview.

To start using SimpleForum theme on your GetSimple website just needs a number of things:

• ItemManager 2.3+ plugin must be installed and configured
  
• Frontainer 1.0 plugin or or similar 'user management plugin' (for creating an unique user ID) must be installed and configured.
  
• The fancy url checkbox should be activated in admin settings
  

  
Demo Forum: http://im.ehret-studio.com/forum/


Detailed instruction on how to install the SimpleForum you can see here:

1. First of, create following page structure in admin: 
   1. Login
   2. Signup
   3. Accounts 
   4. Logout 
   5. Recovery 
   6. Activate
   7. Forum
       -1. Edit (child page of the Forum)
       -2. Post (child page of the Forum)
       -3. Phones (child page of the Forum)
       -4. Readers (child page of the Forum)
       -5. Tablets (child page of the Forum)

Categories: Phones, Readers and Tablets are temporary names, you can change them again at any time later.
    Please make sure that the resulting page slugs are exactly the same as page names: login, signup, accounts, etc.






2. Install / activate latest version ItemManager (v. 2.3 I’ve fixed a small cache bug, you'll need it to cache your forum pages)
3. Install / activate Frontainer v. 1.0 from GitHub or Extend
4. Install / activate SimpleForum theme from GitHub or Extend 
5. Go to Plugins > Frontainer settings and put there your eMail data:
(Site name, email from, email to, etc. These parameters are used for user registration and authentification email)
6. Let’s go to ItemManager's tab > Categories and create following categories there:

   1. Users
   2. Threads
   3. Postings

7. Join to all three created categories and make a note of those category ID's, these ID's will be assigned to constants in the functions.php file - but more of that later. 
8. After that go to ItemManager's Fields menu, select Users category first and click Reload, then create these fields for it:

   1. Name: email,
Label: eMail (or your choice),
Type: Text field

   2. Name: password,
Label: Password (or your choice),
Type: Password

   3. Name: recovery,
Label: Recovery password (or your choice),
Type: Hidden field

9. Now, select Threads category > click Reload. Create fields:

   1. Name: category,
       Label: Category (or your choice),
       Value: Tablet computer
                  E-Book readers
                  Smartphones
       Type: Dropdown

   2. Name: content,
       Label: Content (or your choice),
       Type: Long text field

   3. Name: user_id,
       Label: can be left blank,
       Type: Hidden field 

10. Select Postings category > click reload button, create fields:

   1. Name: thread_id,
       Label: can be left blank,
       Type: Hidden field

   2. Name: user_id,
       Label: can be left blank,
       Type: Hidden field

   3. Name: content,
       Label: Content (or your choice),
       Type: Long text field

11. Go to /theme/SimpleForum/ then edit this file functions.php There u’ll see following lines:

Code:

define('USERS_CAT_ID', 19);
define('THREADS_CAT_ID', 20);
define('POSTINGS_CAT_ID', 21);

Change any ID values which differ from those that you created (as you noted earlier) you can also change $categories array there at a later time, but let's keep the values as they are right now, just for test.

[Charpy1]

Very nice work !
This will be usefull for many people, for sure.

Can you give us some screenshots or logins to have a quick try?

[Bigin]

You can register at any time and start posting immediately ;-)

[jwzumwalt]

Can this forum adaption be used in an existing GS site, or does the site have to be dedicated as a forum only site?

[Bigin]

Sure, the simplest approach would be to rename template.php to forum.php for example. Then copy entire content of the folder SimpleForum to your theme folder and assign forum.php to your Forum page as template.

[brochrane]

love this idea and the demo looks really good, I have tried to add SimpleForum theme to my own website but when activate the theme I receive a HTTP ERROR 500 on the frontend, I have managed to narrow it down to being an issue in functions.php, I'm not sure if this is maybe because the forum was built on an earlier version of ItemManager? any help would be greatly appreciated!

[Bigin]

Normally these scripts are compatible, but I will check it anyway.

Would you please check the server logs so that we can detect the issue?

Thx

[Bigin]

Just tested, seems to work. 

Apache
PHP 7.4.2
ItemManager 2.4.4
Frontainer: 1.0.1

Check the installation again step by step. Frontainer is installed? Add Frontainer's script from the `Preparing your theme for using Frontainer` section into your `functions.php` file instead of the template.

And please check the logs if there are still some problems, thanks!

[brochrane]

Thank you so much for your reply, I am going to attempt installation again tonight and will let you know how I get on, I will also update with the error logs if I dont succeed.

Thank you for your help.