[TYPO3-ect] chc_forum discussion

[Elmar Hinz]

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Pros:


Cons:


Proposal by Michelle:

CHC Forum

The CHC Forum, created by Zach Davis and Lucas Thurston of Cast Iron
Coding, has been an invaluable addition to achieving a community
solution in TYPO3. This extension is tightly integrated with TYPO3,
which allows a developer to add it to the website seamlessly. Before
this extension, developers needed to use a third party forum, modify
countless templates and build a custom extension just to bridge between
the forum's authentication and TYPO3's. With CHC Forum, full
administration can be done through the TYPO3 backend, while certain
users can be allowed moderation rights for administration in the
frontend, thus making it extremely easy-to-use.

The CHC Forum manual is very thorough with step-by-step instructions for
users, administrators and developers. It goes beyond most manuals with
the addition of "Common Problems and Solutions" under "Configuration",
"3rd Party Integration" and "Tips and Tricks". Even without the manual,
the forum was developed in such a way that it runs almost
out-of-the-box, thanks to "Quick Install" instructions for the
impatient.

Support is provided through the TYPO3 bug tracker and the forum's own
mailing list group. The developer frequently answers requests and fixes
bugs in a timely manner. Recent improvements include cwt_community
integration, ratings of posts, the ability for moderators to
lock/unlock/hide/unhide threads and the ability for users to "watch
threads".

The CHC Forum has led to a few collaborations. The News with CHC-Forum
extension by Rupert Germann allows visitors to leave comments to news
items and integrates them with a thread in the forum. The forum can also
be integrated with the CWT Community extension, created by Sebastian
Faulhaber, to provide developers with additional community features.
This also supplies a strong model of how one extension can work with
several other high profile extensions to expand functionality.


Happy Holidays!

Michelle

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