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** This thread discusses the Content article: ObjectClarity Fireboard Discussbot **

The Discussbot allows you to integrate your Forum discussions with your content. At the bottom of your content items it can include a link to the discussion about each article and optionally include a subset of the running commentary.

Once you have the mambot (or plugin in Joomla 1.5 speak) installed you will need to publish it. This is no different than any other bot, module or component. Before the bot gets loaded you have to enable it in your FireBoard Config. Once it's enabled and published you're almost ready to see it on your Joomla! website.

There are two ways to add the discussbot to your articles, by adding tags to your content or forget the tags and use the "Auto" features. If you have a site where only a small portion of articles are discussed in your forums, you may be better off using tags and only add them as required.

Discussbot Tags So what does this tag look like? Here's one: Where "123" is the Fireboard Category Id number. You can find your category Id numbers by looking at the URLs in your FireBoard installation or look at the Bot Reference Chart in your FireBoard Configuration. You can type them manually or install the FireBoard Discuss Button to add it to your content editor.

Automatically Discuss Content
This is my personal preference as I don't like adding tags to my content items if I don't absolutely need to. There's lots of flexibility with the "Auto" options and it should be able to accommodate most sites.



Discussbot ParametersLimit PostsThis setting allows you to limit the number of posts that will be displayed at the bottom of your content item.



ShowDo you want to show the first few posts or the last few posts? Maybe you're more interested to see how the discussion got started by showing the first posts added to the Forum Thread. Or just set it to show the Last Posts to see where the conversion has gone today.



Sort postsWhich posts do you wat at the top? First ones or last ones? I really can't say too much about this one byond - Just try it... If it looks upside down to you, change it to the other.



Use Discuss ImageYou can display the link to your forum as an image or as text. Either one works, which one do you like better?



First Thread HandlingThis one is a bit more complicated. When a new forum thread is created the bot creates a link from the forum thread back to the content item. The bot is able to create this link in 3 different ways.

1. Link is in User's Post
   
2. Link & Article text
   
3. Link to Article only
   

1) Using this method of "First Post Handling" is the way the original discussbot worked. It uses FireBoard to start the new thread and adds a link back to the content item to the top of the user's post.

2) The second method inserts the first post of a new thread with a link to the content item followed by the complete contents of the article. A second post is created containing the user's remarks.

3) The third method will start a new Thread by insertng a post containing a link to the content item, followed by the user's post.

As the first method uses FireBoard to handle new threadsthe bot needs to match the new thread to the content item using the Article title - this may result is mismatched or unmatched threads if the subject contains unusual or encoded characters. The second and third methods insert directly into the discussbots cross-reference table therefore eliminating any need to match the thread title to the title of the content item.

Enable QuickPostQuickPost is a simple form where users can respond to forum discussion directly from the content item. It's an easy and convenient way to participate in forum discussions about content items.

Show Smilies in QuickPost This option simply adds the FireBoard Smilies to the QuickPost form. It uses the same smilies defined for FireBoard and they can be displayed on either side of the QuickPost form.

Enable Public QuickPostIf you don't mind non-registered users participating in your forum discussions you can set this one to Yes. It will bypass any FireBoard security and let anyone post into your forums. You may see a lot of SPAM posts if you leave this enabled.



QuickPost FormThis is a simple option to keep the QuickPost form expanded or collapsed depending on your preference.



QuickPost LocationYou can chose to have your QuickPost form at the top or the bottom of the displayed posts.



Front Page LinkYou can also choose to put a link to your forums right on the front page. It will only display the link because discussion threads and QuickPost would probably destroy your front page layout.



Auto Discuss LinkThis has to be my personal favorite. When this is set to Yes, the bot will automatically create new threads and display the bot without having any tags in your content.



Allow Manual OverrideIf you use the Auto Discuss Link option but would like to arbitrarily discuss an article in some other Fireboard category. Enable this option, then add the usual {mos_fb_discuss:#} tag to your article. Leave it disabled if you don't use it and save the overhead looking for a tag that won't exist.



Fallback to Subject MatchingThis is left behind for sites that were using the 1.0.3 versions of the bot that used only the Thread subject and the Content item title to match threads and content. Once the Discussbot introduced a cross reference table and all your content items have been added (it's done automatically) this is no longer required and can be disabled. Again, this takes a bit of overhead and should be disabled if not required.

Auto J!-FB Category Id pairsThis one is cool. You can define a specific FireBoard Category for each Joomla Category. That way when new threads are created, they're automatically created in the appropriate FireBoard Categories.

E.g. If Joomla category #5 should create threads in FB category #6 and Joomla category #7 should create threads in FB category #10, enter '5,6;7,10;' (without quotes!). Joomla categories not listed here will fall-back to the value in 'Auto FB Category Id'.



Auto FB Category IdEnter the FireBoard Category ID number where new threads should be created. Once set the bot will automatically create new threads in this category. This setting is also used as a fallback for any categories not mentioned in "Auto J!-FB Category Id pairs".




Auto Content Section Id's Apply discussbot only to these content sections. Separate section Id's with a comma. Leave empty to apply to all sections. (Requires Auto Discuss Link : Yes)



Exclude Content Section Id's Exclude these sections from the discussbot. Separate section Id's with a comma. Leave empty to apply to all sections. (Requires Auto Discuss Link : Yes)



Auto Content Category Id's Apply discussbot only to these content categories. Separate category Id's with a comma. Leave empty to apply to all categories. (Requires Auto Discuss Link : Yes)



Exclude Content Category Id's Exclude these categories from the discussbot. Separate category Id's with a comma. Leave empty to apply to all categories. (Requires Auto Discuss Link : Yes)



First Post Owner The Joomla User Id number to be used when creating first posts. Leave blank to use the content item author. (Requires First Thread Handling options 2 or 3)



Show Debug InfoShow debugging info in the Joomla! front end.



Debug User Id'sA comma delimited list of Joomla User Id's that can see the Debug info. Users not in this list will not see debug info. Leave this empty to let all users see debug info.

Once again it's a start. I would like to include some FAQs etc but that will come as things come up.

-M

Great mambot. Thank you!

Now the inevitable questions:

1) Can you display the quick post box inside of a <div> in a specific place - or only at the bottom of the page?

2) Can you display the Title of the Forum's category Id that the Quick post will be adding to? i.e. for {mos_fb_discuss:123}, display the title of category #123.

Both these features would be very useful.

The bot doesn't allow adding it in the middle of content as it didn't seen terribly useful to do so. I've only heard one other user request it and they only "thought it would be cool" and didn't push for it.

I've not considered adding the category title to the bot's "Discuss in ..." message. I guess I've tried to keep the bot as light as possible but if you've looked at the code, it's not what I'd call 'light' anymore. As long as features can be turned off and therefore not adding to the overhead I don't mind adding some useful features.

-M

I'm not familiar with how Fireboard stores titles in its DB, but it's worth a look. I'm imagining using discussbot with a leading question (What do you guys think about X?....) as a good way of populating new forums active and starting conversations. So much cooler than just having comments. In terms of being able to load discussbot in a module position (or inside a div) it just give us more control over how the page looks.

Nice component. Unfortunately, the "link only" option that is contained in the sourcecode cannot be set from the admin backend.

If you want to not have the discussion in your content items, you have to edit the sourcecode. It would be good to be able to set the number of listed items to 0. Currently this resets it to the default value of 6.

And as a sidenote: A comment like
// TODO: Sadly we may have built the quickpost form et al without needing to...
that voids most of the stuff that has been done before after one single if statement is really sad It's not too hard to make that if a litte bit more up front...

Besides that: Nice mambot

Cheers, Enlightning Man