in progress Home Page - Replacing Top Discussions with Forum > Newest Posts

Okay, so this is really about duplicating a Ning functionality but it makes the most sense for my community,

I want to replace the Top Discussions block on the home page with the Forums > Newest Posts that is labeled Discussions in the Top Nav (but should probably be labeled Forum (and how do I change that?).

TIA.
updated by @claygordon: 02/12/15 10:50:08AM

This is one of the things I believe is important to change for all us 'Ning Bundle' users. It's something I planned to request help on myself once I solved my current skin/cloning issue.

As it is out-of-the-box, the Main page of our site contains a module showing "Top Groups" AND a module labeled "Top Discussions". But the Top Discussions actually features latest discussions from our Groups, not from our Forums. There is no main page module at all for Forum Discussions. This is something every single Ning creator will be asking for and NEED to change, if it's not changed by default for all of us.

This is still a holdover from a couple months ago when JR team was thinking that all our discussions were within our Groups, and before they added the jrProfileForum module to properly receive our forum discussions from our Ning Archives while importing to Jamroom modules.

I feel it's very important that by DEFAULT, our main page also have a Forums module, showing latest Forum Discussions (not latest group discussions...which currently needs to be re-named just that, to avoid confusion with the Forum discussions).

Chocolate- Because the current "Top Discussions" does not feature forum discussions at all, but rather Group discussions, we can't merely exchange it with one for forums- we need to create one for forums on its own, and then we can decide if we want to keep the one for groups (and rename it Group Discussions perhaps) or remove it.

Chocolate- you can change the titles on the tops of each module in your Skin>Language tab.
For example, I changed the "About" title in the top description to "Welcome to Friends of the Mountain Dulcimer" and I changed "older posts" to "older blog posts". If you look in that language tab of your current skin, you can change "Discussions" to "Group Discussions" which will at least clarify that the current module is for group discussions rather than forum discussions.

Now we just need a real 'Latest Forum Discussions' module for our main site pages.


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...just another satisfied Jamroom customer.
Migrated from Ning to Jamroom June 2015

I'm guessing there are going to be other Ning users that want latest discussion instead? I'm pretty certain when we were developing the NingJa front page that the feedback from Ning users was that have the latest discussions on the front page was something every Ning user would want... maybe not?

Maybe a skin setting that can be switched?


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Brian Johnson
Founder and Lead Developer - Jamroom
https://www.jamroom.net
updated by @brian: 01/01/15 07:19:52AM

There is still confusion between latest forum discussions and latest group discussions here.

Hear me out- on Ning we have a main page module simply showing our Groups- and we can sort them in various ways (groups with most members, groups that have the latest activity...). (Plus, any activities that happen in a group shows up in the Timeline/activity feed on the main page.) But we don't have a "Latest Groups Discussions" module, like we now have on JR.
Instead we have a main page module showing Latest Forum Discussions.

Now in Ningja JR, we have NO main page module for Forum Discussions at all, but we have TWO main page modules for Groups- one showing a list of "Top" groups, and one showing latest Group Discussions...only it's called simply "Discussions" which is confusing because people will assume it is forum discussions.

1) I believe we ALL need a main page module for Latest Forum Discussion posts. similar to as shown in my screenshot.

2) The Groups modules showing on the main page should be tweaked in some way as well- Soaring was suggesting a SINGLE module showing various group activity. --> I feel that if a member wants to see a simple list of groups, they can simply click on the Groups Link in the top nav bar. (and that list we admins should be able to sort ..at least by Most Members and most recent active rather than groups being listed alphabetically) .

In my opinion, Modules on the main page seem to be better suited to showing 'latest' activity in their respective feature. (i.e. latest members, latest posted photos, latest added videos, latest discussion posts...) Then the overall Timeline as well, which brings it all together for members checking in, at a glance in one place. For myself, I would be in favor of a single main page module showing "Latest Activity in Groups", and a single module for "Latest Forum Discussions posts". Then if members want to see simple complete lists of forums, groups, videos,, members, etc...they can either click on the "All" links or the top navigation header links for that particular feature. To me that makes the most sense and is the most organized and consistent arrangement.


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...just another satisfied Jamroom customer.
Migrated from Ning to Jamroom June 2015
updated by @strumelia: 01/01/15 08:32:16AM

OK - I thought in Ning there was no forum - just discussions? That's likely the source of the confusion.


Easy fix.


You can sort in any way you want - the order_by argument in the {jrCore_list} call can sort by any field.

I'll get a ticket open to make the front page a setting where you can change between Forums and latest group discussions - I'm certain at some point a Ning user is going to want "Latest Group Discussions" instead of "Latest Forum Posts" so instead of removing it it would be better to make it configurable.

Hope this helps!


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Brian Johnson
Founder and Lead Developer - Jamroom
https://www.jamroom.net
updated by @brian: 01/01/15 08:07:49AM

That would work for me on one condition- that the latest Group Discussion Posts appear on the main Page general Timeline/Activity Feed (as they currently do in Ning). If they don't, then Groups activities will become too invisible if we set our "Latest Discussions" module to be latest FORUM discussions.


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...just another satisfied Jamroom customer.
Migrated from Ning to Jamroom June 2015

"OK - I thought in Ning there was no forum - just discussions? That's likely the source of the confusion. "
I thought so. That's why JR created the whole newer jrForums module after the initial bunch of modules- to receive the FORUMs discussions from our Ning archive...which are completely separate from the GROUPS' discussions.


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...just another satisfied Jamroom customer.
Migrated from Ning to Jamroom June 2015

Just to be clear, the jrForum module wasn't created for Ning, its been around for a while.
The Ning archive only has a list of discussions, some of which are associated to groups. Those are imported to the jrGroupDiscuss module.
The rest, those not associated to a group, are imported to the jrForum module and become 'global' forums/discussions.


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Paul Asher - JR Developer and System Import Specialist

Ah, thanks for the detailed explanation Paul- good to know how it actually works.


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...just another satisfied Jamroom customer.
Migrated from Ning to Jamroom June 2015

It's a matter of semantics and grouping. Ning does have a Forum module on the home page. The entries (we'll call them discussions) displayed here are not associated with any Group - members have the option of assigning them to a category or leaving them in the default (uncategorized).

Each Group has its own discussions - its own forum - but the entries in this group have no category assignments; they belong to the parent group "category."


@Brian -

I really do need to put the Forum > Newest Posts up on my site before I can go live. I will move Top Discussions over into the right column (under Top Groups) and change the label to Latest Group Discussions or similar.

:: Clay

Choco- I agree with your summation. It's pretty important to make this happen.


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...just another satisfied Jamroom customer.
Migrated from Ning to Jamroom June 2015