One hurdle that eluded me for a while was how to offer translated phrases and words for labels in the database. In other words if I set what would normally be "General Forums" as "_GENFORUMS" in the database, how could I get the page to pre-process this translation correctly and pull the translation from PN's language files. The answer was fairly simple:
echo eval("return ".$cat_title.";");
Some of the other feature/benefits I wanted to accomplish were:
- The ability to set multiple languages and have them all display to the user (within whatever SITE language interface they normally used).
- The ability to select and store favorite sub-groups in any forum so that they see only those groups they have selected on return visits.
- The ability to designate moderators based on forum, group, and language.
- A file caching system for the main forum page to quicken loading (the group scan query is a bit long).
I still have some additional items to add of course. But I wanted to share this forum with the PN developer community as a source for ideas, etc. As my site is based on v7.03 (and heavily modified from that point) I don't think my code would be of much benefit in the new API scheme of things. I am not against sharing it if there is a demand. Provided those requesting it understand that it will NOT run on PN v7.2+ as it is. Nor would it even run on something older unless you made considerable db changes. Nothing I have done in this app is extremely complicated, in fact my code is likely full of amateurish stuff. But to me it's the idea that counts.
JIM STARKWEATHER (staff_jim@armorama.com)
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