Coding help for an idea wanted

[kickoff3pm]

I've had this idea I know will be very popular with forum owners. Here's the basic idea, if it's already been done please point me to it, if you can help please let me know.

Imagine the are two web sites, each have very separate forums A & B.

On each site a message board is created with the same objective.

If I post a message on board A that message also shows on board B
If I reply on board B the replies are shown on board A also.

Both board are in sync and a conversation can be had by the members of A & B you don't need to be a member of both boards.

I hope you understand the above, I understand this might not be possible because of access rights etc but I'm no coder so I've been trying to think of a way around that too and here it is;

You use another site, a central point which the admins of the two other site join and setup the link between the two boards. Then if possible on each forum site the board being used is tagged with some code that picks up on a change, takes the text of that change and sends it to the central point. The central point works out where it should go and logs into that forum and places the message.

Am I mad or can this be done?

TIA

[elfishtroll]

I've had this idea I know will be very popular with forum owners. Here's the basic idea, if it's already been done please point me to it, if you can help please let me know.

Imagine the are two web sites, each have very separate forums A & B.

On each site a message board is created with the same objective.

If I post a message on board A that message also shows on board B
If I reply on board B the replies are shown on board A also.

Both board are in sync and a conversation can be had by the members of A & B you don't need to be a member of both boards.

I hope you understand the above, I understand this might not be possible because of access rights etc but I'm no coder so I've been trying to think of a way around that too and here it is;

You use another site, a central point which the admins of the two other site join and setup the link between the two boards. Then if possible on each forum site the board being used is tagged with some code that picks up on a change, takes the text of that change and sends it to the central point. The central point works out where it should go and logs into that forum and places the message.

Am I mad or can this be done?

TIA

The answer to both questions is yes!


Moderation (depending how extensively you moderate) may become an issue obviously as deleted or moved topics/threads may have to be synced accordingly.

Just off the top of my head, this is possible with the RSS Feed to Post mod available here...

basically, you would RSS->Post a particular thread from Board A on Site A ( which automatically populates  or posts to a thread on Board A on site B)


on site A, it would do something similar as well, the feed would have to ignore auto generated posts (otherwise you would just have an echo feeding itself!)

It would accomplish this by doing the following:
When the RSS feed is translated into posts, the userID is set to.."auto"

when the RSS feed to Post program is writing to the Board A on Site B, it would not write any records where the userID is set to "auto" in that way, only copying original content.


there are other ways which would probably be more elegant and with a lot more work - but this could be implemented in 2hours or less

[Dr MoYaJa]

why having yo different forums with the same members and the same topics and objectives ?
use just one

[kickoff3pm]

why having yo different forums with the same members and the same topics and objectives ?
use just one

It's for fan sites.

If you are a fan of a team A you would be a member of team A forum only. But when team A plays team B you might want to talk to team B fans. To do that you need to become a member of team B forum.

If each forum had one thread which synced any members of both A & B can post away no problem.

You might not understand this but I know the would be a big demand for this feature.

[spottedhog]

I will throw this out there.....  I am assuming you are wanting something similar to Rivals, etc.   am also going to assume you will use 1 install of SMF.

Using the SMF theme layer system, you could have an initial start page with links to the various fan bases.  Then each fan base could have their own separate theme.  Here is some code to start on that:

Code Select Expand

<?php

$ssi_gzip = true;  //true--means gzip is turned on.
$ssi_ban = true;  //true--means a banned forum user will be banned also in the SSI page.
//$ssi_theme = 2;  //uses the theme [images, buttons, colors] with ID=2, which usually is classic theme.  Specifiy theme ID here.
//Leave as is to use the default theme or the member's theme.
ob_start();  //is needed not to get errors.

require('./path/to/SSI.php'); //replace path/to  with actual path.

$context['page_title'] = 'test page'; //needs to go above template_main_above(); to display Page Title

template_main_above();

//Page content goes here


template_main_below();

?>

Then each fan base page could use a separate, color coordinated theme.  Using the code above, you could put ad banners in the header.php file to generate some revenue.

Next you may want to make the Categories be each team.

Just quickly thinking here....  you could make custom ssi_recentTopics(); for each fan page, etc.  For continuity, maybe have one universal category for things like Site News, Events Calendar, and Site Support.  Events Calendar could be used for game schedules, and you could pull out those events posts for each fan page.

What I cannot initially figure out is how to make a page that pulls out just the Team Category Board, while not displaying all the Team Categories.  If you or someone else could figure out this part, then heck, it is done!

hmmmmm....  you could create custom themes using the default theme and modifying the CSS, then use team graphics for the logo file for the team-specific theme.

Another thing might be to have at signup, the choices for Teams, which could be Membergroups.  Maybe even have premium memberships.

sorry..... just got to dreaming.... lol

Do you have partners in this idea???

[kickoff3pm]

Thanks for the input your missing the idea slighty. I don't want to set up a multi site like rivals but I do want to give sets of "rivals" the chance to talk.

The are already existing sites that use all sorts of software. I'm thinking of either a plugin that will join a thread on one site to another thread on a seperate site. Allows the members of both site post messages and those message show on both sites. In effect both site get merged but only for that thread.

Or, perhaps even better would be a individual portal, where forum owners can select to share a thread with other forum owners.

I understand it would be more difficult if all the sites were not Simple Machines based but not impossible if you use a portal.

I could go into more details via email I suspect, and yes i would like to take this further as I think the would be a great demand. If you can imagine each site might have 2000 users. Bring them together doubles their user base and just for this sport the are more then 100 sites in the uk. I can see each site joining up ten sites each as an average. I can host, design simple stuff, do images and search engine stuff but I can't code so looking for someone to take that side on. The is an audiance of over 20 million sitting there. Anyone interested ?

[ryansdistrict]

that i almost what i need too
if any one have an active form and would like to merge with http://boards.ryansdistrict.com plz pm me