zForum 1.0 Rel 16 and Plone 2.5 Integration Guide

2008-02-29 09:53:00

Here is the Plone Integration guide that ships with the zForum product, it is located in Products/zForum/doc/plone_integration_guide.txt as a reference, I was able to follow it step by step (seasoned admins can skip certain obvious steps), and was able to have zForum in plone with little to no hassle whatsoever.. zForum in Plone =============== zForum in plone is a unique combination in a sense that zForum does not require its own "content types" since all of them are provided by the SQL/Python back-end and API, this allows zForum to be somewhat "autonomous" and in some ways not too "plone-aware". On the other hand, with just a few hooks (emulating zForum's "right nav" as one portlet or slot, or whatever name the plone devs give to the navigational regions in the UI), zForum can be talking to Plone seamlessly. This Document has been revised to support version 2.5 of Plone Here are the steps to allow a Plone site to contain a zForum instance and play nicely and adapt accordingly: zForum Set-Up; - Add the zForum instance (Must select Plone option when adding zForum in plone) Plone Set-Up: - Creating zForum's roles in plone context: + NOTE: The roles below may already exist in your plone context, if this is the case, you can safely skip this step. + From the ZMI, click on your Plone instance (Not zForum's) + Click on the "Security" tab + At the bottom of the page, you'll see a section called "User Defined Roles" along with an "Add Role" button: - Add the role zAdministrator - Add the role zAdministratorStaff - Add the role zMember - Add the role zMemberPremiere - "Enable" Plone assigning of zForum-specific roles to users (plain-vanilla plone installation) + From the Zope Management interface (ZMI) Click on the "acl_users" object + Click on the "portal_role_manager" object (Group Aware Role Manager) + Click "Add a role" link, and create the following roles: (You may leave the title and description empty) - zAdministrator - zAdministratorStaff - zMember - zMemberPremiere + The above will allow any Plone administrator to assign these roles to any user in the system. - Adding a test user (Optional) + Add a regular user as you would normally do, give the user zMember or zAdministrator additional role(s) - Edit (Customize) ploneCustom.css and add in its appropriate place: + Click portal_skins|plone_styles|ploneCustom.css + From the (read-only) ploneCustom, click the button: Customize + Locate the message "/* DELETE THIS LINE AND PUT YOUR CUSTOM STUFF HERE */" + Right After the message add the following line (Only what is between the square brackets: - [] - NOTE: if your zforum instance is named differently, you need to change the above name accordingly, e.g. if your zforum instance in plone is called "forum",you'll add ] - Enabling zForum in the tab section: + Click on portal_actions + Add new action, Give it a title (Forums), id (zforum), the URL will be something like "string:${portal_url}/zforum", permission: View and Category: "portal_tabs" - Add "here/zforum/zf_macros/macros/rightnav" to Plone's right_slots property (Again, if your zForum instance is named differently, you'll need to change its ID accordingly, e.g. "here/myforuminstance/zf_macros/macros/rightnav" if yout forum instance's ID is "myforuminstance" ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Hide/Dispay zForum right nav locally (when in the forums only) or globally (anywhere in the site (depends on Plone's policies in some cases)): ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- By Default, zForum's right navigation macro (portlet-ized) will show anywhere in the site, if you want to modify this behavior, and display the zForum's right navigation portlet *only* when inside the forum system, you need to make a small change to zforum's zf_macros page template page: - Open [zforum]/zf_macros document (page template) - Locate the line of code that reads:

Plone 2.5 Support Added in 1.0.14

2008-02-06 07:10:00

I just released an upgrade to zForum (version 1.0.14). This upgrade contains an update to the plone_integration_guide.txt included in the Product and located in the Products/zForum/doc folder. I used the same documentation to set up a DEMO, test plone site, in the same server where zForum runs, please visit: http://plone.zforum.org/ This is a "read-only" version of zForum, which uses the same SQL database as zForum's, so all you see here will be seen there as far as postings. You may not post new topics in that instance (at least not for now), but that'll give you a taste on how zForum integrates with Plone. The installation of zForun inside Plone took a mere 5 minutes. Let me know your comments and suggestions. -- sb

zForum 1.0 Rel 15 and 16 Released

2007-10-31 06:15:00

After some time in the oven 1.0 Rel 15 is ready for use (or so I think) - This update adds lots of new functionality to the forums, such as categories and forums arbitrary ordering, skin use (4 skins provided), abiliy to add/edit any skin, no more "corner images", zforum displays the rounded images using good ol' CSS (which allows for skin customization) and several other goodies. As for bugfixes, well, the ">" and the "<" are now "properly" rendered (for use when pasting those nasty tracebacks in a topic), removal of IP showing fo the user, "hot" topics are now flagged with a "red" envelope icon, more security added and countless small changes aimed to performance enhancements. Upgrading: If you are updating zForum from version 1.0.8 to this version (1.0 rel 15) you need to run two SQL patches, the 1.0.9 patch and the 1.0.15 patch. If you are upgrading from 1.0.9 through 1.0.14 to this version (1.0 rel 15) you need to run the 1.0.15 SQL patch only. For those installing zForum for the first time, the standard schema_mysql.sql or schema_postgres.sql already contains all the patches. Changelog for this version: Version 1.0.15 -------------- - Released TBD - Forums and Categories display can be sorted arbitrarily, controlled via administrative section - Skin Management implemented, Forum administrators can enable system wide skins and optionally give registered users the ability to change their own skins - Administrators can now allow users to either add or only reply (or both) to any forum in the system, this is useful, for instance, if you want to use the message boards as a blog system, where only admins can add topics (the owner) and users (either anonymous or not) can respond to them only. - "Hot Topics" finally works, Administrator controls the number of "hits" that the topic must have in order to visually mark the topic as a "Hot Topic" in the "view_forum" page - Search back to operational status - "Quick Jump" bug fix, drop-down only shows the list of forums which the user is allowed to add/edit topics or view access only (read-only). - Fixed ValueError condition on "fixTableBreaks()" where the error could be triggered by an esoteric condition. - Experimental change to zf_parse (the one module in charge of the no-less-than-important task of preventing html injections in the posts, to allow html code to be processed but not rendered (before all the html code passed was being silently dropped, but this caused some problems when the users were posting, say pieces of code)) - IP address on a topic is now available only to administrators - Update SQL schema: schema_mysql_patch_1.0.15.sql and schema_postgres_patch_1.0.15.sql Feedback is, as always, appreciated. Release 16 Update: Release 16 came out just two days after release 15, it is mainly a minor revision, and its main change was to remove the cookie dependency of zForum to handle the skins, all skin information is now stored in the zope's SESSION object, much cleaner if you ask me, and more "web browser friendly" (hear that? Opera and Safari), where Cookie changes are not too well handled by these browsers, a minor speed enhancement in a form of a SQL index added to one of the tables has also been added to the patch file. Please post your questions in the forum if you have any, regards, -- sb

ETA for Release 1.1 - Was: ETA for 1.0 Release 17?

2007-08-01 11:57:00

Is there an ETA for Release 17, (and will it have working search and some/all of the REALLY nice UI stuff in zTracker?). Does it make sense to consider bolting PloneBoard on to zForum's db backend, or will development on zForum continue?

zForum Installation Guide (covers versions through 1.0.16)

2007-06-30 16:34:00

This document will try to outline a basic zope installation or upgrade of zForum in both a windows and linux-ish environment, the main topic will emphasis in the Linux environment, feel free to add to this document when windows-specific issues arise: NEW INSTALLATION Pre-Requisites - Zope (zForum has been tested on versions 2.7, 2.8 and 2.9) - MySQL or Postgres Database Systems (zForum has been tested on MySQL 4 and 5 and Postgres 7 and 8) - CookieCrumbler - mysql-python and ZMySQLDA - Python bindings for mysql and Zope Database Adaptor for MySQL if MySQL is used, OR psycopg2 and ZPsycopgDA - Python bindings for Postgres and Postgres Database Adaptor for zope id Postgres is used. Notes: CookieCrumbler *may* already be included in your system, especially if you have Plone installed Database Set-Up (MySQL installation) - Create the database that you'll use for zForum: create database zforum_db - Assign a user/pwd to the DB (many different ways): grant all privileges on zforum_db.* to zforum_db_user@localhost identified by 'zforum_db_pwd'; - Read the contents of the sql schema into te newly created database: (From Products/zForum/doc/): mysql -u zforum_db_user --password="zforum_db_pwd" zforum_db < schema_mysql.sql zForum Set-Up - Add it as any other regular zope product: From the ZMI, select zForum from the drop-down product list and fill in the desired values, make sure you add the appropriate database connection string, add zForum You should be good to go. UPGRADING Upgrading gets a little tricky when you use zForum as a standalone product and rely on zForum's own acl_users and/or mailhosts. Upgrading zForum in the FileSystem: Just remove (back-up) the Products/zForum directory, and uncompress the new zope version into the same location, restart zope. Now the "hard" part. There could be "SQL Patches" that would need to be applied, usually it is as easy as apply the SQL patch for the version of zForum you are upgrading to, however, there *might* be other patches to apply as well, please post in this forum if you are upgrading from/to using specific zForum versions. Upgrading zForum in the Zope Mangement Interface: - Make a copy of the site and leave it aside - Add the new zForum instance from the product drop-down If you have your users located in the zForum acl_users object, I recommend you remove "acl_users", "MailHost" from the NEWLY created zForum instance and COPY/PASTE them from the copy of zForum you just made From that point, you should have an operational upgraded zForum. Let's use this thread to specify all those pesky unique combinations or special cases to complete this post. -- sb

Plone Integration Guide (txt) (Plone 2.5 / zForum 1.0.14)

2007-05-31 01:03:00

Here is the Plone integration guide (Products/zForum/doc/plone_integration_guide.txt), please note that this posting is just a reference as this document can change in future versions, but it'll give a set of "gudeliness" for the integration Plone/zForum) zForum in Plone =============== zForum in plone is a unique combination in a sense that zForum does not require its own "content types" since all of them are provided by the SQL/Python back-end and API, this allows zForum to be somewhat "autonomous" and in some ways not too "plone-aware". On the other hand, with just a few hooks (emulating zForum's "right nav" as one portlet or slot, or whatever name the plone devs give to the navigational regions in the UI), zForum can be talking to Plone seamlessly. This Document has been revised to support version 2.5 of Plone Here are the steps to allow a Plone site to contain a zForum instance and play nicely and adapt accordingly: zForum Set-Up; - Add the zForum instance (Must select Plone option when adding zForum in plone) Plone Set-Up: - Creating zForum's roles in plone context: + NOTE: The roles below may already exist in your plone context, if this is the case, you can safely skip this step. + From the ZMI, click on your Plone instance (Not zForum's) + Click on the "Security" tab + At the bottom of the page, you'll see a section called "User Defined Roles" along with an "Add Role" button: - Add the role zAdministrator - Add the role zAdministratorStaff - Add the role zMember - Add the role zMemberPremiere - "Enable" Plone assigning of zForum-specific roles to users (plain-vanilla plone installation) + From the Zope Management interface (ZMI) Click on the "acl_users" object + Click on the "portal_role_manager" object (Group Aware Role Manager) + Click "Add a role" link, and create the following roles: (You may leave the title and description empty) - zAdministrator - zAdministratorStaff - zMember - zMemberPremiere + The above will allow any Plone administrator to assign these roles to any user in the system. - Adding a test user (Optional) + Add a regular user as you would normally do, give the user zMember or zAdministrator additional role(s) - Edit (Customize) ploneCustom.css and add in its appropriate place: + Click portal_skins|plone_styles|ploneCustom.css + From the (read-only) ploneCustom, click the button: Customize + Locate the message "/* DELETE THIS LINE AND PUT YOUR CUSTOM STUFF HERE */" + Right After the message add the following line (Only what is between the square brackets: - [] - NOTE: if your zforum instance is named differently, you need to change the above name accordingly, e.g. if your zforum instance in plone is called "forum",you'll add ] - Enabling zForum in the tab section: + Click on portal_actions + Add new action, Give it a title (Forums), id (zforum), the URL will be something like "string:${portal_url}/zforum", permission: View and Category: "portal_tabs" - Add "here/zforum/zf_macros/macros/rightnav" to Plone's right_slots property (Again, if your zForum instance is named differently, you'll need to change its ID accordingly, e.g. "here/myforuminstance/zf_macros/macros/rightnav" if yout forum instance's ID is "myforuminstance" ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Hide/Dispay zForum right nav locally (when in the forums only) or globally (anywhere in the site (depends on Plone's policies in some cases)): ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- By Default, zForum's right navigation macro (portlet-ized) will show anywhere in the site, if you want to modify this behavior, and display the zForum's right navigation portlet *only* when inside the forum system, you need to make a small change to zforum's zf_macros page template page: - Open [zforum]/zf_macros document (page template) - Locate the line of code that reads: <div metal:define-macro="rightnav" - insert the following AT THE END OF THAT LINE: tal:condition="python:hasattr(here, 'zf_macros')" + The whole line of code will then become (without the BRACKETS): - [<div metal:define-macro="rightnav" tal:condition="python:hasattr(here, 'zf_macros')"] - Voila, your zForum's right nav portlet will only appear when the user is inside the forum system. External Product Dependencies: - Either ZMySQLDA (MySQL DA) or ZPsycopgDA (Postgres DA) - CookieCrumbler (Although zForum will not add it since Plone already provides it) NOTES: - zForum's plone-enabled stylesheet grabs the color and UI properties from Plone's "base_properties". -- sb

zForum Bug Tracker

2007-04-24 14:12:00

The zForum bug tracker is officially located at the zTracker website (a zope product in itself also by yours truly), you may post your bug/issue requests here for discussion, if the issue is important, I will add it to the bug tracker myself, otherwise you may request an account at the bug tracker system and I'll gladly provide one for you. zForum Bug Tracking System: http://www.ztracker.org/view_tickets?project_id=2 zTracker Account Request (optional): http://www.ztracker.org/signup_form -- sb

Skinnable zForum

2006-09-16 15:51:00

Coming up in 1.0.15, zFourm will be fully "skinnable", I'll probably ship the product with 3 or 4 different color schemes, zForum 1.0.15 will not use image elements anymore for the rounded corners, it's all take care using clever CSS and JS yet keep maintaining standards, this will basically allow zForum to change its colors seamlessly. Color information will be stored in its own table and will be fully editable from the admin interface. As for plone, zForum will continue to depend on Plone's internal color schemes. - sb

zForum 1.0.11 and 1.0.12 Released

2006-09-15 20:34:00

Another "utility" release from the 1.0.9 series, this by no means is a small update, there are several fixes and enhancements. As (almost) always, there is a SQL patch file for this version, please apply the patch SQL, this particular patch is somewhat important, since if not applied, you will prevent any new users from signing up in the forum system, if you do not know how to apply an upgrade patch pelase ask in this forum. Patches are included in the product (For 1.0.11), if you are installing zForum "from scratch" (without updating) just run the schema_mysql.sql or schema_postgres.sql scripts, all patches are included in there, if you however, are upgrading from 1.0.10 to 1.0.11 here are the changes: Version 1.0.11 -------------- - Released Aug 31, 2006 - Patch files for postgres and mysql to increase the length of the columns that contain the available roles to access categories and forums - Increased text area for a topic edition - Fixed zope error when submitting the the signup form with all fields empty. - Fixed zope error when submitting the "forgot password" form with all fields empty - Administrators can now restrict users from self-register in the system (default: allow self-registration) - White space now works for code/code pseudo-code Version 1.0.12 -------------- - Released Sep 1, 2006 - Topic subscription now "sticks" when editing a topic - Previously banned Users/IPs cannot add new topics or responses - Forums that allow Anonymous Users portings (add/respond) can now ban their IP address and will be denied the addition or response to topics (mostly for smappers that use open proxies) - Client IP gathering has centralized into its own method, in addition, IPs gathered should not contain a "string" id IPs anymore Postgres: -- zForum 1.0.11 Patch -- Increase the size for several key columns for role handling BEGIN; alter table zf_forum_category add column new_cat_visible_to varchar(255); update zf_forum_category set new_cat_visible_to=cat_visible_to; alter table zf_forum_category rename cat_visible_to to old_cat_visible_to; alter table zf_forum_category rename new_cat_visible_to to cat_visible_to; alter table zf_forum_category drop column old_cat_visible_to; alter table zf_forum add column new_add_postings_access_roles varchar(255); update zf_forum set new_add_postings_access_roles=add_postings_access_roles; alter table zf_forum rename add_postings_access_roles to old_add_postings_access_roles; alter table zf_forum rename new_add_postings_access_roles to add_postings_access_roles; alter table zf_forum drop column old_add_postings_access_roles; alter table zf_forum add column new_admin_min_access_roles varchar(255); update zf_forum set new_admin_min_access_roles=admin_min_access_roles; alter table zf_forum rename admin_min_access_roles to old_admin_min_access_roles; alter table zf_forum rename new_admin_min_access_roles to admin_min_access_roles; alter table zf_forum drop column old_admin_min_access_roles; COMMIT; -- Allow Forum Administrators disabling the self-registration insert into zf_system_properties (property_name, property_desc, property_value) values ('zfsp_allow_registration', 'Allows User self-registration. Any value will allow a member to self-register in the forum system, an empty value disables this option.', 'Yes'); MySQL (4/5): -- zForum 1.0.11 Patch -- Incerease the size for several key columns for role handling alter table zf_forum_category change column cat_visible_to cat_visible_to varchar(255); alter table zf_forum change column add_postings_access_roles add_postings_access_roles varchar(255); alter table zf_forum change column admin_min_access_roles admin_min_access_roles varchar(255); -- Allow Forum Administrators disabling the self-registration insert into zf_system_properties (property_name, property_desc, property_value) values ('zfsp_allow_registration', 'Allows User self-registration. Any value will allow a member to self-register in the forum system, an empty value disables this option.', 'Yes'); Please Note that upgrading from 1.0.11 to 1.0.12 does not require a SQL patch file, for more informaiton please read the Products/doc/changes.txt file to know what versions require a SQL patch. Regards, -- sb

Dutch Language Added

2006-08-30 16:08:00

Dutch language file has been officially implemented and will appear in zForum 1.0.11 and on. Thanks to Herman Boswijk for this important contribution. -- sb

Enable zForum (1.0.8) in Plone (2.1.2)

2006-07-04 10:33:00

Here is an excerpt of the included documentation to aid in the integration of plone, please read careful and post your questions or comments in this thread: zForum in plone is a unique combination in a sense that zForum does not require its own "content types" since all of them are provided by the SQL/Python back-end and API, this allows zForum to be somewhat "autonomous" and in some ways not too "plone-aware". On the other hand, with just a few hooks (emulating zForum's "right nav" as one portlet or slot, or whatever name the plone devs give to the navigational regions in the UI), zForum can be talking to Plone seamlessly. Here are the steps to allow a Plone site to contain a zForum instance and play nicely and adapt accordingly: zForum Set-Up: - Add the zForum instance (Must select Plone option when adding zForum in plone) Plone Set-Up: - Edit (Customize) ploneCustom.css and add <dtml-var "zforum.zUI['zforum_plone_stylesheet.css'](_.None, _)"> in its appropriate place: + Click portal_skins|plone_styles|ploneCustom.css + From the (read-only) ploneCustom, click the button: Customize + Locate the message "/* DELETE THIS LINE AND PUT YOUR CUSTOM STUFF HERE */" + Right After the message add the following line (Only what is between the square brackets: * [<dtml-var "zforum.zUI['zforum_plone_stylesheet.css'](_.None, _)">] - Enabling zForum in the tab section: + Click on portal_actions + Add new action, Give it a title, id (zforum), the URL will be something like "string:${portal_url}/zforum", permission: View and Category: "portal_tabs" - Add "here/zforum/zf_macros/macros/rightnav" to Plone's right_slots property External Product Dependencies: - Either ZMySQLDA (MySQL DA) or ZPsycopgDA (Postgres DA) - CookieCrumbler (Although zForum will not add it since Plone already provides it) NOTES: - zForum's plone-enabled stylesheet grabs the color and UI properties from Plone's "base_properties". -- sb

Upgrading zForum from Previous Versions

2006-06-14 12:48:00

With Every zForum version out, there is a chance that the internal structure of the SQL database changes, usually to allow for optimization or additions to the current functionality. For that, I've included a "patching" system that has to be applied in order for zForum to function properly. The Patching system started on zForum 1.0.5 The name of the patch file (located in $INSTANCE_HOME/Products/zForum/doc/*) tells what patch to run in regards of the zForun version. Example: If you Have zForum 1.0.4 (or any version before) and want to update to zForum 1.0.5, you should run the appropriate file (Examples for MySQL Db system: mysql -u dbuser -p dbname < schema_mysql_patch_1.0.5.sql If you have stock zForum 1.0.5 and want to update to zForum 1.0.6, you'll need to run: mysql -u dbuser -p dbname < schema_mysql_patch_1.0.5_to_1.0.6.sql Finally, if you have zForum 1.0.4 and want to update all the way to 1.0.6, you will have to run each patch individually: mysql -u dbuser -p dbname < schema_mysql_patch_1.0.5.sql mysql -u dbuser -p dbname < schema_mysql_patch_1.0.5_to_1.0.6.sql Until an incremental method is implemented this is the *right* way to update zForum. --sb

zForum Topics - System Topics

Welcome to zForum 1.1