Can I ask for two minor tweaks to the Forum section? Both are sensible changes though I don't know how difficult they will be to achieve.
1. On the main Forum page, change the hotlink under the main heading from "Add new forum topic" to read "Add new forum" and put a password on it!
That would stop newcomers accidentally creating new and empty entries in the list of forums.
2. Once a forum has been selected the list of topics is now sorted in descending order of number of replies, which is meaningless.
In order to find the most recent replies to topics, which is the way it was before, one has to click the "Last Reply" hotlink twice since the first time it sorts the oldest up to the top.
Changing the sort order back to descending Last Reply date would be the most sensible fix.
Penny
Unfortunately
That's not how it works. When you go to create Forum Topic, you're supposed to choose an existing Forum for the new Topic, if you don't, it creates a new Forum. And there's no way to either make separate permissions for these two things nor to easily put a password on the creating of a new Forum. I may be able to do something by choosing a default Forum for the new Topic. And I have yet to find a control for changing the default order in which topics are listed except by writing a new view.
Basically, Forums in Drupal have been broken since two major upgrades ago. It's just not been a big priority to figure out what to do about it. We're one of the few large Drupal sites that even uses Drupal forums.
I have a fix in mind but it will require time and time is the most expensive thing in the universe right now.
Hugs,
Erin
= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.
Forum Topics
Yeah, I know how to create forum topics and comment to them, I just did.
The problem is that the link at the top of the list of forums creates a new forum, not a topic.
Anyone new coming to that screen is going to think, "oh, right, click on that and start writing" rather than selecting one of the forums first.
That's why we get this ever-increasing list of what seem to be weird forums with nothing in which I assume you go through occasionally and cull.
Penny
Edit: already edited! That's what comes of looking at posts via Accounts -> Track instead of going to the Forum page!