Update Request -- Intelligent Forum Display/Redirect Options

[ipbconvert]

I think it'd be awesome to have the option to play around with forum orders and where they show up on the main forum page (i.e., is it the first forum at the top, or way below? as a category or a forum with small subforums?), for different member groups, given the same permissions.

In other words, say I've got a bunch of free forum registration users... well, their needs are different than members, and pre-sale questions might be their most relevant section. Of course, the members-only sections are good to show them so they're more interested in becoming a member, but before they become one, these forums serve little function. At the same time, once they do become a member, the opposite is true. Having a pre-sale questions forum at the top for someone who is a now a member is utterly nonsensical!

From my support ticket:
"Thanks man, your guys' support really is top notch. I've played with it quite a bit, and I think I've narrowed down the problem. Thanks to your suggestions, I'm most of the way there to what I'm after (the ideal, anyway), and if users click on the sub-links in the "Free Forum Registration Member Redirect" they'll now get redirected to the intended forum.

However, there is still something I'd like to do, and I don't know if it's possible, but it seems like it should be somehow: In my opinion, it'd be much better to encourage interaction when members can see the last post info before they go there.

When logged in as an Admin (I've enabled the original forum and redirect forums for Admins/Mods), these are the screens:

A


B


As you can see in A, I've made new posts in the free forums. However, there are 0 topics and 0 replies for the Free Forum Members Redirect. In B, which shows after clicking the Free Forum Registration Members Redirect, it's the same. This makes sense since they're simply links, and I want to know if it's possible to have that area with topics/posts "call" (not a programmer ) the same data that it's calling to display posts/topics under the normal non-dummy forum. Is this relatively easy to do via the Admin CP, or would it fall under "paid mod" category? Regardless, I think users would appreciate it for sure...well, I would anyway, ha.

Possible Solutions:

-You guys could have a "clone forum" feature that literally takes all data from another forum and doesn't accept posts, like a viewable shell, and only when someone clicks the link to the forum that actually contains Topics do they get redirected back the original. This expands slightly on the idea above of "calling" the same topic/post data as the original forum.

-Another way to do it would be to allow forum positioning for different member groups. If someone has a string of 10 products and 10 different member groups, getting the relevant product up top for the relevant member group would be a huge benefit.

Thoughts, or am I stuck with the "_ Views"? "



His response:
"Hello,

For the 0 topics / replies issue, unfortunately that is something that would require a 3rd-party modification or code editing. Redirect links are usually used to link to external pages or sites rather than other forums so the code doesn't exist in IP.Board to get the information. I am not aware of any existing modifications that do this so I recommend posting in the IP.Board Modifications forum first. If you don't have any luck there, check the Custom Services directory.

I like your ideas for the viewable shell, it would be handy in situations like this where you want to multiple forum links that all point to the same forum.

I recommend posting this idea in the IP.Board Feedback forum. This is regularly read by the development team so it will be considered for a future version of IP.Board.

Many thanks,"