Mirror forum comments with ALL the IPS apps

[Pseudonym]

One of the things I was happiest to see advertised in IPS4 was closer integration between the various apps. But it doesn't go far enough for me. I'd like to see more integration, particularly around comment mirroring...

Quote

With IP.Content articles and custom databases you can mirror a topic to the forums when a new article or database record is submitted. In doing so, IP.Content can also utilize that automatically-generated topic as the comment "storage" for the article or record. When a comment is submitted to the article, the comment is actually stored as a reply to the topic. Similarly, replies made directly to the topic in the forum also show up as comments for the record.

This is great, but I'd also like the same functionality applied to IPS.Calendar comments. Are there plans to extend this to other IPS apps as well?

 

I've got a couple of other suggestions around comment mirroring, too:

Duplicate content
We know search engines penalise you for having pages with duplicate content. So rather than having IPS app comments "mirrored" to a forum topic, could we simply redirect the user instead? So for instance, an IP.Content article would still be listed among all the other articles in the database, but when clicked it takes the user to the forum topic.

Mirrored topics should include the appropriate page template
Ideally, we'd include the template from IP.Content (or IP.Calendar, or whatever) at the top of the page, and then the rest of the forum topic below. That way you don't get a "lo fi" version of either.

What do you reckon? Any chance of making this happen?

[chilihead]

I actually think if you want people to use the other apps more and to engage more, then mirroring to forums is a bad idea. This promotes the older thinking of forums being the key app, and the other apps become content pushers. With CS4 you have all apps showing in one result stream, so your users should be able to find the comments and reviews in the apps without mirroring easily. Make sure your default streams show all app results. If you mirrored, you would have two results in the stream next to each other for one content item and its comments/replies, which is not ideal. Unless you set it to Topics, which is counter-productive. The only time I used this was in v3, because the VNC listed each app separately and it was set to Forums as default. Now, I prefer when publishing an article, that article show in the stream with topics and images and blogs, and the comments are stored in the article, no mirroring. When clicked you are taken to the article (not the forum) which is the point, and you can see the entire article as it was meant to be seen with all the fields, layout, etc. I don't feel that mirroring other apps in this way is closer integration, I feel it actually works against it, from an app activity level anyway. You can also use content blocks to your advantage.

[Pseudonym]

16 hours ago, chilihead said:

If you mirrored, you would have two results in the stream next to each other for one content item and its comments/replies, which is not ideal.

17 hours ago, chilihead said:

When clicked you are taken to the article (not the forum) which is the point, and you can see the entire article as it was meant to be seen with all the fields, layout, etc.

True. And I guess this is sort of what I was referring to when I talked about duplicate content issues and including the article template at the top of the forum topic. But I admit this is certainly a "hacky" way of operating.

So maybe we need to take a step back, and look at the reasons you might want to mirror content from other apps into the forums. Then work out a "best practice" way to reach that same end goal.

For me, the three main reasons are:

Content discovery.
The benefit of the forum app is that it categorises content (by putting topics into various forums), and within each category, the content with the most recent comments is on top. That makes it really easy for people to find those recent comments. I feel they get lost when attached to an article or calendar event. (Yes, comments will show up in an activity stream, but it's not so easy to brose by category, and the busier the site, the more the individual replies get lost in the flow...)

Consistent comments template
Apps like Pages, Blogs, Calendar, etc, use a cut-down template to display comments. They don't have all the nice bells and whistles that the Forum comments do. Personally, I want my comments to look the same across each of the apps.

Fully-fledged moderator functions
I want to be able to use all the moderator functions I get in the Forums across all the other apps. If a member posts a comment in a Calendar event that should really be split into its own topic in the Forums, I want to be able to do that.

 

So what's the answer? Typing this reply, a much simpler method occurs to me. (At least, I think it's simple - the IPS developers may disagree!)

1) Create a setting that allows other app content (Calendar events, Blog posts, Page articles, etc) to also be included in the Forum topic list. This means in addition to having its own space in its own app, content can be categorised by forum, and sorted by most recent comments.

2) When clicked, this link in the Forum topic list takes the user to the content in the appropriate app - eg the particular Page article. This means you see the entire article as it's meant to be seen (not the lo-fi forum-mirrored version).

3) The full set of moderating functions are integrated and comments templates are consistent across all apps.

 

I think that could solve everything! :-)

[Pseudonym]

On 17/02/2016 at 0:52 AM, Pseudonym said:

So what's the answer? Typing this reply, a much simpler method occurs to me. (At least, I think it's simple - the IPS developers may disagree!)

1) Create a setting that allows other app content (Calendar events, Blog posts, Page articles, etc) to also be included in the Forum topic list. This means in addition to having its own space in its own app, content can be categorised by forum, and sorted by most recent comments.

2) When clicked, this link in the Forum topic list takes the user to the content in the appropriate app - eg the particular Page article. This means you see the entire article as it's meant to be seen (not the lo-fi forum-mirrored version).

3) The full set of moderating functions are integrated and comments templates are consistent across all apps.

I don't suppose anyone's thought about this any further?

It would be great to get some feedback from IPS about what they think of this suggestion. How feasible is it? Does IPS plan any development along these lines, or should I find my own developer to get it done? Obviously I don't want to brief a developer if there's something similar coming anyway.

Cheers!