Fluid View for forums with subforums

[KT Walrus]

I'm loving the new Fluid View option for the forum index page. It is proving to be a great option when I want to view newly posted/updated topics. There are times when I still want to browse with the old view of listing the forums. When I use the old view and navigate to a root category page or a forum that has subforums, I would like the option to use Fluid View from this page. That is, pages like:

https://invisionpower.com/forums/forum/307-community-led-resources/

https://invisionpower.com/forums/forum/503-customization-resources/

that have subforums (and thus are index pages themselves) should have the same user settings to enable Fluid View just on this category/forum. Perhaps, the ACP should have these settings on any category forum.

Index Page Settings:

 

Category Forum settings:

 

My suggestion is to add the "Default forum view" and "Members can choose?" options to the Forum Settings of a forum that has the type "Category". This would result in the forum page being shown in Fluid View with only the category/subforums in the sidebar topics filter.

 

[KT Walrus]

Just discovered that the current implementation does support viewing a forum in Fluid View, but if the current view is traditional or grid, navigating to a category or forum sets the view to traditional or grid and there is no way to change this to Fluid View.

I'd like to suggest that traditional/grid/fluid be an option on all individual forums/categories, settable in the ACP. The traditional view for a forum is really the fluid view without a sidebar filter widget shown. So, making this change should be rather easy. If the admin allows members to choose for a particular category/forum, then toggling between views should remember the setting associated with the category/forum.  That is, the ips4_forum_view cookie should contain 3 lists of forum ids (one list for each view type) where the view setting was explicitly chosen by the user. The forum module would check this cookie to see if the view has been overridden from the default view type assigned to the forum in the ACP. If not, it would check the "default forum view" attribute on the forum/category. If no "default forum view" attribute set for the specific forum/category, then choose the global default view.

If you implement this, you would simply add the "Default forum view" and "Members can choose?" settings on individual forums/categories with an additional "inherit global default" from the "Forum Settings" page as the default choice for "Default forum view". The second change would be changing the contents of the ips4_forum_view cookie to have the 3 lists of forum ids where the user has chosen a different forum view.

[Charles]

I think you may be misinterpreting what Fluid View is designed to be. The fact you are wanting so many options and settings for something that is designed to be simple sort of speak to that.

When we made Fluid View we were thinking of communities who did not need or want a very strict hierarchy of "categories" and "forums" but just wanted to display information. In the modern use of forums this is becoming more and more common. In fact, some new platforms only offer this approach. We have many clients who only have just one "forum" where they place all their topics.

In Fluid View, "forums" act more like tags in that they are simply helping to identify content-types. There is no structure when using Fluid View. Things like "pinned topics" become rather odd so we allow those to be shut off. Multi-levels of subforums only serve to be in the way really.

We have said before and I still think it's true that Fluid View is not for every community. If you have a complex, hierarchal structure then you may wish to stick to the traditional tabular layout that has existed for decades and keeps this concept in place. It's why we have the option to choose your mode because it does not work for every community

 

[TheWorldNewsMedia.org]

 

[AlexWebsites]

I would add the ability for guests to view multiple views and not just the default. I would also add a setting in blocks to prevent showing in certain views.

I do understand that fluid view is for single hierarchy and stuff, but it is a good way besides the activity page to see a list of topics. However, if you do have fluid view as default, search engines will not follow or see those sitemap forum category links it seems and will be redirected to a non SEO friendly url.