Hi community friends!

I was searching for a way to make custom fields in a thread. Years ago, I used MyBB and they have a nice plugin called "Xthreads". With Xthreads I could totally change the way a forum display looked. (See url below for examples)

http://mybbhacks.zingaburga.com/showthread.php?tid=559

Is there a way to accomplish the same with IPS? I know that IPS utilizes databases - and I think this is something I can do with databases but I'm not 100% sure. As far as I understand, databases are separate to the forums and in the Xthread case - it was part of the forums just heavily customized.

Take a look in this resource by @HeadStand:

 

@Adriano Faria,

Thanks for the fast response. I saw this plugin but I wasn't sure if it can accomplish what I'm looking for. My understanding is this can just add custom fields to any part of the suite - not customize the actual forum thread display look.

You better ask on its support topic but I see in the description:

By default, you can add

- Custom fields when creating topics

What you mean by “customize display look”?

7 minutes ago, Adriano Faria said:

What you mean by “customize display look”?

Correct. And be able to add custom fields to that display.

So I could create a "Support" forum but have the display look totally different than a normal thread look and use custom fields with it. Hope that makes sense.

So with MyBB Xthread - you could take a standard forum and it's input and turn it into something like this:

In this example - it's a "Review Thread"

Input would look like this when you hit "New Thread"

 

Display would look like this

Ah, those are two different things. One, which is add custom fields, the resource I linked you to does. The other is customize the topic view template. Guess  I misunderstood. 

Anyway, the hardest thing the resource does. Then you can find someone to customize the template here: https://invisioncommunity.com/forums/forum/506-customization-requests/

Just now, Adriano Faria said:

Ah, those are two different things. One, which is add custom fields, the resource I linked you to does. The other is customize the topic view template. Guess  I misunderstood. 

Anyway, the hardest thing the resource does. Then you can find someone to customize the template here: https://invisioncommunity.com/forums/forum/506-customization-requests/

Right. I guess my question is can the topic template be customized on a "per forum" basis. I wouldn't want every forum topic view to look like that just one forum.

3 minutes ago, joshuaj said:

I guess my question is can the topic template be customized on a "per forum" basis.

Sure. 

Actually, the topic template application allows you to customize the display of the custom fields. You can make them look any way you want.

48 minutes ago, HeadStand said:

Actually, the topic template application allows you to customize the display of the custom fields. You can make them look any way you want.

Do you mean Template System? 

On 12/23/2018 at 5:47 PM, kmk said:

Do you mean Template System? 

Sorry, yes. Topic Template was the old name for it. :) 

37 minutes ago, HeadStand said:

Sorry, yes. Topic Template was the old name for it. 🙂

Can you provide some screenshots that show the differents results?

On 12/23/2018 at 3:56 PM, HeadStand said:

Actually, the topic template application allows you to customize the display of the custom fields. You can make them look any way you want.

Does this allow a "per forum" customisation? Example : 

i want Forum A to look like a review system 

i want Forum B to look like standard forum

6 hours ago, joshuaj said:

Does this allow a "per forum" customisation? Example : 

i want Forum A to look like a review system 

i want Forum B to look like standard forum

Yes. You create different "sets", where each set is assigned to a different forum, and each set has its own view. 

You can have the same field in multiple sets. 

On 12/24/2018 at 6:47 PM, kmk said:

Can you provide some screenshots that show the differents results?

I don't really have a test site, so I don't have anything nice looking. Unfortunately. I'm really not a designer, so you wouldn't get anything fancy out of me even if I tried for days. :) 

9 hours ago, HeadStand said:

Yes. You create different "sets", where each set is assigned to a different forum, and each set has its own view. 

You can have the same field in multiple sets. 

Is there any documentation on how to make these sets anywhere?

14 minutes ago, joshuaj said:

Is there any documentation on how to make these sets anywhere?

Full documentation, in both Doc and PDF format, is included with the file download.

14 minutes ago, HeadStand said:

Full documentation, in both Doc and PDF format, is included with the file download.

 

Oh sorry, I think I misunderstood. I was looking for documentation on the Template System to make individual forum templates. Is that also included in the application?

17 minutes ago, joshuaj said:

 

Oh sorry, I think I misunderstood. I was looking for documentation on the Template System to make individual forum templates. Is that also included in the application?

Yes. Full documentation is included.

I have one more question

If I wanted to create my own forum style/look and I set up the fields I'd like to include in the submission, is it possible to have a blank submission in the default forum field? (hope I explained that correctly)

So basically I wouldn't want to use the default forum input text box - I'd like to have that set to "blank" and not use it in the custom template design.

 

Scratch that. I just see the answer to this on your file version changes:

Allow Empty Content - allows users to populate your template and skip the main content (e.g. create topics with empty posts)

3 minutes ago, joshuaj said:

I have one more question

If I wanted to create my own forum style/look and I set up the fields I'd like to include in the submission, is it possible to have a blank submission in the default forum field? (hope I explained that correctly)

So basically I wouldn't want to use the default forum input text box - I'd like to have that set to "blank" and not use it in the custom template design.

You mean the post content? The app allows you to make that field optional. I can't remove it completely, for a variety of reasons. But it can be left blank.

1 minute ago, HeadStand said:

You mean the post content? The app allows you to make that field optional. I can't remove it completely, for a variety of reasons. But it can be left blank. 

That's what I meant. I saw it in your file change notes. It can be left blank and I am guessing when you make the custom template - you can just now show that in the template. I also took a look at some of the users websites in your support thread and this seems to be the exact thing I'm looking for to customize my forums individually like I did with mybb Xthreads.

Thanks for your attention and replies. I really appreciate it.