Is this possible to do with Pages comments & Topic posts?

[Maxxius]

I think this will not be easy to grasp what I'm trying to find out but please bear with me.

Since 3.4 days I had an idea about sort of integrating Comments written under Pages' articles and certain Topics within the forum. I never got to it however since 4.4 came out I need to revisit this and find out if its even possible. So...

For example. I have a gaming community and each game has its discussion topic. As more and more news popup regarding an upcoming game - they are simply posted into the same topic by various members and it all just goes into this one topic in the forum. As an admin I'm not entirely happy about that because no exposure of it would happens on Pages if I wrote a short article about something related to that game and if the article would be commented - these comments would only stay visible under the article and never in the game topic.

So my idea is create a game topic, copy its ID. Meanwhile people add posts in the topic. Then a Pages' news article is posted and while posting the article there would be a field where I could enter the topic ID or a autocomplete thing where I could start typing the topic name and once a connection is established between an article and a certain topic this happens:

- from the moment article is posted - it's contents are automatically also copied to the topic as a reply (don't know if its good SEO-wise though)

- when comments are posted under the article - they are also added to the topic as a reply

- if anyone writes replies within the topic after the article was published - they are then copied (or just mirrored somehow) as article comments

- topic replies written prior to article publishing date would not be shown in comments.

Goal being the chronological and continuous discussion happening in the comments and in the topic. It's like storing comments in a topic not in a article topic database table if I express myself right.

After a set time like 2 weeks after the article was published newer replies from the topic are no longer mirrored as article comments and a message appears, that more replies could have been made and please click this topic link for further info. Though I'm not entirely sure how to handle this final part.

I think that would serve as a good way to highlight some of the news on a pages portal to generate clicks, grab attention of new users and create a feeling that the pages portal is alive while keeping everything in sync and being whole when it comes to forum-only reading old members.

Do I make any sense here? Do you see any good in this? Would love to hear you feedback of the idea in general.

And most importantly IS THIS POSSIBLE WITH IPS 4.4?

Thanks 🙂

[opentype]

26 minutes ago, Maxxius said:

And most importantly IS THIS POSSIBLE WITH IPS 4.4?

Yes. You can set a Pages database to create a forum topic with synced comments, so they appear both under the article and as topic replies. 
 

[Maxxius]

Wow! OMG! this is amazing!!! Thanks for the great news @opentype

That's great BUT what if most of the topics for games already exist is there a way to link existing topics to new articles being written?

[opentype]

There is no direct feature for that, no. But there might be ways around it, like manually adjusting the IDs in the database or moving the posts to the linked topic that Pages creates. You might need to try what works for you. 

[Maxxius]

I guess so.. I though about manual phpMyAdmin db editing but that would be too much time-consuming.

A custom plugin should be able to handle this somehow. Are you perhaps capable of coding such a plugin?

[Nathan Explosion]

Give this a test, but here's a theory....

1) topic already exists.

2) create pages article, this creates a new topic

3) merge the old topic in to the new topic (not new into old)

where do the new pages comments now end up when they are made?

[Maxxius]

that can be a lot of work in my case but at least I can try to test it at the demo. will report back later.

[Nathan Explosion]

27 minutes ago, Maxxius said:

that can be a lot of work in my case but at least I can try to test it at the demo. will report back later.

If it works then it's a much better option than hacking about with the database.

[Maxxius]

but if so then doesn't seo take a hit in some way?

[opentype]

Probably not. But if you really worry about it, you would have to hide the comments from guests with a template edit in the article template. 

[Daniel F]

Merging topics into Pages "comment topics" isn't supported and I wouldn't advise trying to accomplish this with a hook.
Merging topics into Page Sync Topics was disabled because it caused too many issues. 

[Maxxius]

1 hour ago, Daniel F said:

Merging topics into Pages "comment topics" isn't supported and I wouldn't advise trying to accomplish this with a hook.
Merging topics into Page Sync Topics was disabled because it caused too many issues. 

can you elaborate more? what issues? are there truly no possible workarounds around it? dang..

@Matt @bfarber

[Maxxius]

I tried on demo to move posts into a pages-generated article and it says You do not have permission to moderate that topic. Though I'm the admin. But moving posts from pages-generated topic to ordinary topics does work.

[Maxxius]

I'm revising this question. So todays question would be since there is a big difference between normal topics and comments-topics then IS IT POSSIBLE to make two or more pages' articles put the comments into the same comment-topic?

Let me give you an example. I run a gaming community where game topics are most popular. I create the initial game topic by making a news article which in turn creates a comment-topic and people from the forum discuss the game there. then lets imagine a new piece of news comes around and I decide to post it as article BUT I do not want a separate topic - I want to use the game game comment-topic I made earlier. Can such a mod be done and be safe to use @Daniel F

[Ryan Ashbrook]

No, the topic associated with the record must be a unique relationship. Otherwise, the system will become quite confused when things like moderation are performed on the topic, because it won't know which one it's really associated with, and the system isn't designed to account for multiple associations.

In short, I wouldn't recommend it.

[Maxxius]

Darn.. Well this is a nasty hit for my plans.

Okay perhaps there can be another way. Back to the drawing board not utilizing the built-in system of Pages-comment-topics.

Can this be done as I described below?

Idea is create a game topic, copy its ID. Meanwhile people add posts in that topic. Then a Pages' news article is posted and while posting the article there would be a field where I could enter the topic ID or a autocomplete topic title thing where I could start typing the topic name and once a connection is established between an article and a certain topic this happens:

- from the moment article is posted - it's contents are automatically also copied to the topic as a reply (don't know if its good SEO-wise though)

- when comments are posted under the article - they are also added to the topic as a reply

- if anyone writes replies within the topic after the article was published - they are then copied (or just mirrored somehow) as article comments

- topic replies written prior to article publishing date would not be shown in comments. 

It's for a lack of a better description like <iframing> the whole topic with its ability to post under an article just with ability not to show previously posted content from that topic. Only show the content from topic which was posted since the time article was posted.

@Ryan Ashbrook