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Topic: New to ElkArte, have some questions... (Read 3335 times) previous topic - next topic
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New to ElkArte, have some questions...

Hi, I'm administrator in a few forums and recently I discovered ElkArte, and like some addons to the core and the things that you have done with it. I have some experience with SMF,  I and a friend have a very specific MOD to manage Series, Chapters and News in SMF+SimplePortal, and I like to modify some MODs to get what I need, so I have some knowledge of how SMF works.

I want to ask if a feature is not in ElkArte or its addons, can I install SMF MOD in ElkArte and will it works?
Also I want to know what changes need some MOD from SMF to work properly in ElkArte? If I can setup an ElkArte forum I want to install my MOD to work in the forum.

The most important MODs that I use in SMF are:
-Default Signature
-Default Avatar (to keep it nice)
-Personal Messages to Membergroups (as admin want to send PM to a whole Member group, staff mainly)
-Spoiler Tag (modified by me to use jQuery, kind of the spoiler tag here)
-Membergroup ID with Group Name (really need to know the ID of member groups in Admin)
-SimplePortal (best portal for my needs)
-SP Articles RSS (to set up RSS feeds for News with my MOD)
-SimpleColorizer (stylish everywhere)
-Age And Location (always is good to know)

Can I install them? or have ElkArte some of this functionalities already in the core/addon?

Re: New to ElkArte, have some questions...

Reply #1 –

Quote from: Gluz – I want to ask if a feature is not in ElkArte or its addons, can I install SMF MOD in ElkArte and will it works?
SMF mods will not directly work with ElkArte, they need to be ported over to ElkArte's structure.  Porting MODS from SMF to ElkArte can be, and has been done many times, I've done a bunch of them.

How much work that is depends on what the modification is doing.  If it mostly using hooks then its very easy.  If it does a series of source edits, its going to be more work as we did a fair amount of restructure in the files to better organize / modularize things.  There are a lot more hooks in place now, so source edits are rarely needed these days.

Quote from: Gluz – Also I want to know what changes need some MOD from SMF to work properly in ElkArte? If I can setup an ElkArte forum I want to install my MOD to work in the forum.

The most important MODs that I use in SMF are:
-Default Signature
-Default Avatar (to keep it nice)
-Personal Messages to Membergroups (as admin want to send PM to a whole Member group, staff mainly)
-Spoiler Tag (modified by me to use jQuery, kind of the spoiler tag here)
-Membergroup ID with Group Name (really need to know the ID of member groups in Admin)
-SimplePortal (best portal for my needs)
-SP Articles RSS (to set up RSS feeds for News with my MOD)
-SimpleColorizer (stylish everywhere)
-Age And Location (always is good to know)

Can I install them? or have ElkArte some of this functionalities already in the core/addon?
From your list,
Default Avatar is part of the core
Spoiler Tag (using jquery) is part of the core. 
Age and Location would be done with custom profile fields, which is also part of the core. 
SimplePortal has been ported over to ElkArte, go to the addon site to download that. 
Some of the other ones I'm not really familiar with so others may help with that.  If SimpleColorizer is a code color, that is also built in to the core.

Re: New to ElkArte, have some questions...

Reply #2 –

Thanks for the relpy, the only thing that I think it's important is the RSS of SimplePortal articles to cover all my needs for the forum.

Is there any guide to know how to port SMF MODs to ElkArte? Or the main changes to do from one system to the other? I want to try to port my MOD in case we use ElkArte as forum system when we start the new forum.

Re: New to ElkArte, have some questions...

Reply #3 –

hmm... I don't think there is a guide.
If you have example and/or questions, it may help in creating such a guide. ;D
One that is likely to be frequently useful is the way to recall the database object:
Code: [Select]
$db = database();
and then it can be used like this:
Code: [Select]
$request = $db->query('', SELECT something FROM {db_prefix}whatever', array());
$val  =$db->fetch_assoc($request);
$val  =$db->fetch_row($request);
$db->free_result($request);
and alike.
Bugs creator.
Features destroyer.
Template killer.

Re: New to ElkArte, have some questions...

Reply #4 –

Oh, so, there's no $smcFunc anymore? I like that, in some php scripts to do stuff in the database I use that instead of mysql_database php functions because is more easy to do things whit it.

An for our MOD, basically all that we use is $smcFunc to handle all db info, and from SMF and SimplePortal we use createBoard(), createPost() and createArticle() to create new project boards and news about that project, so, if that functions doesn't change then we only need to change $smcFunc to $db object. If that functions change, then I need to know how to use the replacements of the functions.

Re: New to ElkArte, have some questions...

Reply #5 –

All I can see for now is that you mainly need ElkArte and SimplePortal to run your forum. Minor addons can be dealt with slowly if they are not part of the core already.

Re: New to ElkArte, have some questions...

Reply #6 –

Quote from: Gluz – Oh, so, there's no $smcFunc anymore?
Yep, the part of interaction with the database has been replaced by an object that, for the moment, mostly maps the same functions, while the part dealing with strings has been replaced with the class Util with all static methods.

Quote from: Gluz – An for our MOD, basically all that we use is $smcFunc to handle all db info, and from SMF and SimplePortal we use createBoard(), createPost() and createArticle() to create new project boards and news about that project, so, if that functions doesn't change then we only need to change $smcFunc to $db object. If that functions change, then I need to know how to use the replacements of the functions.
Honestly I don't remember exactly, but I'm confident these functions should still be almost the same (at least in terms of inputs and outputs).
Bugs creator.
Features destroyer.
Template killer.

Re: New to ElkArte, have some questions...

Reply #7 –

There is a lot more in-code documentation. You should be able to browse the code with no problem. Also, a lot of work has been done to de-duplicate code. Functions/methods are in the files you'd guess them to be in. If you guessed wrong, any normal IDE should be able to find them with ease.

If you need some help, I'd recommend gist'ing your code and then people can work on it with you.