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(Using Vanilla to realize comment-feature like seen on e.g. youtube ! # 1)

Greetings
eugen

Can anyone explain to me what the difference would be between some sort of additional function and the simple concept of posting a video in the first post and letting people comment on it in the rest of them?

hi miquel & Minispeeper:

Yes ... thats right.
As right now im having the video site and the vanilla forum ... and i wanna give my members the chance to comment the videos right on the video pages, like you see on youtube eg.

of course they would have to create an vanilla account first to post ... i just want to embedd a comment feature right on the video pages.
I got a special vanilla category for video comments and i would kike to use this category for it.

Example:
A member is watching a video and like to comment it.
Right now he would go first to the forum, then sign up and then comment on the vanilla forum website.

It would be much better and easier if he had the possibility to ligin and comment the video right on the videosite. using include or ssi or whatever, sont know.
And if he comments a video as first user the thread would automatically been created on the vanilla category i mentioned above.

Sorry , my english isnt the best but i hope you understand what i mean.

Eugen

Hi wanderer ...

nice idea but no acceptable because all users would go then first to the forum :(
Also i had to manually add hundrts of videos as threads ^^

It should be kinda automatically.

Im not a coder, so this is just an dumb exmaple:

On the video page should be a code like eg:
<php
include /whatever/vanilla/addons/commentfeature/check.php?videoID=(variable)
?>

If then a user visits the videopage something should check first if a thread in vanilla is already existing with this "video id".

If YES ... he should embedd the exisiting thread and comments and give the option to add additional comments after login in.
if NO ... it should tell someting like "no comments till yet - ADD COMMENT NOW" and if someone adds one ... he should create the thread with the videoID as topic in vanilla.

hope you understand what i mean ... exactly like youtube does it for example ...

So in my case the user got the option to:
1. visiti the vnailla board, going to the video comment category and browse there
AND/OR
2. visiting the video page and read/write comments to the actual video he is watching.

vanoob:

yes i know, sorry for the double thread thing :(

But still .. its not the question what is possible and what others would do or like ...

i am having a big EXISTING video site where i want to include vanilla (which actual exists as normal "board" as usual) to let my users comment the videos right on the video pages. There is NO querstion or possibilty to change this whole workflow or to include all the videos into vanilla.

And i know that the addons are a huge pot, but without any kind of solution for my idea ... i seen all addons available yet.

Greetings

i think i understand your needs, but i'm afraid what you need isn't a so easy thing to do

but as fysicsluvr said in the other thread (if i remember well, excuse me if not) it seems kindda similar to what we have here with the addons site.

No, I was just suggesting that as a place to start, and an example of what you might want.

if i were you i'd embed the relevant vanilla thread in an iframe... so something like this in your video cms:

<iframe src="http://example.com/forum/<?php print $thread_id; ?>"></iframe>

you could store the equivalent thread ids in your cms, or you could do a lookup against the vanilla discussion titles or something. you could even populate the iframe from your cms if the vanilla discussion doesn't exist.

i'd recommend adding a vanilla discussion for each video as it is added to your cms though. so there's always a discussion for every video. you can write a script to create discussions for your existing videos fairly easily...

if you go that route, you should prob'ly use jQmedia to embed the video, maybe some additional info, in the first post of the relevant discussion, so that the comments will make sense from the context of the forum as well as from the video cms page.

Hi all .. and thx for your help and ideas.

@bob:
Thats an idea, but i am not that good in doing such things so i couldnt do it on my own :(
Anyway ... Creating a thread for every single video would result in hundreds of threads and just maybe x % used by users to comment the videos. so mass garbage and db entries :(
The addon should check if a thread with the video id is already exist, if not he should create one after the firs user decides to comment the video.

@squirrel:
Janine is close to what im searching for as i seen so far ... but it has to be more flexible so we could add it to any webpage or cms available.


I try to explain the work of the "new addon" as my english allows me to :)

1. There is my normal vanilla installation, available and public.
2. I have a special category - lets call it "Video Discussions"
3. Right now a user needs to 1. go to the vanilla 2. go to this category 3. check if a thread with the video id already exists 4. if not create new one 5. send comment
4. the addon should be implemented through a code like (NOOB EXAMPLE!) = include /vanilla/extensions/nameofaddon/whatever.php?ID=VIDEO-042-4333
(the ID is available on every page on my video cms)
5. the script should then check if in category "Video Discussions" is an thread exisiting with ID = VIDEO-042-4333 (e.g.)
6. if yes, he should include the comments so they show up on the video smc site where the user can watch the video.
7. if not, he should say and link something like "NO COMMENTS YET - Add your comment now!" - if the users click the link he should be able to add a comment (if he is loged in) and the script should then create the thread with the relevant ID.

Sorry, can´t explain it that good in english ... but like i said already it should be nearly the same like everyone can see on many other sites like e.g. youtube`s comment feature. ... just based on vanilla.

It would be soooooooo great and nice if some addon programmer could tell me if such an addon would be possible - i think more people then me would need something like this.

Greetings
eugen

@eugen, this is almost precisely how Janine works, with a few exceptions:

1-5. Works this way but the behind-the-scenes mechanics are different. Janine makes a new table in Vanilla that matches IDs with "associated" discussions, that's all. The associated discussions can be forced into one particular category (or the category can be made to match the category of the blog post) but that's just user sugar that makes no difference to Janine. From a user's point of view the effect is the same as what you describe.
6. I don't quite understand what you want here. Do you mean that the Vanilla extension should modify the Video CMS database to publish comments there? That sounds tricky. Or would the Video CMS call on the Vanilla extension to display comments in the format of the Video CMS? That sounds easier and safer, though it might work better as a separate extension. Or could probably even get away with a call to comments.php inside an <iframe> tag and do all the reformatting you want in CSS, though this would leave a lot of HTML cruft in your pages.
7. This is Janine's biggest failing right now. What you describe is the correct way, what Janine should do. Instead, Janine automatically creates the new discussion with a starter comment when anyone hits the link you described in 5. This is bad because it means spidering web bots can create discussions in your forum just by following the links.

The other big problem with Janine is that it includes all of the CMS interface code in the extension. That's bad because adding support for any new CMS (or fixing bugs in an existing interface class) requires a new package for all Janine users to download. This flaw combined with the above flaw is leading me to write an entirely new extension that will replace Janine, called Affinity.

But Affinity is a multiple-step process. The first step was Set List (because I hate writing form controls). The next step is some kind of CMS connector class.

But yeah, it's the same philosophy behind Janine, namely, "I already have a forum, why do I need a comments module on my CMS?"

So everyone who is using vanilla could exactly realize something like we all see daily on youtube.

But that's the thing... you're the first person I've ever seen ask for this feature. I just don't think there are many people eager to run their own video CMS. The bandwidth costs alone would strike dead most mortal men.

The trick here is to break up your system into smaller features, each of which could have other practical uses. For example:

1. An extension to automatically create a Vanilla discussion that is linked to a post on a CMS. I know for a fact that several Vanilla/Wordpress users want this and at least one guy asked me to adapt it to MediaWiki as well.


2. A theme that displays a bare-minimum version of comments.php. Useful for anyone who wants to embed a Vanilla discussion into another web page.


3. An extension that lets you pick from any installed theme on the fly when displaying a Vanilla page. Closely related to #2 but sounds like it might have a bunch of other cool, non-obvious uses.

Put these together and you have a generic system for using Vanilla as an all-purpose comment system for just about any kind of CMS. It solves your problem, and it grabs the interest of a much wider set of Vanilla users.

Someone else please correct me if I'm wrong. I may have tunnel vision from working on Janine/Affinity.