The following documentation is about the Discuss This! module.
The concept of the Discuss This! module is simple:
Let users comment your pages but force them to do so in your Forum.
The module let you add a link at the bottom of your pages, by default called Discuss This!. When clicking that link, it creates a form where one can enter a comment. When that comment is saved, it generates a forum post with the comment attached. That post is then attached to the original page. A page with a post shows you a different link, Participate in this discussion, which let people know that comments have already been posted. It is also possible to display comments under the discussed node.
The following pages explain how one can setup Discuss This! to use all the available features.
The Discuss This! module enables you to remove comments from a page, but still let people post comments about it. The page teaser will be used in a forum post and the valuable user comment attached to that forum.
The figure on the right1 shows you the expected process:
The module works and is secure, however, there are problems difficult to circumvent. The following lists them. If you can help fixing some them, you'll be more than welcome!
It is possible to reorder the node fields using the CCK module. If the Discuss This! comments do not appear exactly where you'd expect them to be, try using the the CCK module:
This trick generally works to place fields within a node. It will not work to move blocks around. If you want to place the Discuss This! comments after a block, then you have to create a block with Views or another similar technique.
The module now offers the option to display the recent comments on the node being discussed.
You may have to play with the permission to finally see the comments (i.e. comments may need to be shown to anonymous users.)
Drupal issue: Displaying recent comments and Login/Register link for Anonymous users
There is a known conflict with Comments Bonus API which is required by the AJAX Comments module.
It happens that you install a module with one or more required fields. In most cases, modules provide a set of default values that will suffice to permit Discuss This! to create new nodes automatically (it needs to do so whenever a new topic is required.)
A module known to generate that side effect is the Domain module, used to enable multiple domains and sub-domains to represent your website.
At this time I did not look closely to find a way to circumvent this issue. I think that we could have a default page shown to the administrator who can then save a page with defaults. Later, we'd reuse those defaults to create pages automatically.
At this time there is no queue mechanism for the very first comment. The module would need to save the comment in the standard comment queue. Unfortunately, there won't be a topic yet, thus saving the comment is not possible in the queue provided in Drupal Core.
There are two solutions available:
Solution 1 is a problem because it requires rewriting all the code necessary to manage such a queue.
Solution 2 has another issue: Drupal administrators may want to offer both types of commenting (i.e. comments on nodes and Discuss This!) in which case we cannot know what to do with those comments1.
By default, whenever you register an account on a Drupal website, you access multiple pages. This means you lose the ?destination=page-to-comment query information.
There are several solutions here:
Of course, having an implementation with both solutions would be perfect. Then we can let administrators choose what best fits their website. (i.e. solution 1. could be a problem in a mostly private website.)
This module is handled internally by removing the effect of the CAPTCHA on the forum post being created. Since you can add a CAPTCHA to the Discuss This! form used to enter a new comment, it does not matter that the CAPTCHA of the forum post be bypassed.
At this time, I implemented two Boost cache clearance. One is when you create the very first comment and the other is when you edit the post.
However, when a user adds a new comment, the node being discussed will not be refreshed until the expected Boost delay for that page.