# AA Forum
[![Badge: Version]][AA-Forum on Pypi]
[![Badge: License]][AA-Forum License]
[![Badge: Supported Python Versions]][AA-Forum on Pypi]
[![Badge: Supported Django Versions]][AA-Forum on Pypi]
![Badge: pre-commit]
[![Badge: Code Style: black]][black code formatter documentation]
[![Badge: Support Discord]][Support Discord]
[![Badge: Automated Tests]][Automated Tests on GitHub]
[![Badge: Code Coverage]][AA-Forum on Codecov]
[![Badge: Contributor Covenant]][Code of Conduct]
[![Badge: Buy me a coffee]][ppfeufer on ko-fi]
Simple forum app for [Alliance Auth]
## ⚠️ Before you install this module ⚠️
This module needs quite some configuration done before working properly. You need to
modify your Apache/Nginx configuration as well as the global URL config of Alliance
Auth. So please only install if you know what you're doing/feel comfortable making
these kinds of changes. For your own sanity, and mine :-)
## Contents
- [Overview](#overview)
- [Features](#features)
- [Screenshots](#screenshots)
- [Installation](#installation)
- [Step 1 - Install the package](#step-1---install-the-package)
- [Step 2 - Configure Alliance Auth](#step-2---configure-alliance-auth)
- [local.py](#settings-in-homeallianceservermyauthmyauthsettingslocalpy)
- [urls.py](#settings-in-homeallianceservermyauthmyauthurlspy)
- [Step 3 - Configure your webserver](#step-3---configure-your-webserver)
- [Step 4 - Finalize the installation](#step-4---finalize-the-installation)
- [Step 5 - Set up permissions](#step-5---set-up-permissions)
- [Permissions](#permissions)
- [Changelog](#changelog)
- [Contributing](#contributing)
## Overview
### Features
- Simple permission system. Only 2 permissions. ("has_access" and "can_manage")
- Simple administration, no maze to click through to get where you want to go.
- Categories and boards are sortable via drag and drop in the admin view.
- Mass creation of boards with a new category.
- Boards can be restricted to 1 or more groups, bards without restrictions are
visible for everyone who has access to the forum.
- Announcement boards where only certain users can start topics.
- Child boards (1 Level), which inherit their access restrictions from their parent.
- CKEditor with image upload.
- Unread topics counter as a number on the "Forum" link in the left navigation.
- Optional notifications about new topics in a board via Discord webhooks.
- Forum profile for each user.
- Personal Messages.
- Optional Discord PM for new personal messages.<br>
This feature is disabled by default, can be enabled by each user in their forum
profile. Needs one of the following applications installed:
- [discordproxy]
- [AA-Discordbot]
### Screenshots
#### Forum Index
![Screenshot: Forum Index]
#### Topic Overview / Board Index
![Screenshot: Topic Overview / Board Index]
#### Topic View
![Screenshot: Topic View]
#### Start new Topic (ckEditor)
![Screenshot: Start new Topic]
#### Admin View
![Screenshot: Admin View]
## Installation
#### Important: Please make sure you meet all preconditions before you proceed:
- AA Forum is a plugin for Alliance Auth. If you don't have Alliance Auth running
already, please install it first before proceeding. (see the official
[AA installation guide] for details)
- AA Forum needs a couple of changes made to your Webserver and Alliance Auth
configuration. So make sure you know how to do so. The steps needed will be
described in this document, but you need to understand what will be changed.
### Step 1 - Install the package
Make sure you are in the virtual environment (venv) of your Alliance Auth
installation Then install the latest release directly from PyPi.
```shell
pip install aa-forum
```
### Step 2 - Configure Alliance Auth
#### Settings in `/home/allianceserver/myauth/myauth/settings/local.py`
This is fairly simple, configure your AA settings (`local.py`) as follows:
```python
# AA Forum
INSTALLED_APPS += [
"ckeditor",
"ckeditor_uploader",
"django_ckeditor_youtube_plugin",
"aa_forum", # https://github.com/ppfeufer/aa-forum
]
if "ckeditor" in INSTALLED_APPS:
# ckEditor
import ckeditor.configs
MEDIA_URL = "/media/"
MEDIA_ROOT = "/var/www/myauth/media/"
X_FRAME_OPTIONS = "SAMEORIGIN"
CKEDITOR_UPLOAD_PATH = "uploads/"
CKEDITOR_RESTRICT_BY_USER = True
CKEDITOR_ALLOW_NONIMAGE_FILES = False
# Editor configuration
#
# If you already have this from another app, like `aa-bulletin-board`, you don't
# need to define this again, just add it to the `CKEDITOR_CONFIGS` dict, see below
#
# You can extend and change this to your needs
# Some of the options are commented out, feel free to play around with them
ckeditor_default_config = {
"width": "100%",
"height": "45vh",
"youtube_responsive": True,
"youtube_privacy": True,
"youtube_related": False,
"youtube_width": 1920,
"youtube_height": 1080,
"extraPlugins": ",".join(
[
"uploadimage",
# "div",
"autolink",
# "autoembed",
# "embedsemantic",
"clipboard",
"elementspath",
# "codesnippet",
"youtube",
]
),
"toolbar": [
{
"name": "styles",
"items": [
"Styles",
"Format",
# "Font",
# "FontSize",
],
},
{
"name": "basicstyles",
"items": [
"Bold",
"Italic",
"Underline",
"Strike",
# "Subscript",
# "Superscript",
# "-",
# "RemoveFormat",
],
},
{
"name": "clipboard",
"items": [
# "Cut",
# "Copy",
# "Paste",
# "PasteText",
# "PasteFromWord",
# "-",
"Undo",
"Redo",
],
},
{
"name": "links",
"items": [
"Link",
"Unlink",
"Anchor",
],
},
{
"name": "insert",
"items": [
"Image",
"Youtube",
"Table",
"HorizontalRule",
"Smiley",
"SpecialChar",
# "PageBreak",
# "Iframe",
],
},
{
"name": "colors",
"items": [
"TextColor",
"BGColor",
],
},
{
"name": "document",
"items": [
# "Source",
# "-",
# "Save",
# "NewPage",
# "Preview",
# "Print",
# "-",
# "Templates",
],
},
],
}
# Add the external YouTube plugin
aa_forum__external_plugin_resources = [
(
"youtube",
"/static/ckeditor/ckeditor/plugins/youtube/",
"plugin.min.js",
)
]
# Put it all together
CKEDITOR_CONFIGS = {
"default": ckeditor.configs.DEFAULT_CONFIG,
"aa_forum": ckeditor_default_config,
}
CKEDITOR_CONFIGS["aa_forum"][
"external_plugin_resources"
] = aa_forum__external_plugin_resources
```
#### Settings in `/home/allianceserver/myauth/myauth/urls.py`
Now let's move on to editing the global URL configuration of Alliance Auth. To do so,
you need to open `/home/allianceserver/myauth/myauth/urls.py` and change the
following block right before the `handler` definitions:
```python
# URL configuration for cKeditor
from django.apps import apps
if apps.is_installed("ckeditor"):
# Django
from django.contrib.auth.decorators import login_required
from django.views.decorators.cache import never_cache
# ckEditor
from ckeditor_uploader import views as ckeditor_views
urlpatterns = [
re_path(
r"^upload/", login_required(ckeditor_views.upload), name="ckeditor_upload"
),
re_path(
r"^browse/",
never_cache(login_required(ckeditor_views.browse)),
name="ckeditor_browse",
),
] + urlpatterns
```
After this, your `urls.py` should look similar to this:
```python
from django.urls import include, re_path
from allianceauth import urls
# Alliance auth urls
urlpatterns = [
re_path(r"", include(urls)),
]
# URL configuration for cKeditor
from django.apps import apps
if apps.is_installed("ckeditor"):
# Django
from django.contrib.auth.decorators import login_required
from django.views.decorators.cache import never_cache
# ckEditor
from ckeditor_uploader import views as ckeditor_views
urlpatterns = [
re_path(
r"^upload/", login_required(ckeditor_views.upload), name="ckeditor_upload"
),
re_path(
r"^browse/",
never_cache(login_required(ckeditor_views.browse)),
name="ckeditor_browse",
),
] + urlpatterns
handler500 = "allianceauth.views.Generic500Redirect"
handler404 = "allianceauth.views.Generic404Redirect"
handler403 = "allianceauth.views.Generic403Redirect"
handler400 = "allianceauth.views.Generic400Redirect"
```
### Step 3 - Configure your webserver
Your webserver needs to know from where to serve the uploaded mages of course, so we
have to tell it.
#### Apache
In your vhost configuration, you have a line `ProxyPassMatch ^/static !`, which tells
the server where to find all the static files. We are adding a similar line for the
media, right below that one.
Add the following right below the static proxy match:
```apache
ProxyPassMatch ^/media !
```
Now we also need to let the server know where to find the media directory we just
configured the proxy for. To do so, add a new Alias to your configuration. This can
be done right below the already existing Alias for `/static`:
```apache
Alias "/media" "/var/www/myauth/media/"
```
At last, a "Directory" rule is needed as well. Add the following below the already
existing Directory rule for the static files:
```apache
<Directory "/var/www/myauth/media/">
Require all granted
</Directory>
```
So the whole block should now look like this:
```apache
ProxyPassMatch ^/static !
ProxyPassMatch ^/media ! # *** NEW proxy rule
ProxyPass / http://127.0.0.1:8000/
ProxyPassReverse / http://127.0.0.1:8000/
ProxyPreserveHost On
Alias "/static" "/var/www/myauth/static/"
Alias "/media" "/var/www/myauth/media/"
<Directory "/var/www/myauth/static/">
Require all granted
</Directory>
<Directory "/var/www/myauth/media/">
Require all granted
</Directory>
```
Restart your Apache webserver.
#### Nginx
In order to let Nginx know where to find the uploaded files, you need to add a new
location rule to the configuration. Add the following right below the definition for
your "static" location.
```nginx
location /media {
alias /var/www/myauth/media;
autoindex off;
}
```
Restart your Nginx webserver.
### Step 4 - Finalize the installation
Run static files collection and migrations
```shell
python manage.py collectstatic
python manage.py migrate
```
Restart your supervisor services for Auth
### Step 5 - Set up permissions
Now it's time to set up access permissions for your new module. You can do so in
your admin backend. Read the [Permissions](#permissions) section for more information
about the available permissions.
## Permissions
| ID | Description | Notes |
|----------------|------------------------------------------------------------------|---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|
| `basic_access` | Can access the AA-Forum module | Grants access to the forum |
| `manage_forum` | Can manage the AA-Forum module (Categories, topics and messages) | Users with this permission can create, edit and delete boards and categories in the "Administration" view. They can also modify and delete messages and topics in the "Forum" view. **Users with this permission are not bound by group restrictions and have access to all boards and topics, so choose wisely who is getting this permission.** |
## Changelog
See [CHANGELOG.md]
## Contributing
Do you want to contribute to this project? That's cool!
Please make sure to read the [Contribution Guidelines]
(I promise, it's not much, just some basics)
<!-- Images -->
[Badge: Version]: https://img.shields.io/pypi/v/aa-forum?label=release "Version"
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[Screenshot: Forum Index]: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ppfeufer/aa-forum/master/aa_forum/docs/images/forum-index.jpg "Forum Index"
[Screenshot: Topic Overview / Board Index]: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ppfeufer/aa-forum/master/aa_forum/docs/images/topic-overview.jpg "Topic Overview / Board Index"
[Screenshot: Topic View]: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ppfeufer/aa-forum/master/aa_forum/docs/images/topic-view.jpg "Topic View"
[Screenshot: Start new Topic]: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ppfeufer/aa-forum/master/aa_forum/docs/images/start-new-topic.jpg "Start new Topic (ckEditor)"
[Screenshot: Admin View]: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ppfeufer/aa-forum/master/aa_forum/docs/images/admin-view.jpg "Admin View"
<!-- Hyperlinks -->
[Alliance Auth]: https://gitlab.com/allianceauth/allianceauth
[AA installation guide]: https://allianceauth.readthedocs.io/en/latest/installation/allianceauth.html
[discordproxy]: https://gitlab.com/ErikKalkoken/discordproxy
[AA-Discordbot]: https://github.com/pvyParts/allianceauth-discordbot "AA-Discordbot"
[CHANGELOG.md]: https://github.com/ppfeufer/aa-forum/blob/master/CHANGELOG.md
[Contribution Guidelines]: https://github.com/ppfeufer/aa-forum/blob/master/CONTRIBUTING.md
[AA-Forum on Pypi]: https://pypi.org/project/aa-forum/
[AA-Forum on Codecov]: https://codecov.io/gh/ppfeufer/aa-forum
[AA-Forum License]: https://github.com/ppfeufer/aa-forum/blob/master/LICENSE
[black code formatter documentation]: http://black.readthedocs.io/en/latest/
[Support Discord]: https://discord.gg/zmh52wnfvM
[Automated Tests on GitHub]: https://github.com/ppfeufer/aa-forum/actions/workflows/automated-checks.yml
[Code of Conduct]: https://github.com/ppfeufer/aa-forum/blob/master/CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md
[ppfeufer on ko-fi]: https://ko-fi.com/N4N8CL1BY