Topic on Project:Support desk

Hello, I would like to ask if anyone knows how to integrate a forum system into mediawiki (not just the typical discussion page thing on mediawiki and wikipedia, but would replace the discussion page for each page as well as have a general forum age), such as something like phpBB. Thanks

See Extension:DPLforum (use-case examples are linked to at the bottom of that page). You can also try Extension:WikiForum, see if it still works.

In case there is going to be extensive use of forums on your site, maybe it would be better to use a separate dedicated forum application for this purpose, instead of relying on MediaWiki's less ideal solutions.

I was planning on just relying on a separate application (probably phpBB), do you think it would be best if when you click on a discussion page link it will just like to the page of that discussion page in the application? For example if you were on article number 3450 and you click on discussion page then it would bring you to the forum page for article number 3450. Thanks

I don't have much experience in this, but my guess would be that if the discussions are expected to be short, then StructuredDiscussions (this is the method used on this page) seems more comfortable for users, but if the discussions are going to be very detailed with lengthy walls of text, then the present default talk pages might be better.

I personally feel that with paginated (divided into multiple pages) forums like phpBB, casual users might not bother going through the trouble of clicking through each page. On the other hand, MediaWiki discussion pages have everything on one page, it isn't very aesthetic (can be helped through better skins), but casual users participation seems more likely.

thank you for the response, I don't think that the length and depth of the amount of pages will be an issue because this is a history/scholarly oriented website that I am creating