Question Adapt Kunena for Threadless concept for Online shooping

I'm scoping out a project that requires functionality much like threadless.com.

A user will be able to submit an idea for a product, using a title, description and an image upload.

Secondly, other users will be able to view the submitted idea and details, and vote on whether they would buy the product, maybe buy, or wouldn't.

Kunena seems like it would be a great place to start for this functionality, and further customize.

However, without having much experience with this product, I would like to ask:

How much of this behavior is already built into this forum software?

Thanks,
Ricky

You could adapt Kunena for the purpose you've stated but, ultimately, I think it lacks the core functionality you require and you might be better looking into a niche solution (like UserVoice ). However, because you asked, this is how I would go about achieving a Kunena solution.

Assuming that you need to regulate your "forum" - to allow users to submit their products but not allow other users to explain why they voted the way they did - you could achieve your needs with a Kunena's "message review". Every message that is posted has to be reviewed by the administrator / moderator before it appears on the forum. If anyone else, not approved by the administrator, tries to post something then you can reject their message. You can set moderation on a category-by-category basis. In this way you can set up a category (or categories) for your users to submit their products for voting.

The voting, itself, is achieved using the Kunena "karma" function. This is about as close as Kunena gets to meeting your requirement. The karma facility is a reward system for the users, not for the messages they post, and that's where I think Kunena is unable to satisfy your needs if you want people to vote about the products.

Furthermore I am critical of the karma system for other reasons, because of its non-transparency, non-accountability and total anonymity. You may like to look at what I wrote: What is karma? . If you wanted to use the karma system - remembering that it's a reward mechanism for your users and not their products, you might like to change the word "karma" to something else (like "points") which might be more appropropriate (see here for information on how to do that).

To setup a forum category for message review, you would need to make the following changes (use Components » Kunena Forum » Forum Administration and select a category to edit):

• Forum advanced configuration

• Locked = no
• Public Access Level = Everybody
• Include Child Groups = yes
• Admin Access Level = Manager
• Include Child Groups = yes
• Review posts = yes

Moderation of the Forum and Forum moderators

• Moderated = yes