Currently, the comments of discourse and wordpress are synchronized. It would be great to have bidirectional synchronization between the main content so that the discourse community can edit (modify and significantly enrich) the content from the discourse instance. Thus, the community could participate in the improvement of the WP site (which is what the community is designed for - to participate in the creation and improvement of content), and not just full-time editors.
The articles would be better and the information more accurate and up-to-date, without involving additional staff. To do this, you need to enter a third setting: synchronize topics between instances.
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Hey Volanar,
If your Discourse site is going to mirror your Wordpress site do you necessarily need both?
The way their request is worded, here’s how I see their flow:
flowchart
WP <--> Post
Discourse <--> Post
Community --> Discourse
Editors --> WP
Right, but what’s the benefit of having two editing interfaces to the same content?
While WordPress can and does handle markdown, it’s not the default for most sites, and unless the behavior has changed markdown is converted into html when the post is saved. Any specific CSS styling is also lost. The result is that good looking Wordpress posts end up losing some of their visual fidelity when viewed on a Discourse site.
Allowing discourse to overwrite the content of a WordPress post would hamstring many of the presentation features within Wordpress. There’s also the issue of versioning and simultaneous change - presumably last writer wins?
If you want editors and community members to contribute the quality of the same pieces of content, why not edit them in the same place?
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Because controlling who sees what and cannot do other things is much better controlled on Discourse, but on WordPress side can be other publications too.
That could be one reason. I don’t take any sides if that is good, bad or neutral case.
(To me at least) it sounds like they don’t want to add everyone from there community to the WP instance:
Though you do have a point, editing on one side or the other is probably better than editing on both ends.
Hey there @volanar, I can see what you’re trying to achieve.
This will not be a part of the WP Discourse plugin in the foreseeable future, partly because that plugin is focused on syncing Wordpress comments as opposed to content Wordpress posts, and partly because making the WP Discourse Plugin bidirectional poses challenges that are difficult to solve within the framework of that plugin and the way it works with Discourse. @Stephen mentioned to some of those challenges. There are others.
That said, it is potentially possible that you’ll be able to achieve your goal through the use of the Wordpress ActivityPub Plugin and the Discourse ActivityPub Plugin, which, combined could, on paper, do what you’re wanting to do, i.e. bidirectional synchronisation of content (Wordpress posts and Discourse posts).
There are two big caveats there. The bidirectional features of the Discourse ActivityPub plugin are not yet merged into the main branch of the plugin (the PR is currently under review), and I’ve never tested that plugin with the Wordpress ActivityPub plugin. But what you’re suggesting is potentially possible by combining the two.
Indeed, the scenario you’ve described is what the ActivityPub protocol was developed to handle. Why is it more possible in that context as opposed to the WP Discourse context? There are many reasons which I won’t get into here, but suffice it to say that if that is your goal that is the avenue you should consider.
Because wordpress supports WPML and the content is translated into several languages. WPML is good for tracking changed content. Next, WP publishes content on the blog and mobile app. That is, WP can be used as a headless CMS
The main topic will be created in WP, but the community can make corrections and additions to the content. This is technical information and the beauty of the content is not important, so you can install the markdown plugin in WP by default for a single content format. Ideally, it is better to use ghost, strapi, squidex or another platform, but it will cost money and will not suit everyone. The solution should be universal for everyone
I came up with a good option. At the end of the topic, specify a link to editing on the frontend side on WP. This way, users will be able to edit the content themselves, and the moderator will be able to accept or reject changes.
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