Discussion plugin for Joomla
This is actually my first blog post after joining the company not long ago. Some of you may have known me since back then but those who have never get to meet me yet, I am Mark one of the new developers here.
I hoped you guys are excited when the earlier post about EasyDiscuss 2.0 as it will be one of the biggest change ever. While working on EasyDiscuss, we were a reluctant to actually create YAC (Yet Another Comment) plugin but after developing it on the initial wireframe stages, it got us thinking that this is pretty cool and it allows easy searching when the replies are actually done in the discussions itself.
The plugin allows you to automatically link the articles in Joomla back to EasyDiscuss and vice versa. So, here it is some screenies of how it works and how it's going to help you build your site to allow collaboration between your site members and the author's on the site.
This is what the front page would look like after enabling this plugin.
The plugin allows you to add your own likes which is linked to the discussions.
You can also configure to show who is currently viewing the article.
As an owner of a site, you would also want to be able to allow users to directly input their comments.
Linking between discussion and Joomla articles.
Configuration of the plugins.
That's all from me for now. Oh and before I forget, a beta release will be scheduled very shortly.
About the author
Comments
Yep, this will be free 
Hello!
In the form of comments you want to correct display smiles:
components/com_easydiscuss/assets/vendors/markitup/sets/bbcode/style.css
line 29 from 30 and 48 of 49.
correction:
29| ...(images/emoticon-smile.png)}
30| ...(images/emoticon-happy.png)}
and
48| ...(images/emoticon-smile.png) center no-repeat #eee}
49| ...(images/emoticon-happy.png) center no-repeat #eee}
Hey Kolya,
Strange, there isn't actually a problem here. Is there a conflict on your template?
in the template do not raise any conflict
Sorry, don't quite get you. Would you mind posting this at our helpdesk? http://helpdesk.stackideas.com
Hello Jordan,
Yes, I am trying to make it worth with K2, Zoo , Flexicontent and EasyBlog. Since these components actually triggers content plugins, it should already work out of the box
Great!
And since we now know you are THE Mark from JomSpcial, then Stack Ideas now has yet another reason for being among my favourite Joomla developers.
While I have you, a feature request for some future version of Easy Discuss: custom fields. It would be great to be able to ask commenters to pick from a menu (e.g. what do you do? what is your gender?) that would get added to their signature in a post, otherwise, you could map the field (gender or some other) to a corresponding JomSocial field for logged in users. This would AWESOME.
Hello Jordan,
Thanks for your warm welcome Oh, since we are on that custom fields topic, there has been some rework on the existing url references and attachment uploads and in EasyDiscuss 2, you can actually create new fields as easy as creating a new theme override. Will update the docs shortly
Since I'm using EasyDiscuss as an "Answers" type component, I probably won't use the plugin described here. Fortunately, I am confident that EasyDiscuss 2.0 will be flexible enough for me to continue using it in this way.
Hey Jon,
Yep, the rest of EasyDiscuss would work as it was apart from some massive user interface refinements
....how far away is 'very shortly'?
Hey Henrik,
We're scheduling for a beta somewhere early next week
This is getting more exciting. Can hardly wait until the the new version is in beta to see all the features.
Will it have a Weekly Digest so the subscribers can opt in for a weekly digest of the most popular content?
Quora and Focus and other popular Q&A sites use this feature to keep people informed and engaged on the latest weekly content.
Hey Randall,
The current version of EasyDiscuss has already included the email digest subscriptions 
. If you click on the email icon on the front page, you should be able to subscribe to daily, weekly or monthly updates.
Thanks Jack,
I haven't installed EasyDiscuss 1.1 on my site as I am waiting to do a fresh install of the 2.0 beta.
I look forward to the beta release next week.
Are you the same Mark that left the Jomsocial dev team a while ago?