Change template html in sharepoint discussion reply box

Question

I have a wss 3.0 install which needs an "anonymous" discussion board. I can modify the view so no usernames are displayed, however when I click on "reply", the message I'm replying to shows up in the rich text box with the username of the previous poster.

Is there a way to remove that username? or Remove the previous posted text altogether? I've found the schema.xml file with lots of relevant info under the ..12\TEMPLATE\FEATURES\DiscussionsList\Discuss folder, but not sure if this is the easiest way to adjust this setting.

Any comments appreciated.

Answer 1

Best practice says that you should always create a custom list definition instead of trying to modify the OOB assets.

The easiest way to do this is take a copy of the 12\TEMPLATE\FEATURES\DiscussionsList\Discuss folder, modify the feature Ids and names so that its unique. Then your free to change the schema render template (i.e view schema) and modify the edit and display forms.

If you need to modfify the actual entry form you may consider a custom control template : http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa543922.aspx

Custom list definition : http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms466023.aspx

Answer 2

Agrothe,

I have a similar requirement (hide or mask the author inside the reply thread.). What exactly inside of schema.xml do you think will allow you to do accomplish that?

Not sure if the list forms are exposed to xslt. If so, then perhaps this is another approach.

FWIW, the other solutions I have investigated:

(1) A custom event handler. Unfortunately, I can't pinpoint which event fires when someone click reply. (2) Anonymous blog comments (http://blogs.msdn.com/sharepoint/archive/2007/08/06/anonymous-comment-feature-for-sharepoint-blog-now-available-on-codeplex.aspx). (3) the other thing I am considering, is to introduce a global anonymous active directory login, which users can use to post anonymously. Not ideal, but for the amount of time I have spent researching a solution, might be my last hope.