If your site has Discussion Forums enabled, you will be able to add at least one discussion forum to your site.
A discussion forum allows people to converse online by posting messages to a web page. Generally, it is a good idea to have one forum per topic of conversation; this stops the discussion getting too fragmented and confusing.
For each forum, the following options are available:
- Allow anyone on the Internet to view the forum and post messages.
- Password-protect the forum posting facility so that only registered users may post messages.
- Password-protect the forum itself so that only registered users may view messages.
- Allow users to sign up for their own accounts - all they would need is a valid email address.
- Require any new messages to be approved by a moderator before they become visible.
To create a new forum, first go to the Discussion Forums option from the Main Menu. If this option is not available, you will need to contact your portal administrator to have the forum facility enabled for your site.
Clicking on the Add new forum link will create a new forum with a blank name and no users. Your site can contain several forums, so more may be added later.
Once you have added a forum, you should create a link to it on your web site so that people can access it. To do this, edit the page you want the link to appear on and add a "Link to Forum" element.
For each forum, the following links will appear:
Edit forum settings
Edit forum user accounts
Delete this forum
Click on a link or scroll down to read more.
Edit forum settings
The following items can be changed for each forum:
- Forum name - give the forum a descriptive name, for instance the intended topic of conversation.
- Notify site admin of new posts - if set to "Yes", all site administrators will be emailed whenever a new comment is posted to the forum.
- Must be logged in to post - if set to "Yes", only forum users who have logged in will be able to post comments.
- Must be logged in to read anything - if set to "Yes", the forum will only be visible to forum users who have logged in.
- New users can create their own accounts - if set to "Yes", anyone who does not have an account will be able to create one for themselves provided they have a valid email address.
- Posts must be approved by the moderator - if set to "Yes", new comments do not appear on the forum until a moderator (a site administrator or a forum user given moderator privileges by a site administrator) marks them as visible.
- Trust before approval is not needed - each time a logged-in forum user posts a comment which is then accepted by a moderator, their "trust level" increases. Each time a comment they have posted is deleted, their "trust level" decreases again. To ease administration, this parameter can be set so that a user who repeatedly adds "good" comments no longer has to have their comment approved before it is published. For instance setting this to "50" means a user who has posted 50 "good" comments in a row no longer needs moderator approval. Set this to "0" to disable this feature.
- Allow files to be attached to posts - if set to "Yes", users may attach files to their comments when posting. This is not recommended if you are allowing users to post without logging in, since viruses, worms, etc can be spread by malicious users in this way.
- Indentation size (pixels) - how many pixels deep to indent each level in "Nested" mode. The default should be acceptable.
- Default sorting order - the order in which forum comments are shown by default - oldest first or newest first.
- Default display type - the default way in which forum comments will be displayed. "Threaded" and "Nested" are the most widely used.
- Default max age of posts to display - the default cut-off point for showing forum comments. For instance, "Past month only" will by default only show comments posted less than a month ago.
- Automatically change view as soon as a new view is selected - whether to change the index view as soon as a user uses the drop-down box or whether to wait until they click the "Change" button.
Be sure to click on the "Store Changes" button to store any changes once you have finished.
Edit forum user accounts
All of the forum user accounts will be listed on this page. From here you can edit and delete any of the accounts, as well as create new ones using the "Add new user" link.
For convenience, a "Download Excel spreadsheet of forum users" link is provided. This spreadsheet will include all information available about each user, except their password.
Note that a site administrator can log in to any forum on their site without being listed in the forum user list, in order to perform moderatorial duties. However, because they are not "real" forum users, any comments they post will appear to have come from "Anonymous".
The following settings can be changed when editing a forum user's details:
- Username - this must be unique in this forum.
- Signed name - the user's real name.
- Email address - the user's email address.
- Trust level - the user's current trust level. This increases when the user posts a comment that is accepted by the moderator, and decreases when a comment made by that user is deleted. If it reaches a predetermined level (see "Trust before approval is not needed" in the forum settings section above), the user no longer needs moderator approval for their comments.
- Moderator - if set to "Yes", this user can moderate other comments (i.e. edit them and delete them).
- Change password - to change a user's password, fill in both boxes with the new password.
Click on the "Store Altered Details" button to store any changes you have made to the user's details.
Delete this forum
Deleting a forum will remove all comments and forum user accounts associated with that forum permanently, and any links to it will cease to work.
Please be absolutely sure you want to delete a forum before clicking on the "Delete this forum" link.
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