Using the Edit Tools

The forum administrator and other users, if granted the appropriate permissions, have a special set of tools available for forum maintenance. Both ‘forum’ and ‘topic’ views allow for a set of edit tool icons to be made visible for manipulating or editing entries. On the ‘forum’ view, the edit tools icon (appearance varies by spf skin) appears in the topic title area. On the ‘topic’ view, the edit tools icon appears on the far right of the post icons row for each topic.

Enabling the Edit Tools

Before the Edit Tools will appear on the Forum front end, they must be enabled in the Forum administration. To enable them, access the Forum ☛ Admins ☛ Global Options panel in order to set the option to Display Admin Tool Icons. Check the box and save the options.

With the Admin Tool Icons turned on, beside each topic entry and post entry an icon will be placed that will open the toolset when clicked on. The icon image will depend on the icon set you are using with your forum.

Edit Tools on Forum Views

The following tools are available within each topic entry:

Lock Topic – This tool will toggle a lock on and off for the selected topic. Locking a topic will prevent any member of guest being able to make new posts to that topic. The Admin will always be able to create new posts however

Pin Topic – Also known on some forum systems as ‘sticky’. Toggling on the Pin will ensure that the selected topic always remains at the top of the forums topic index.

Edit Topic Title – Allows for editing of the topic title and, if necessary, the topic slug. The slug should ONLY ever be changed if the topic has a problem displaying correctly due to odd characters in the slug.

Change Topic Status – Allows the admin to change the status of a topic if topic status sets are being used.

Change Sort Order – The default sort order for all topics is set in the Forum > Options > Topics panel. This admin tool can be used to reverse the sort order of posts for the selected topic only.

Delete Topic – Deleting a topic will remove it and all of it’s posts from the system. This action can not be reversed.

Move Topic – Allows the user to move this topic to a different forum. When clicked, the ‘move topic’ form will be displayed.

Break Link – This tool only appears if the forum topic is linked to a blog post and it allows for that linkage to be broken. No content is removed – but the link relationship between the blog post and forum topic is destroyed.

View Topic Properties – Information and ID’s of the Topic.

Edit Tools on Topic Views

The following tools are available within each post entry:

Approve Post – If a post is awaiting moderation, clicking on the ‘approve’ icon will approve it.

Show Users Email – Quickly find the email of the selected posts author. A users email address is never shown anywhere else.

Pin Post – Also known on some forums as ‘sticky’. Pinning a post will ensure it remains at the top of the post thread.

Edit Post - All posts can be edited by the forum Admin at any time using this tool.

Move Post – Move this post to a new Topic.

Delete Post – Deletes the selected post from the topic.

View Post Properties – Information and IDs for this Post.