Forums
Once the Groups structure is in place you are ready to create your forums. If a group is a container for one or more forums, a forum can be viewed as a container for the topics – sometimes known as ‘threads’ – pertaining to that forum.
The forums are the principle place where your users will create topics and as with groups, it is worthwhile to spend a little time giving some thought to the best layout and sequence. Most forums will place the important and, perhaps, busiest forum near the top descending down to the less well used.
The illustration to the right shows our support site to have four forums in the first group – the busiest group with the busiest forum at the top – and two forums in the second group.
Simple:Press also supports sub or child forums. These offer the user finer granularity in organizing their structure. Sub-forums act like a nested level of categories within the umbrella of their parent forum.
Creating A Forum
When you create a new forum, you will need to provide the following information.
| Item | Description |
|---|---|
| Forum Type | The choice is a standard, main forum - or a sub-forum |
| Forum Parent | If you are creating a standard forum you are required to select the parent group. If, on the other hand you are creating a new sub-forum, then you will be asked to select the patent forum. This will switch dependent upon the forum type selected. When you have selected the parent, the rest of the form will open |
| Name | The Forum Name is used as the main heading for each forum in Group View and when the forum is displayed in Forum View |
| Description | You can supply an optional description which will be displayed in a smaller font beneath the name. This provides the opportunity to display some explanatory text of what the forum is all about |
| Display Position | Possible locations for the new forum will be displayed for you to select from. Remember, when a forum is moved, it takes any sub-forums with it |
| Lock | Individual forums can be locked so they can attract no new topics. Normally at creation time they will be left unlocked |
| Tags | Tags can be turned on or off for each forum. Tags are created by users when a new topic is added to a forum |
| RSS | Feeds can be turned on or off for each forum |
| Custom Icon | The 'skin' you choose for your forum will contain a default Forum icon but you can optionally supply a custom icon for each forum. See Configuration Panel for details on where to store custom icons |
| Topic Status | A topic status set can optionally be assigned to each forum. See Topic Status Settings |
| Special Message | There is an optional special message area between the forum heading and it's topic list. Text and HTML can be entered for this message and it can be styled in your forum skin |
| User Groups and Permissions | We will discuss these later in User Groups and Permissions |
Please note that after the forum is created you may edit any of the above data. In addition, an RSS feed for the forum will be created which you can optionally redirect to a feed service such as FeedBurner. By default Forum RSS feeds encompass all of the posts in all of the topics belonging to a forum.
