Discussion Forum

Adding forum to a page:
use the inclusion code %%include-forum%%

Members / Users: Users must register by e-mail. This validates that at least the e-mail provided is accurate. Due to the heavy use of spam filters, authorizations may not get to the user. In this insatnce you can activate users manually from your management console.

If users forget their username or password they can have it e-mailed to themselves via the link on the login page.

Signups are limited to 1 per e-mail address. This allows you to ban users and prevent them from creating a new account.

Linking Urls: When post are made, any urls provided will be automatically linked to the website. There is no code to use, but the entire url must be used. For example https://mywebsite.com will link to the website but mywebsite.com will not.

HTML Mode: HTML is not enabled in posts. In most cases this only allows for spam and inserting images from outside websites and implicating your website in hot linking schemes. It also prevents skewing of your pages by posters.

Color Settings: The forum allows for colors in the tables seperating the messages. Use the same colors if you want the look to appear as a list without any highlighting.

Creating Categories: You can add upto 25 main topics. This gives you the ability to have multiple discussions about different subjects.

Category Descriptions: Each catagory can have a short description that is displayed on the main page. The description allows readers a more detailed idea of what they can discuss in that category.

Removing Posts: Posts are based on new messages. If you delete the main message, all replies will also be deleted. Or you can delete any individual replies. Additionally you can delete an entire category, removing all the posts in that category.

Editing Messages: The messages can only be edited by the site owner once they are posted. This prevents angry uers from deleting all their posts or going back and changing messages to spam. Although allowing users to edit messages is a nice feature, it tends to cause more problems than it solves.

Notes:

The forum is simplified to make it easy to use and participate. It also lacks features such as traffic details and page views. As small sites do not wish to show how infrequently pages are viewed.

There is no contact within the board for private messages or e-mail. These features were left out to minimize spam. People can post their e-mail addresses in the messages if they need that ability. There is no filter to remove content.

Since there is no message filter, the site owner will be responsible tor managing content. If you do not like what people are posting, ban them and remove the posts. There is no way to automate message editing.

The hardest part about running a forum is babysitting the users. If you get any reasonable number of users, you will get some bad apples. If you use this program, you will find out quicly how mean people can be when they are hiding behind a computer terminal.