Forum.pdf

Dynamic Content

Forums

Use the forum Smart object to host interactive discussions on

your websites.

In this tutorial you’ll learn how to:

Create a forum—on a page of your website, or as an offsite

link.

Configure, manage, and edit forums.

Add a forum moderator group.

Create and edit forum user ranks.

This tutorial assumes that you have already

completed the Access Control & Mailing Lists

tutorial.

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Forums

A forum allows visitors to your website to interact, hold discussions, and

‘post’ general comments and questions. Not only do forums allow you to

gather feedback from the people who

visit your site, they also provide a place

for visitors to go to learn more about

your products and services, or to discuss

a common topic of interest.

The following steps show you how to add

the forum as an offsite link.

Access Control

To add a forum Smart object,

you must first create an Access

Control User List . See the

Access Control & Mailing List

tutorial or online Help for more

information.

Once you have created a forum,

you cannot change its main

forum name, or the Access

Control object associated with it.

Creating a forum

Once you have set up access control (see

the Access Control & Mailing List tutorial),

you can create your forum.

To create a forum

1 On the Web Objects toolbar, click the

Smart Objects Tool . If

necessary, log in to your account.

2 In the Smart Objects dialog, click New...

3 In the Create Smart Object dialog, select the Forum object and

click OK .

4 In the next dialog:

Name your forum.

Type a brief description of the forum.

In the Access Control drop-down list, select the Access Control

object you created in the previous section.

Select your

Time Zone

from the

drop-down

list.

Click

Create .

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Forums

Your forum is added to

the Smart objects Library

and ready to be added to

your site.

Due to the way forums are

formatted, it is generally

advised to add them as an

offsite link. We’ll do this

now.

To add a forum as an offsite link

1 Once you have created your forum, click Exit to log out of Serif Web

Resources.

2 On the Site tab, in the

Add drop-down list,

click New Offsite Link...

3 In the Offsite Link dialog,

select Smart Object and

click the None button.

4 In the Smart Objects

Library, select your

forum and click Select .

5 Name your forum menu

item and choose New

Window in the Type:

drop-down list. Select

the Include in

Navigation check box.

6 Click OK .

Due to the nature of forums, we recommend that you always add them as an offsite

link. However, you can also add them to a site page just like any other Smart object.

To add a forum to a page

1 With the forum selected in the Smart Objects Library, click Insert .

2 Click and drag on your page to set the size of the object.

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Forums

The offsite link is added to the Site tab.

On your web page, a new button is

added to the navigation bar.

Configuring and managing the forum

You have now created everything you need to get your forum up and

running—your forum will automatically create its own access control

group within your access control object. However, there are a few

configuration tasks you should know about before you go ‘live’ with your

site.

If you take a look at the preview of your forum Smart object, you’ll see the

first main section is titled ‘Test category 1,’ with ‘Test Forum 1’ listed

beneath it. These are the default settings that are automatically added to

every new forum.

Category

Subforum

Each forum object can have multiple categories, each of which can also

have multiple ‘subforums.’

The Manage Forum dialog lets you edit the default test category and its

subforum, and create additional categories and subforums.

You can also edit forum and subforum descriptions, add a moderator

group, set permissions, change the style (theme) of the forum, add and

rank users, and set user permissions.

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Forums

Setting forum permissions

The Manage Forum dialog also includes a Forum Privacy section. Here, you can set

permissions to determine if non-registered visitors to your site can read your forums.

If you want non-registered visitors to be able to read your forums, set permissions to

Publicly readable .

If you only want registered visitors to view your forums, set permissions to Private .

In the next section, we’ll do the following:

Edit the default category and its subforum.

Add a new forum to the updated category.

Add a second category and subforum.

Change the forum theme.

To edit the default category and subforum

1 In the Smart Objects Library, select your forum and then, click

Manage .

2 In the Manage Forum dialog, in the Forum Management section,

replace the default Category Name text with your own category

name.

Click Update

Category .

3 Type your new

Forum Name

and Forum

Description .

Click Update

Forum .

To add a new subforum to an existing category

1 In the Add New Forum section, type a name and description for

your new subforum.

2 In the Forum Category

drop-down list, select the

category to which you

want to add the new

subforum (you will only

see one category listed.)

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