Basic Information on Working with Forums 

Use

Thanks to the simple user interface, learning to work with forums is easy and intuitive. This topic describes the basic concepts for forums.

Important Terms Relating to Working with Forums

If you are reading forums and creating messages, you need to be familiar with the following objects:

●      Categories

A category groups together forums with content of a similar nature. Categories can be subdivided into subcategories that group together the actual forums. The interaction of categories and forums determines the forum navigation structure. For more information, see Navigating in Forums.

●      Forum

A forum contains multiple topics.

●      Thread

A thread is a question posed in a forum. A thread consists of the initial question and all the messages that respond to that question. Threads can therefore contain hundreds of messages.

●      Post

A message is a single question, discussion point, or answer that is published in a thread. Messages have a header, text, and sometimes attachments.

Authorizations

Your system administrator needs to give you permissions for creating messages and carrying out other functions.

Moderator Concept

A forum can be moderated, which means that all messages submitted by users to the forum in question are subject to an approval process. Messages are only visible for forum users once the moderator has approved them.

Moderators can also delete threads, move them to other areas, or lock them. You cannot create any more message in a locked thread.

Information on Content and Users in Forums

When you navigate to a forum, the following information is depicted by the symbols shown:

●      New messages since your last visit:  

●      Updated messages since your last visit:  

If you click a user name next to a forum post, information on the most recent messages and threads of the forum user in question appears in the user's profile.

You can use the control panel to obtain important information on your own activities in forums and to make settings. For more information, see Using the Control Panel for Forums.

Use the Feed symbol to obtain a list of all available RSS feeds. There are feeds on announcements, recent forum posts, popular threads, your own messages, and statistics (for example, the total number of threads).