Knowledge Is Power

There are several sections on the main page of a forum: the Forum header, My Menu, Category Listing, and a Statistics section.

In the forum header, the following will be displayed: the name of the forum, and the number of new messages since the user’s last visit, any news posted by the Administrator, and the main navigational bar, which offers links to other features within the forum, such as: profile, help, my forums, calendar, refresh, and logout, as well as quick links to the latest topics and statistics.

The “profile” link will direct users to their personal profile, where they can update their personal information and password, update their location and other miscellaneous information, and personal settings.  (Refer to “User’s Profile” for more information.)The “help” link will initiate the online Help documentation.  “My forums” lists information about a user’s posts, his/her favorites, identified keywords, a list of specified “ignored users” and general statistics regarding his activity within the forum.  The user’s calendar will display the events as set by the Forum Administrator. (Note: a user may add entries to his own calendar if granted permissions that authorize him to do so by the Administrator.)

In the user’s personal navigation menu or sidebar, which is located in the left pane, the member’s username will be displayed, as well as a list of his categories (if he is not on his “Home” page of the forums), and a search bar.  The user can hide the side bar if he/she wishes to.

In the Category Listing pane, members can view a listing of their categories and their Private Topics (if Private Topics has been enabled by the Administrator).  An RSS link is also available for members who prefer to read the latest messages/topics through their RSS reader.  General statistics relating to the categories are also provided for viewing, such as the number of topics posted within each category and when and who made the last post within the corresponding category.

In the Statistics pane, the number of users who are registered to the forum will be displayed, as well as the number of users who are currently logged into the forum.  A link to find the users is available.  Specific to the member, the statistics pane will identify the number of messages that he/she has posted to the forum, and if the member is a global user, the overall number of messages that he/she has contributed in all global forums.

To join a forum, registering to a forum must be done.  To do this, click on the “Join [name of forum] Forums” link, and the Registration Agreement will be displayed for the visitor to read and accept before continuing with the registration process.  Upon acceptance of the terms, the visitor will be required to complete a form, which requests for information such as full name, username, email address, password, location and other miscellaneous information about the user.  When all required fields (marked with an asterisk) have been provided, the visitor can proceed by clicking the “Join [name of forum] Forums” link at the bottom of the forum.

A forum consists of 4 components: the forum itself, its categories, the topics and the messages.  Each component, or level of hierarchy, is illustrated in the diagram below.

Each forum can have an unlimited number of categories and sub-categories.  Categories are like placeholders in which topics of discussion and messages are contained.  Henceforth, a category manages the forum’s topics into folders or groupings.  This is a logical method of sorting topics.  On the home page of the forum, a listing of all the categories to which the user has access, excluding those categories that the user wishes to block from viewing (refer to “How do I update my profile?”), will be displayed.  In addition, the user will see the number of topics posted within each corresponding category, and the date/time/author of the last posting made in the corresponding category.  To find out quickly if new messages have been posted since the last viewing, simply hover over the clipboard icon corresponding to the category in question.

There are so many different names for a “forum”.  Some think of them as message boards or bulletin boards.  Some call them threaded discussions, discussion boards or discussion groups while others call them conferences.  FuseTalk simply calls them forums.

Deciding if just one forum or multiple forums is needed can be difficult, especially if there is an uncertainty of how they are defined and what makes a forum.

The simplistic definition of a forum is a place where people have the ability to start communication (in the form of threads) and reply to other people's threads.  A member of the community in the forum posts a message, which is visible to everyone in that community.  Once read, there is the option to post a reply, which can also be visible to the community.  Thus, a discussion can build up without all users having to be online at the same time.  

FuseTalk can allow for more than one forum to be created.  These forums can be considered as containers for threads started by the community.  Depending on the permissions of community members as defined by the forum administrator, they can post replies to existing threads and start new threads as they wish.  In addition, users of a forum can post anonymously (if this is enabled by the Forum Administrator) or as their registered username.