Discussion Forums - Engaging your user community
The Discussion Forum module allows you to get up and running with your own forum in no time at all.
The Contensis Discussion Forum module is designed to service the needs of user communities using discussion boards.
Creating discussion forums within Contensis is not a technical configuration exercise. A forum can be added to a web page in minutes and once activated allow all the functionality that you would expect.
The major advantage of using our forum is that it is fully integrated from an authentication and general system perspective. There is no need for multiple user logons and databases, which can frustrate users.
Discussion forum dashboard
Discussion forum on a web page:
A web visitor viewing a discussion forum on a web page will encounter one of two views depending upon how the discussion forum has been set up:
1. A view of discussion forums organised within categories as shown in the screenshot opposite.
2. A simple view of discussion forums.
Discussion forum website features:
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Rich user profiles including signatures and avatars.
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Role-based posting, private and archived forums.
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Recent topics and topic lists by user.
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Forum stats on home page, including "who's logged on".
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Users can upload profile photos and avatars.
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Posts show user data like location, join date and number of posts.
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Favourite topics, e-mail notification of replies.
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Mark individual forums read.
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Post private messages.
Administrators and moderators have full control over the running of discussion forums with a Contensis delivered website.
It literally takes a right mouse click, select a discussion forum control then save and publish to get a forum going. It is that simple! The hard work has been done by the Contensis product - that is user management, security, etc. All you need to decide is, if the page with the discussion forum on it will display all categories with forums or a single category? Once you are up-and-running you can add new categories and forums at will.
Discussion forum administration
Administration of the forums takes place in the interface as shown opposite.
Discussion forum features for administrators
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The Contensis moderators may close, pin, delete, move or rename topics, and see user IPs.
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Times adjusted for time zone and daylight savings.
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Admin functions include account editing, profile photo approval, manage and order forums, and asynchronous e-mailing to opt-in members.
From a developer's point of view, the discussion forum saves loads of development time as it is all just ready to go. There is no need to carry out any user integration work, as the discussion forum is built into the core product. As far as customising the forum in terms of look and feel, the discussion forum uses our standard themes approach allowing developers to quickly get the forum fitting in with the rest of the website design.