Forums

A forum is an online discussion site where people can hold conversations in the form of posted messages. A forum may contain a number of subforums, with each having several topics.

Note

In nopCommerce, forums are disabled by default. To enable forums, go to Configuration → Settings → Forum settings and tick the Forums enabled checkbox. The "Forums" link should be displayed in the menu in the public store (top menu or footer in the default theme).

To manage forum groups and forums (inside forum groups) go to Content management → Forums.

Add a new forum group

Click the Add new forum group button.

• Define a new forum group Name.
• In the Display order field, enter the display order of the forum group. A value of 1 represents the top of the list

Click Save.

Add a new forum

• From the Forum group dropdown list, select the required forum group.
• Enter the Name of the new forum.
• Enter the Description of the new forum.
• Select the Display order for the forum group. A value of 1 represents the top of the list

Click Save.

To view an example of how forums should work go to http://www.nopcommerce.com/boards/.

Forum settings

To access forum settings go to Configuration → Settings → Forum settings. This page is available in 2 modes: advanced and basic.

This page enables multi-store configuration, it means that the same settings can be defined for all stores, or differ from store to store. If you want to manage settings for a certain store, choose its name from multi-store configuration drop-down list and tick all needed checkboxes at the left side to set custom value for them. For further details refer to Multi-store.

Common

Define following forum settings in the Common panel:

• Enable forums by checking the Forums enabled checkbox.
• Select the Relative date and time formatting checkbox to enable relative date and time (e.g. 2 hours ago, 1 day ago).
• You can give an opportunity to specify customers signatures by checking Signature enabled.
• Select the Show customers post count checkbox to enable showing the number of posts created by a customer.
• From the Forum editor dropdown list, select the forum editor type to use:
  • Simple textbox.
  • BBCode editor.

  Note

  It is not recommended to change the forum editor type in the production environment.

Permissions

Define following forum settings in the Permissions panel:

• Allow guests to create posts.
• Allow guests to create topics.
• Allow customers to edit posts.
• Allow customers to delete posts.
• Allow customers to manage forum subscriptions.
• Tick the Allow users to vote for posts checkbox to enable voting.
  • The Maximum votes per day field sets a number of votes each user can do per day if the previous setting is enabled.
• Enable private messages by checking Allow private messages checkbox. If enabled the following two settings will be visible:
  • Tick the Show alert for PM checkbox to enable the alert popup if new private messages were received.
  • Tick the Notify about private messages if a customer should be notified by email about new private messages.

Page sizes

Define following forum settings in the Page sizes panel:

• Topics page size - the page size for topics in forums e.g. '10' topics per page.
• Posts page size - the page size for posts in topics e.g. '10' posts per page.
• Search results page size - the page size for search results e.g. '10' results per page.
• Active discussions page size - the page size for active discussions page e.g. '10' results per page.

Feeds

Define following forum settings in the Feeds panel:

• Select the Forum feeds enabled checkbox to enable RSS feeds for each forum.
• In the Forum feed count field set the number of topics to be included in each feed.
• Select the Active discussions feed enabled checkbox, to enable RSS feeds for active discussion topics.
• In the Active discussions feed count field set the number of discussions to be included in "Active discussions" feed.

Tutorials

• Managing forums in nopCommerce