Features
Forums, Discussions and Posts
- Multiple view modes. Display your discussions in a flat style, reminiscent of other popular forum software, or in a threaded view more similar to slashdot or popular blog comments
- Discussion Categories Block
- A discussion categories allows you to build multiple forums in different parts of your site, and display them with great flexibility.
- Can be easily used multiple times on one page, with each block pointing to different areas on your site.
- Allows sorting by display order or date of activity.
- Discussion Topics Block
- Can display topics (top-level discussion posts) from anywhere in your site.
- Can use the global sort mode, or a custom sort mode on a per-block basis. Valid sorting options are topic name, topic date, latest reply, views and replies. Users can also override these settings.
- Discussion Guestbook Block
- Allows site owners to replace the existing guestbook block with one that uses the discussion system as its backend.
- Displays its contents in an attractive threaded view, complete with user avatars and badges support (see below.)
- No need to reinvent the wheel. At their core, discussion categories, topics and posts are all concrete5 pages; they can have blocks, custom attributes, and permissions attached to them, and can be organized, aliased and searched exactly like other pages.
- Discussions may be pinned, ensuring that they will be shown at the top of every topic list.
Posting and Editing
- BBCode support is included, using the BBCode block (which comes with the discussion application.)
- Closing discussions is easy, allowing discussions to remain while no longer accepting new posts.
- Posting can take place in an attractive dialog box, or within a JavaScript-powered in-page form. Posting takes place on the same page without the user having to leave the context of what they're replying to.
- Content Filtering: posting can be disallowed based on the content of the "banned words" file.
- Editing Posts is possible – and editing your own posts can only be done for a certain amount of time.
- Posters can remove their own posts.
- Access Control. concrete5 permissions for editing and removing posts are honored.
Users, Profiles, Registration and Email Support
- Each discussion can be monitored by a user, who will then receive updates any time that discussion is posted to.
- Respond through email. With some additional configuration, monitored discussions can then be responded to solely through email, without returning to the main website.
- User Posts Block
- Displays all the posts created by a user, with paging.
- When added to the global profile page, will display the posts of the current user profile being viewed.
- User Badges
- Integrated completely with concrete5 groups, User Badges allows administrators to create special "badge" groups, assign an image to them, and assign those users badges.
- The User Badges block displays the badges of a given user. When added to the global profile page, this block will display the badges of the current user profile being viewed.
- A customizable setting allows badges to be displayed in an AJAX overlay whenever a user avatar is moused over.
- Easy Administration: administrators can administer a user's badges from within the context of the discussion being read, via a dialog box.
Site Integration
- Post-to-Page Wizard. A page migration tool allows discussion posts to be easily converted into content pages, and vice versa.
- Limitless flexibility. Usage of multiple discussion blocks throughout one site can give extensive control to the administrator of a concrete5 forums setup. Want your forum content centralized? It's easy. Want it to mirror the style of blog comments? Just as easy.
Files and Attachments
- Attachments to posts are fully supported.
- Multiple attachments to a post can be posted and edited.
- Files are completely integrated with the concrete5 file manager, meaning that they can be administered, searched, edited and interacted with using the file manager. File permissions are also honored.