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 The forum module is used to create and manage a forum. By default, forums are seperated into 'sections', though this may be turned off in the options. To use the forum module, click the Forum icon on the start page:
The forum module has two modes of administration; message administration and section administration. They both use the item manager (top of page) and a visual editor (body of page). To switch between editing sections or messages, click the 'Messages' or 'Sections' link in the left hand menu underneath the 'Forum' header.
In the item editor, you can use the delete button  to delete a topic, the reply button  to post a reply to the topic, and the edit button  to edit the topic. You can also check the boxes next to the items and use the group operation icons to affect multiple messages. The lock button  will lock the topic so that messages cannot be posted to it, whilst the unlock button  will unlock them. Note that the item manager does not show the individual messages, only the individual topics. To see specific messages in a topic, click the topic title. When viewing a message list in a topic, you can unpublish/publish individual messages by using the publish button  which will be to the left of the message in the item manager. Though the topic item editor does not have a publish/unpublish icon, the property is still available in a checkbox in the visual editor.
You may note that the visual editor is slightly different in the forum system than they way it is most other places. This is because the visual editor edits using 'BBC' code, which is a specialized scripting language for forums and bulletin boards. There is a long history of support and development of BBC code, and tutorials/explanations of the code can be found by googling it. It is a very simple scripting language, generally taking about 5 - 10 minutes to get the jist of. If you are uncomfortable using BBC code, use the visual editor's buttons to guide you through it.
By clicking the 'Sections' link at the left, you will open up the section manager of the forum module. The section manager is much like the category manager for downloads, articles, FAQ, etc. Each section holds forum posts and may have it's own announce and body. If a section is set to 'display as separator', it will not display topics in it, and will instead appear as a separator between sections. The 'options' and 'body' tabs will also be deactivated. This is good for when you will need to create several sections that need to be logically grouped under a common header; you would insert a section as a separator above that group with the common header as the announce. All other buttons and functions are otherwise identical to the 'Messages' section of the forum module.
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