Overview

This module allows you to integrate full-featured forums into your website. The forums are highly configurable and allow you to:

•	Organize forums into forum groups

•	Open/lock forums

•	Perform index-based full-text searches of forum content

•	Manage all forum posts and threads of a particular forum

•	Create moderated forums (posts needs to be approved before they are displayed on-line)

•	Choose to require and/or display e-mails of the forum users

•	Subscribe to receive notifications about all posts added to a forum or thread by e-mail

•	Configure standard forum functions such as post attachments, BBCode support, adding posts to favorites, user avatars and more

•	Set forums to use Friendly URLs

•	Use your own custom forum layouts

•	Enable a forum only for authenticated users

•	Specify user roles that are allowed to use various forum functions via Security settings

There are two basic types of forums:

•	Pre-defined forums - created by the administrator and then displayed on the website.

•	Ad-hoc forums (article comments) - created for a single document when a visitor posts the first comment to the given document.

The Message boards module provides another option that allows users to post comments on your website. Please refer to Developer's Guide -> Modules -> Message boards to learn more about it.

The Forums module can be managed in CMS Desk -> Tools -> Forums. Further settings can be found at Site Manager -> Settings -> Forums and are described in more detail in the Developer's guide -> Modules -> Forums -> Settings topic.

The Developer's guide -> Modules -> Forums -> Forums internals and API sub-chapter provides information about the database tables and classes used by the module and examples of how forums can be managed using the API.

Kentico CMS Community Site Guide contains some additional forum examples and tutorials:

•	Part 1 -> Forums: Examples of the functionality and customization of groups.

•	Part 2 -> Creating the Forums section: A step-by-step tutorial on how to create a sample forum section of a website.

You will need to have the sample Community Site installed to follow Kentico CMS Community Site Guide.

Page url: http://devnet.kentico.com/docs/5_5r2/contexthelp/index.html?forums_overview.htm