Running forums
Discussion boards on your site — categories, titled topics and replies, with formatting and images — plus rules for who reads and posts, and the tools to moderate them.
Forums, in the Engage part of the sidebar, put discussion boards on your site at /forum: titled topics sorted into categories, with replies underneath. Unlike the feed in Running a community, a forum is for conversations people search, read and come back to. You need the editor role or above to run it.
Your first forum
- 1Open Forums and choose Create forum. Give it a name; its address is made from the name, and you can change it later.
- 2Under Categories, add the categories topics go in — for example Questions, Ideas and Show and tell. Turn on Only the team starts topics for an announcements category.
- 3Under Settings, choose who can read and who can post. Then link
/forumfrom your site's menu.
A forum without categories takes topics as they come. Once it has categories, everyone starting a topic picks one. Deleting a category keeps its topics in the forum, without a category.
Several forums
Your plan includes one forum. With Extra forums on your plan, choose New forum above the tabs to add another — each with its own address under /forum, its own categories and its own rules. When a site has several, /forum lists them; with just one, it goes straight to it.
Who can read and post
| Setting | Choices |
|---|---|
| Who can read it | Everyone, Signed-in visitors or Community members only |
| Who can post | Any signed-in visitor or Only community members |
Community members are visitors who joined your site's community and chose a handle. Asking for that means people pick a public name before they post. A forum only members can read is always members-only to post in, and if your plan doesn't include the community, a members-only forum stays closed rather than opening to everyone.
- Accepting posts — turn it off to make the forum read-only. Your team can still post.
- Hide a post after this many reports — reports from different people hide a post until you decide. 0 turns this off.
- Email new reports to — who hears about new reports.
What visitors do
- Start a topic with a title, in one of the forum's categories, and reply to other people's.
- Format posts with bold, italics, lists, quotes, code and links, and add up to 10 images to a post — JPEG, PNG, WebP or GIF, up to 5 MB each. Preview shows the post as it will look.
- Edit or delete their own posts, and report anyone else's.
- Find the topics they started, and the ones they replied to, under Forums in their account.
Images in posts count toward your site's storage, like files in the media library. When someone deletes their account, the topics they took part in stay, shown under "Deleted account", so other people's answers aren't lost.
Moderating
Under Topics, open any topic to see every post in it, hidden ones included. From there you can Pin it to the top, Lock it against new replies, move it to another category and reply as the team. Your reply shows your name with a Team badge — even in a locked topic or a closed forum. Post as the team starts a topic the same way.
Reported posts from all your forums wait under Reports. Hide takes a post out of view and Restore brings it back; Remove deletes it for good; Keep it dismisses the reports. Hiding or removing the first post of a topic does the same to the whole topic.
To stop someone posting, choose Ban from forums on one of their posts, or add their email address under Banned. They can still read, and what they already wrote stays until you hide it. Lift ban undoes it.
Still need help?
If the articles don't answer your question, open a ticket and the VPress team will get back to you.