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.