e107deluxe

First go to your Plug-in Manager and scroll down to where you see the "Forums" plug-in. You will need to click install to be able to have this feature available on your site. Then you go to Plug-ins at the top of your admin. screen and select "Forums".

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Next you want to create Parent forums which are the main sections of your forums that can be broken into general topics. You will find this option to the right side of the screen.

Once you are in that new screen, type in the name of the parent group in the first box. For this example, I am going to use "General Chat". Next is the "Viewable by:" option. If you have already set up your user classes, you will have all those options available to you at this point. For my example, I am going to set mine to "Everyone (Public)" as this parent group will have generalized chat that I don't mind anyone reading. Last is "Post Permission". In my example I will set that to user class "Members" that way there are no "Unknown" posters and no one can spam my board or troll it without first signing up. If they sign up and they do this, I can always ban their IP.

Click "Create Parent" to finish this step.

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Next click "Create Forums" on the right side of the screen. This will create the actual forum sections that can be posted within.

Once you are in this new screen, you should have a drop down menu in the first box, and it should say "General Chat". If you have other parent groups, you can select them at this time. Next is a "Name:" box and in here you will put the name of your forum topic. For my example, I am using "This and That". The box below that is for the description of your forum. For my forum, I entered "Discuss anything and everything that does not have a specific area devoted to that topic." Your viewers will be able to see this text beneath the name of the forum. After that is a "Moderators" drop-down menu. It should be defaulted to Admin. and as I am the only admin. of my site, I will leave it as so. The remaining two fields are the "Viewable By" and the "Post Permission." I want these to be the same as the parent group so I set them as I did in the above step.

Lastly click "Create Forum".

At the top of the screen it says "Forum Created". Now I am going to repeat the above steps so that I have the following forums: Game Chat, Movie Chat and Music Chat.

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Your next step once you have created all the parent groups and forums that you want, you will select "Forum Order" from the right side of the screen.

You should be able to tell apart your parents and your forums. Forums have a little icon to the left of them. First adjust the drop down number to the left of your parents to put them in the numbered order that you want them to appear on your site. Then you will do the same for your forums under each parent group.

Once you are done click "Update Order". At the top of the screen it should say "Order Updated".

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Next you will click on "Preferences" on the right side of your screen. Here you have a lot of options at your disposal. I will go through them one by one.

First: Enclose tables - Tick this to render the forum within theme table
I check this one for it tends to help make your forums appear more organized. It is however your preference on this matter.

Second: Forum Title - Title displayed in caption if enclose tables is ticked
This option is basically the title of the pages within this section of your website.

Third: Enable email notification - Tick this to allow your users to have the option of receiving an email when somebody replies to their post
Go ahead and check this option. Let the user decide if they want to use this feature as it doesn't make any more work for you to let them use it.

Fourth: Email notification ON by default -Tick this to allow make the email notification checkbox be on by default
Leave this one unchecked. The above option already allows your members to chose if they want to use this, don't force it on them.

Fifth: Enable polls - Tick this to allow your users to set polls in the forums - the Polls plug-in must be installed to use this feature
If you do not have the "Polls" plug-in activate on your site, you can leave this one unchecked. This is basically if you want to allow members to create a forums post to where people can vote on the topic.

Sixth - Enable file / image attachments -Allow users to upload file or image with their forum post, click here to set max file size, allowed types etc.
To use this setting you also need to tick 'Enable image posting' on the images page
This should not be checked. First of all it can be a security risk as you never know what people may attach and secondly, e107deluxe has currently disabled uploading files for the very same reason.

Seventh - Maximum width of uploaded image - Leave blank to disable auto resizing of images
Leave this blank if you intend to not allow your members to embed image codes into their posts. By them embedding pictures into their posts, they could cause your page size to change and people may have to side scroll on that page.

Eigth - Create link to full size image - Enabling this will resize larger images and also create a link to the original full size image. If disabled, original image will be discarded
I check this box. It helps keep your forums looking nice and allows members to place links to the pictures they want to show, however they have to be clicked on to view, therefore preventing side scrolling on your site.

Ninth - Enable tracking - Tick this to allow your users to track threads and be emailed when the thread is replied to
This is basically like the e-mail notification, but they can chose which specific threads they want to know about. You should click it.

Tenth - Enable Redirect - Tick this to make browser redirect to forum page after replying
After a poster replies to a message in your forum, this will take them back to the forum title page. I usually do not use this option as I like to have the option to review my post once more or choose for myself to go back to the title page.

Eleventh - User Custom Title - Tick this to allow users to change their Custom Title
I don't allow this option. I prefer to set up ranks for the forums and that helps inspire your posters to post more in order to get a more appealing title. Also, they could change their title to something inappropriate.

Twelfth - Reported Posts - Click here to email admin when someone reports a forum post
I check this option. I want to know if someone thinks a post is inappropriate and this way I can go and correct the issue if needed.

Thirteenth - Show Tooltips - Tick here to show a tooltip containing the first post of the thread when mouse hovers over thread name.
You can check this if you think your users may have problems navigating around your site.

Fourteenth - Length of tooltip - This will determine the number of characters to display in the tooltip.
I leave this blank as I do not check the above option.

Fifteenth - Email prefix - The text you enter will prefix the subject on any emails sent through the forum
I set mine to [STP_Forums] for I want my members to know what forums they got the email from.

Sixteenth - Popular thread threshold - Number of posts made to a thread before it is marked as popular
I set this to 21. The reason I do this is because it is double plus one of the option below and I feel a thread shouldn't be popular unless it hits three pages. This is entirely up to you.

Seventeenth - Posts per page - Number of posts displayed per page
I set this to 10. Ten is a reasonable amount for someone to read in a thread before having to click to go to the next page. Any less and they are clicking a lot and any more and they may get lost within the thread.

Eighteenth - Emphasize Sticky Threads
Give extra emphasis to sticky threads (separate thread sections and headers)
I uncheck this option. There is no need for it. Stickies will have an icon before the name of the thread and therefore you will be able to tell what is a sticky, especially when it stays on the top of your page.

Now you are ready to click "Update Options" and it should tell you at the top of the screen "Options Updated".

Next on the right is the "Prune" settings. You might want to be careful using this option. I, myself, do not use this option but if you like to keep a very tidy forum, then this option may be for you. I shall discuss what it does for you so that you don't make any mistakes.

"Prune topics with no replies in this many days:"
You will enter in this box a numerical value and after that many days, the forums will automatically perform the options you select below it.

"Please select to either delete pruned posts completely, or make them inactive (not deleted but not visible in forums)"
If you select "Delete", the posts will be gone forever, if you select "Inactive" they will be there, just either not visible or marked as inactive.

Below that option you can select which forums you want it to perform these options on.

Click "Carry Out Prune" to save your options.

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The next option on the right are "Ranks". Here is where you can set the user titles that can be earned through posting. You can create up to ten different titles and set the number of posts the member must make in order to attain that new rank. You can make these ranks anything you want and set them to any value you want.

Click "Set Ranks" to save your ranks.

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Next is the "Forum Rules" option. Here you can make rules visible to Guests, Members and Administrators. It will appear for those groups when they are in the forums. I usually don't put anything in these sections unless there is a problem that seems to be ignored.

Click "Submit" to save your rules.

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Next on the right is "Reported Posts". This is where you will find the posts that are reported to you by your users and it will give you various options on how to take care of the report.

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Next option is "Moderators". Here the CMS will list all your forums and beside each of them a drop down menu where you can select what user classes has rights to moderate the forum. I leave this at admin as I prefer to handle my website myself. However, if I got too busy, I will create more admins or create a new user class such as "Asst-Admin".

Click "Submit Moderators" when you are done.

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Tools is the last option on the right. Here you can select your various forums and several different tasks to perform on them. These tasks include recalculating the number of posts and replies made in your forum to give you proper and accurate counts. You may want to run this every once in a while if you find yourself deleting a lot of posts or moving them into other forums.

Click "Execute Functions" to finish this task.

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And there you have it, your forums are complete. If you have any problems, please feel free to respond and I will help you as best as I can. Good Luck!

Saved for Future Posts

BRAVO!! Very nice guide, great job and I'm sure this will help everyone that doesn't know exactly what to do when setting up their forums.

I need help,about how I can put the latest forums post on center of my home page...?

You need to active the last forum posts plugin and/or the menu depending on your theme. (I'm not sure about the name)