Social Forum Creators: A Tutorial Just For You

So, as we were importing Social Forums into the new format we took privacy really seriously. As such, every Social Forum on the H.A.M.B. is now set to private. If you would like to change this setting, simply go to your Social Forum, roll your mouse over the link on the top right titled, "Social Forum Tools." You will see this:



Click on "Edit Social Forum." That will take you to a page that looks like this:



Here's a quick description of what is possible here:

1. If you leave all boxes unchecked, your forum will be private and users are not able to ask to join.

2. If you check the "open" box. Your forum is public. However, before a user can see the content they have to JOIN your forum. You will not be able to moderate who joins the forum.

3. If you click the moderate box, you will be able to moderate who joins the forum.

4. Ignore the "Sticky" box on the screen shot. That's an admin thing.

Here's some examples:

It seems overly complicated at first, but it works once you get your mind around it. The shortcoming here is that even with an open forum set for no moderation, a user still has to join to view the content. I'm working on that... But like I said, privacy was important to us.

So important, that we did screw something up in the import. As it stands, all of the old threads in old social forums are locked. I am working on fixing this with a batch query. Until then, you can unlock threads if you wish. Here's how you do this.

First, click on the check box located next to thread title (If you don't see a check box, then you are not the owner of the group). It will look like this:



From there, click the "select all" box. Then from the drop down, choose "Unlock Threads" and then click GO. This will unlock all threads on the forum page you are currently looking at. Unfortunately, you will have to do that for each page in your forum.

Alternatively, you can wait until I have a bulk fix... Which I'm hoping is soon.

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Also, if you have a busy social forum and need help with moderation you can now add moderators to your forum. To do so is simple. First, go to your social forum. Then, roll your mouse over the Social Forum Tools link, and click on "View Social Forum Members." It looks like this:



Once on the members list, click the "edit" link to the far right side of a members entry. From there, just click the "moderator" check box next to the user's name. It will look like this:

 

Nope... The creator of that group is @Carbs & Chrome - a long standing user with a very good reputation.

 

This was my fault. It's fixed now.