The Discussion Forum is a great place to communicate with other people. Not only can you read about things that are going on in the church and with its people, but you can also inform people of things that you want them to know and ask questions about a variety of subjects. If someone sees your question and they know the answer (or have an opinion) they can answer in what is known as a thread. Each individual comment in a thread is known as a post. So, in this tutorial we are going to talk about.
Reading Posts in the Forum
- Go to the Discussion page of the Antioch Website and you will see the forum. Anyone can look at it and read it, but you can only post if you are logged into the website.
- You will see a row of pictures that look like buttons along the left side of the forum beside the forum names. If these buttons are orange, the forums contain threads that you have not read yet. If the buttons are grey, you have read all of the threads contained within that forum.
- Click on a forum name that you want to read and you will open up that forum so that you can see a list of all the threads contained in the forum. They should be arranged so that the newest threads or the threads with the newest posts will be at the top. Again, the threads you have not read yet will show an orange "button" picture.
- Click on the thread name to read all the posts contained in that forum. If it is a long thread, it may go on for several pages. You will see that information in the bottom of the thread box and you can click on next to go to the next page.
- When you are finished reading the thread and wish to make your own post or comment,go to the Reply section below.
Posting to a Forum
- Click Forum Home and click on the name of the forum you want to post to. This takes you to the page of the selected forum. If any posts have been made to the forum, they are listed here. Remember, you can't post to a group or category, only to a forum.
- Click the New Thread button. This takes you to the Add/Edit page.
- In the subject box, tuype a subject that best describes the content and purpose of the post. This will be the title of the post or thread as it appears on the site.
- Enter the content of your post into the large text box.
- (Optional) Click the Insert Image or Insert Smiley buttons if you want from within the text editor.
- (Optional) Upload an attachment. Simply click the Browse button and select your attachment from your local file system. click Upload File. after you do this, the file you just uploaded will be selected in the drop-down list.
- Select Notification to receive e-mail notification whenever someone replies to your post.
- Select Update.
Replying in a Forum
- Click on the name of the forum you wan to reply in. This takes you to the forum. The post you want to reply to should be listed. If there are lots of posts, you may need to do a search to find it.
- Click the Reply button and do your thing again.
- Click Update.
Quoting a Previous Post
Sometimes your reply will be relevant to only one part of a post and you want to make it easy for people to know what you're talking about. At other times, the thread you are replying to might already have ten posts and your reply is targeted at one reply in particular. By selecting Quote instead of Reply, the body of the original post is added inside the editor. This helps others understand the point of your post.
Searching for a Post
The Forums module has its own search function, although the standard DNN search works just fine. The search is simple to use, so we won't take you through it in detail. To use the Forum Search, simply click the Search button, which is shown by a magnifying glass, and you will be navigated to a screen that allows you to search yb who posted it, what the subject is you are looking for, the date range during which the post was posted, which forums it may be in, and what is the content of the post you are searching for. Please note that leaving any of these blank will search for anything matching all the criteria you input on this screen.