Quick Help
Simplest Forum is designed to be about the simplest forum possible without being useless.
Getting Started
Configuration Settings
To get started, simply go to 'Components'->'Simplest Forum' and select 'Preferences'.
Disable / Enable the 'Use Captcha' and 'Anonymous Access' radios as desired.
NOTE: If enabling the "Use Captcha" option,
you should first install the plg_simplecaptcha component and make sure that it is published. Next, under the "View Group" setting,
select the user group that will be allowed to see the forums and their contents. Under the "Post Group"
setting, select the user group that will be allowed to post messages to the forums. Under the
"Moderator Group", select the user group that will be allowed to delete messages from the forums.
These groups and all of its child groups will have the specified permissions (see below).
Finally, under "Newest Thread First", select "Yes" to sort the forum posts with the newest topic
appearing near the top of the forum and the oldest topic at the bottom. Click 'Save'.
Creating Forums
Go to 'Components'->'Simplest Forum' and select 'New'. Fill in the "Name" field with the name of the
forum, and the "Description" field with the summary that will be displayed on the front end when this
forum is viewed. When you are finished, click 'Save'.
Adding Menu Items
To add a menu item for a list of available forums, select the desired menu from
the Menu Manager, go to the Menu Items page and click 'New'. Select the
'Simplest Forum' component, then the 'Forum List' layout. Supply a page class
suffix as desired, introduction text for the entire page, and a page title as
desired.
To add a menu item for a specific forum, select the desired menu from the Menu
Manager, go to the Menu Items page and click 'New'. Select the 'Simplest Forum'
component, then the 'Forum Detail' layout. From the "Parameters - Basic"
section, select the forum to show. Finally supply a page class suffix and page
title as desired.
Customizing Forum Display
An example CSS style sheet has been supplied in
/components/com_simplestforum/assets/example.css. This file shows how to
customize the appearance of the forum list and forum detail views.
The forum is now ready to go!
Forum Admin
Administration of forum posts is limited to deleting undesirable posts. To delete a post,
- Log in to the FRONT END as a user that is a member of the Moderator Group that you set in the preferences (see above).
- View the forum post. There will be a link for "Delete this Message" next to the "Respond to this Message".
- Click the "Delete this Message" link. The message will be deleted (Note that child messages will not be deleted).
Joomla! Search Integration Plugin (plg_simplestforum)
Simplest Forum is now bundled with a plg_simplestforum.zip file which allows you to search
Simplest Forum posts using the standard Joomla! search. Once the file is installed, simply
enable it in the Plugin Manager. After enabling it, performing a search in the standard
Joomla! search bar will yield matches from post subjects and message bodies.
Latest Posts Module (mod_simplestforum_latest_posts)
Simplest Forum is now bundleted with a mod_simplestforum_latest_posts.zip file which
provides a very simplistic "Latest Posts" view of selected forums. Once the module is installed,
there are a handful of configuration options.
- Introduction Length
- This controls how many characters of the post will be displayed before the elipses (...) and "Read More" link
- Posts to Display
- The number of posts to display introductions and links to
- Forum Ids
- A comma separated list of forum IDs (not forum names) from which posts should be displayed. (You can find the forum ID from the Simplest Forum forum list page)
- Read More Text
- The text to be displayed in the link to view the full forum post
- Show Date
- Set this to Yes to show the date / time of the post(s), No to hide that information
- Date Format
- The PHP date() format string for how the date should be rendered if "Yes" was selected for Show Date. See http://us3.php.net/manual/en/function.date.php
Because the display for this module is so basic, I recommend overriding the layout
in your template if you need special tweaks.
Getting Help
If you run into any problems, please check out our support forum or feel free to contact
us by sending email to info@ambitionality.com.
Upgrading
To upgrade Simplest Forum to the latest version:
- From the Joomla! administration, navigate to "Components"->"Simplest Forum"
- Click the "Back Up" button. A copy of all of your posts and forums will be made.
- Through the Joomla! Extensions installer, remove the Simplest Forum component
- Download the latest version of the Simplest Forum from the Joomla! extensions website (http://extensions.joomla.org)
- Through the Joomla! Extensions installer, install the new Simplest Forum component
Security Note
No special effort has been made to prevent automated submissions and board
spamming other than disallowing non-users to make posts, using tokens and the SimpleCAPTCHA.
Donate
If this component has saved you some time or helped you make money on a
project, please consider making a $1 or $2 donation by following the link below. You can
also donate by supplying translations (we need updated language files for all
supported languages and updated help files as well). Thank you!
Change Log
- 2008-07-24 v 1.2.3
-
- Added French front end language pack (thanks to Francois Soulard [soulard@visio-conseil.com www.visio-conseil.com] for the translation)
- Added French language pack for Simple CAPTCHA (thanks to Francois Soulard for the translation)
- Added French language pack for Latest Posts module (thanks to Francois Soulard for the translation)
- Minor Fix added language translation support for ANONYMOUS label
- Fixed / hacked around infinite redirect loop issue with IIS CGI
- Fixed SimpleCAPTCHA caching issue and incorrect Content-Type response header (thanks to Alexey for pointing this bug and solution out)
- 2008-06-16 v 1.2.2
-
- "Fixed" SimpleCAPTCHA to work with PHP4
- Added language support for SimpleCAPTCHA
- Added quick and dirty "latest posts" module v 1.0.0
- Added search plugin v 1.0.0
- Improved presentation of permission options in configuration parameters
- Added "Back Up" option in administration interface to allow for upgrading component without data loss
- Refactored CAPTCHA code to display via direct rendering rather than temporary image file
- Added German front end language pack (thanks to Peter Grieser for the translation)
- Added Dutch front end language pack (thanks to Bert Koopman - www.woolder-es.nl - for the translation)
- 2008-05-24 v 1.2.1
-
- Added support for "Show Page Title" in menu parameters to forum and post list
- Corrected bug in plg_simplecaptcha with font file not being installed
- 2008-05-20 v 1.2.0
-
- Refactored CAPTCHA to Simple CAPTCHA plugin instead of Simple CAPTCHA component
- Fixed javascript bug with "security_code" not defined
- Added CSS to identify child posts separately from parents (thanks to Barry Windridge for this contribution)
- Added honoring of line breaks in post messages (thanks to Barry Windridge for this contribution)
- Added configuration setting to allow newest thread to appear at the top of the post list along with their children posts (children posts are still ordered newest at bottom) (thanks to Barry Windridge for this contribution)
- Added various code changes to avoid annoying PHP "Notice" messages for PHP configurations with sensitive error reporting options
- Added select list for forums on Forum Detail view menu configuration
- 2008-05-08 v 1.1.5
-
- Added Danish language pack for front end (that you to Mads Isberg Hansen for supplying the translations!)
- Fixed bug with editing of existing forums always creating new forums (thanks to Jardi for reporting this bug)
- 2008-05-04 v 1.1.4
-
- Added Czech language pack for front end (that you to Michal Podsednik for supplying the translations!)
- Added moderator group selection to preferences
- Fixed bug with double posting of responses
- Fixed example css style sheet link to relative (to work with sites working on subdirectories of root)
- 2008-04-21 v 1.1.3
-
- 2008-04-17 v 1.1.2
-
- Added language pack support.
- Added Hungarian language pack (thank you to Erik Maier:[email] for supplying the translations!)
- 2008-04-13
-
- Fixed BUG 20080413_0511-EM "Undefined variable: row in /administrator/components/com_simplestforum/views/forumedit/view.html.php on line 39"
- 2008-04-07
-
- Added Forum Detail view
- Refactored code to be PHP4 compatible (was only PHP5 previously)
- Added example css (/components/com_simplestforum/assets/example.css)
- Added multiple level replies
License
This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or
(at your option) any later version.
This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
GNU General Public License for more details.
You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software
Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307 USA