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,

  1. 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).
  2. View the forum post. There will be a link for "Delete this Message" next to the "Respond to this Message".
  3. 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:

  1. From the Joomla! administration, navigate to "Components"->"Simplest Forum"
  2. Click the "Back Up" button. A copy of all of your posts and forums will be made.
  3. Through the Joomla! Extensions installer, remove the Simplest Forum component
  4. Download the latest version of the Simplest Forum from the Joomla! extensions website (http://extensions.joomla.org)
  5. 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
2008-06-16 v 1.2.2
2008-05-24 v 1.2.1
2008-05-20 v 1.2.0
2008-05-08 v 1.1.5
2008-05-04 v 1.1.4
2008-04-21 v 1.1.3
2008-04-17 v 1.1.2
2008-04-13
2008-04-07

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