How to Build a Forum Website with Drupal 6
A Web forum is a popular and effective way to drive traffic to your website because it allows people to learn from and help each other. Forums also keep an archive of past discussions to refer to. The Drupal content management system allows you to build your own forum website for free. A typical forum website is divided into categories, forums and forum topics. Drupal 6 allows you to create categories, which it calls containers, under which you can create forums. You cannot post forum topics directly to a container. Users must post forum topics to a forum. Containers are optional. If you only have a few forums that would fit under only one category, you do not need to create containers.
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Instructions
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Launch your web browser and navigate to your Drupal 6 website. Log in to the administrative account.
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Go to Administer > Site Building > Modules, and enable the "Forum," "Taxonomy," and "Comments" modules by clicking the corresponding check boxes. Click the "Save Configuration" button to save your changes.
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Go to Administer > Content Management > Forums > Settings. This will present a group of options that allow you to specify how many posts a forum topic must have to be considered hot, how many forum topics to display per page, and the default sorting order of forum topics. Adjust the settings to your liking, and click the "Save Configuration" button.
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Go to Administer > Content Management > Forums > Add Container. Fill out the "Container Name" and "Description" fields. Choose the "Parent" from the drop-down list. If you have no other containers or forums, your only choice will be "Root." Choose the "Weight" from its drop-down list. A higher number will place the container lower on a list of containers. Click the "Save" button. Repeat this step until you have all the containers you want.
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Go to Administer > Content Management > Forums > Add Forum. The fields and options on this page are similar to those on the "Add Container" page. Fill out the fields and adjust the options. Click the "Save" button. Repeat this step until you have all the forums you want.
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Go to Administer > Site Building > Blocks. Find the "Active Forum Topics" block. Hover your mouse pointer over the handle icon under the block column. Then hold your mouse button down, and drag the block to a region on the list. Repeat this procedure on the "New Forum Topics" block. Click "Save Blocks."
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Go to Administer > User Management > Permissions. Under "Forums Module" on the permissions list, click the check boxes under the "Authenticated User" column to enable the following permissions only for registered users of your site: "Create Forum Topics," "Delete Own Forum Topics," and "Edit Own Forum Topics." This will ensure that only registered users of your site are able to create and manage their own posts. Also check the boxes to enable the "Access Comments" permission under "Comments Module" for anonymous and authenticated users. Click the "Save Permissions" button.
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Tips & Warnings
Registered users create forum topics by clicking "Create Content" and then choosing "Forum Topic" from the list.
For added functionality, it is highly recommended that you install the Forum Access, Advanced Forum, Quote, Subscription, BBCode, and Comment Mover modules.
Install the PrivateMsg module to enable users to send each other private messages on your new forum. (See Resources.)
Enable and configure the Profile module to extend your user profiles so that users can share information about themselves with each other. (See Resources.)
References
Resources
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