Web Office Quick Start - Forums

Introduction

Discussion forums are an great way of keeping the members of your church in contact with each other throughout the week by providing a place where they can discuss everything from theological issues to football!  This quick start guide shows you how to create a topic-based discussion forum and perform the role of a ‘moderator’.

Creating a new forum

• If you haven’t logged into the web site already, do so now.  Click the Login link at the top of the home page and enter the login name and password as supplied.
• Once you have successfully logged in click the web office link at the time of the home page. 

Every forum belongs to one of the groups in your church; some forums are intended for use by the whole church (for example, “chat”, “community needs”, and “announcements”) and so they will be located in a group used by the whole church, such as church life.  Other forums are intended for use by a specific group – for example your prayer team may wish to create a private forum for sharing prayer topics.

• Select a   group folder where you would like the forum to be located.
• Select the Forums tab to display the current list of forums in this group.

• Click the  Add a forum to the groupname group task at the bottom of the work pane.
• Enter the details of the new forum as follows:

• The security options allow you to select who can see the forum and who can contribute; for each group of people using the web site select whether the forum is hidden, read only, or read and write.
• Finally, click the create forum button.  The list of forums above will be updated shortly afterwards.

The Forum Moderator

At the bottom of each forum on your church web site is a list of moderators – a list made up of all those people who have the forums and chatter permission for the group where the forum is located.  Although new contributions to a forum appear on the web site immediately, any message which is considered inappropriate or offensive can be  flagged by anyone as “abusive”; the message will be removed and can only be re-instated after it has been reviewed by a moderator.   Moderators therefore have the final “say” over which messages can (and cannot) be published in a forum.

In the web office groups which contain messages which have been flagged as abusive are marked with the   symbol in the site manager area of the navigation pane.

To review an abusive message

• Click on the  group folder in the navigation pane marked by the  symbol.
• Select the forums tab in the work pane.  A list of forums will be displayed shortly afterwards.
• The forum containing the flagged message will be preceded by the   symbol. Click the forum title to display the threads inside.
• The thread containing the flagged message will be preceded by the   symbol.  Click the thread title to display the messages inside.
• The message which has been flagged will be preceded by the   symbol.  Click the abbreviated message text to display the entire contents of the message.
  • If the message requires minor changes before it can be released edit the text as necessary before clicking the save changes and release message button.
  • If the message requires no change before it can be released click the save changes and release message button.
  • If the message needs to be removed entirely click the delete message button.

In some cases an entire thread may have been flagged as abusive.  In this instance none of the messages in the list will be marked; instead the following symbol appears at the top of the messages list:

Click on any of the abbreviated messages to review the contents of this thread, making any changes as necessary.

• If the thread can be released after editing or removing some of the messages click the release the threadname thread task link.
• If the thread needs to be removed entirely click the delete the threadname thread task link; click the yes button to confirm your selection.