Forum Module

Wild Apricot provides a built-in Discussion Forum module. Forum is the place where people can post messages and others can view and reply to the posted messages. Use a Forum page as a place for your community to congregate, collaborate, discuss and share their ideas.
Forum pages can be made accessible to the public - or hidden and restricted to specific groups of users by placing them within website sections with restricted access (See Website Pages with Restricted Access. Even when a forum is placed on a public page, you can control forum settings to allow different functionality to public users and members depending on their level (See Forum settings section below).

Adding forums:

Go to Web Pages and click on [Add page] button. Select Forum from the Functional Pages.
Enter the name for the new forum page
Set page access as Members-only if needed
Click [Create] button

You can create multiple discussion forum pages as desired.

Forum settings

Click on [Edit settings] button. Following settings are available:
- Permissions. You can control what different groups of users can do - Public visitors and per each Member level:
  - No access - selected level will not be able to access it.
  - Read - allow only to read the forum messages
  - Read, Comment - allow to read and comment on any of the existing forum messages.
  - Read, Comment, Create - allows to read, comment and also to create new forum topics (message threads).
- Member picture. Select if you want to show member pictures in the forum and which of the picture fields in your database is to be used. For example you might have a photo field, an avatar and a logo and here you can select which of the fields to use.
- Description. Provide a brief introduction for the forum. It will be placed on top of the Forum page.

Forum topics and replies

Click on [Create Topic] button.
Enter the Subject (Topic) of the new forum post. This topic will be listed on the main forum page.
Enter the body of the message and click on [Create] button.

You can reply to the forum post in two ways:
- You can post a new comment by clicking on [New Comment] button. Enter the comment and click on [Post] button.
- Or you reply to a particular comment. Click on Reply (top-right corner) in any posted comment and it will "quote" the original comment in your post. It is helpful when the thread of comments gets long.

Users may also Edit / Delete their own comments. Administrator can edit/delete any message or comment.
User may also hide their Picture and name be
Note that if you see no picture and <Name is hidden> this means that the user has opted out to show this informationю See: Privacy options for your members in Member directory

Authorized members can use rich text formatting tools when adding topics and replies. (For security reasons their formatting tools are less extensive compared to the tools available to administrators):