About
SocialToaster has the option to add a fully featured user forum into your program. The forum will be available to all users of your program as a place to encourage discussion and generate interaction. Users will have the ability to create posts, reply to posts, and like other users' content. Additionally, users can be awarded points for their involvement in the forum to keep the discussion moving. Please note that there is an additional fee to add forums to your program. Please contact [email protected] for more information.
Managing Your Forum
Category Management
The first thing that needs to be done for a new forum is the creation of some categories. These will be general topics that your users can post in. To create some categories head to Features -> Forums -> Categories in you dashboard.
Here you can add, organize, and hide categories. Keep in mind that once a category has associated posts it cannot be deleted or moved.
Moderator Management
Once you've setup some categories you can choose some forum moderators. Simply search for a user by name or email and then you can add them as an administrator. Additionally, any administrators of you program are automatically able to moderate your forums.
Users can also be made moderators from their user page in the Dashboard.
Moderating Your Forum
Blocking Users
A user can be blocked by forum moderators. This will removed all access to the forum for that user. In order to block a user, a forum moderator has to click the button below in either their Dashboard user profile, or public user profile.
The blocked user will then be sent a message informing them that they have been blocked.
Deleting Posts or Replies
Posts or replies to posts can be deleted by forum moderators on the forum itself. Each post and reply will have a remove icon next to it. Upon post or reply removal, the user that posted the post or reply will be informed with an email
Searching
The forums offer a full text search of all posts and replies. Simply type into the search bar at the top of the forum to see all relevant content
Managing Spam
Users of your forum can mark posts as spam. Any posts marked as spam will show up under the Moderate -> Spam category on the forum itself. Moderators can then decide how to proceed with the marked posts.
Adding Forum Blocks to Your Pages
The main way to view a forum is to go to the forum page but, there are two blocks available to make it so that users have visibility into forums on a page by page basis. You are able to add these blocks to the logged in page, and any custom blocks page.
Featured Posts
This block will show you posts from category of the forum of your choosing. In order to add it make sure you are on a "Logged In Users Only" page. Then choose the Featured Posts block
Click on the gear icon for the block that was added and then select the category and posts from that category that you wish to display:
Once you have made your selections, you will be able to see the selected posts and users can link to those posts.
Comments
The comments block allows users to post comments directly into a block. You can choose to display a category from the forum that currently exists or use a "Hidden Forum Category" so that the posts only display on the page you choose. In order to set up the block, make sure you choose the logged in page or a custom blocks page.
From the block, click on the gear icon. By default, we have the comments go into a Hidden Forum Category. You can choose to change the title from the box.
Or you can select to display a category that already exists. Un-check the "Use a Hidden Forum Category" and select the category that you want to display.
The Comments Block displays as a 4 wide:
