How to Configure Sub-Forums

forumwise · Admin Joined: 28 Jul 2005 $ 78.78

Sub-Forums

Our Sub-Forum feature allows administrators to go beyond the basic heirarchy:

Category -> Forum

And provides an additional level of organization for their forums:

Category -> Forum -> Sub-Forum

This feature is especially useful for large boards that have many forums.

To see an example of sub-forums in action view the ForumWise Support Forum index.

Terminology

For clarity, we will define some terms for use in this guide:

Main Forum Index - the page that lists all your forums.
example: http://support.forumwise.com/forum.html

Individual Forum Index - the page that lists all the threads in a given forum.
example: http://support.forumwise.com/support-forum-4.html

Parent Forum - a forum that contains a sub forum.

Sub Forum - forum that has been assigned a Parent Forum. It will still be displayed on the Main Forum Index, but in a compact form grouped under it's Parent Forum.

Setting up Sub-Forums

First you need to pick a forum that you want to be a Sub Forum, and you need to also decide what it's Parent Forum will be.

Please note that is it critical that the parent and child forums are in the same Category.

Locate the Id number of the Parent Forum from it's URL. For example, the Id of the following forum is 4...
http://support.forumwise.com/support-forum-4.html

Next, go to your admin panel: Forum Admin -> Management

Find the entry for the Forum that is about to become a Sub-Forum.

The last column is called "Parent Forum". The controls below this heading allow you to select the Id of a forum's Parent Forum. A setting of "0" indicates the forum has no Parent.

Now, set the forum's Parent. For example, if the Parent Forum Id is 4, then click the > arrow 4 times to increase the Parent Id selection, and if needed, the < arrow can be used to decrease the Parent Id selection.

Please note, that you should never set a forum's Parent Id to that of a forum that is already a Sub-Forum. In other words, a forum can not be both a parent and a sub-forum.

You are done! Go to your Main Forum Index. You should now see the Sub Forum grouped with it's Parent in the Main Forum Index.

Repeat this process as needed.

Alternate Sub-Forum Placement option

Everything should work well within most styles, however if you use a style like "AdInfinitum", you may find that the sub-forum links on your Individual Forum Indexes are placed at the bottom of the page (or possibly missing). If this occurs, you can try the Alternate sub-forum placement option in General Admin -> Configuration.

Sub-Forum Icon Style option

Your sub-forums start defaulted to a Standard set of icons, so that there is a gauranteed available set of images. Not all, but most styles provide a suitable set of icons that are integrated with the active style. If your style supports them, you may activate the Custom mode to get a more integrated appearance.
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Mark

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