Platform: ColdFusion

You've installed FuseTalk and now you're ready to launch your discussion forums…where to start?

For a general installation, once you have decided on the types of categories your forum will have, you need only walk through setting up the forum settings, create your forum categories and you are good to go.

FuseTalk is a multi-tiered application in that you have the following areas of control:

1. Global Administration Area
2. Forum Administration Area
3. The Forum

The Global Administration area is the main area that oversees all application-wide settings, from providing SMTP settings, to forum paths, security settings and much more. This area is also where you will create your forums and assign forum owner(s) to them. This area is primarily reserved for the Application Administrator.

The Forum Administration area is where you will micro-manage the forum itself such as setting up categories, managing forum-specific settings etc. This area is primarily reserved for Forum Owner(s).

The Forum holds all the data and conversations between users, where you can leave and expect to see responses to messages you have left. Some think of them as message boards, discussion groups, discussion forum, online forum, threaded discussions, conferences or bulletin boards. And we call them Forums. Depending on your requirements, this area is open to a general audience or can be limited to registered users through enrollment.

Note: The Forum Administration is done at the Forum level. The only difference is in the login rights of the individual. A Forum Owner when logged in, will have a menu option to administer the forum, while general users will not.

Here are the basic steps to getting your forum up and running:

1. Create the forum in the Global Administration Area - Log into the Global Administration area. For FuseTalk Basic users or any version with a one-forum license, you will be presented with a pop-up window to create your forum immediately upon entering the Global Administration (if you do not see the pop-up window, ensure nothing on your system is blocking pop-up windows). For multi-forum licenses, you will need proceed to the "FORUMS - Management" area from the drop-down menu and select "add forum". FuseTalk will step you through the initial creation of your forum. During this process, you will either assign a user as the forum owner or in the case of a "stand-alone" forum, you can create the owner on the fly.

2. Once your forum is created, click on the FuseTalk logo in the top left hand corner to go back to the main Global Administration page where you will see your newly created forum under "Recent Items". Click on the "View Forum" icon to go to your forum.

3. Log into the forum as the forum owner and click on the button located along the top menu.

4. A left hand menu should now be visible, click on the link that says "categories".

5. Create categories for your forum and then edit their properties. Details on adding a category proceed here.

6. You're done!

Here are a few points to keep in mind:

1. By default, when categories are created they are given a status as ‘Hidden’, which means they are not visible on the discussion forum publicly until the settings are configured properly and you are ready to activate it for forum use. In order for users to see the category, you will need to edit the category and change its status to "post/reply" (see photo).

2. The default setting for how many days back a user sees topics is set at 20 days. If you find topics seem to disappear from view, make this user setting higher.

FuseTalk is a very robust application, with a rich feature set. We recommend that you take advantage of the online help system to familiarize yourself with the many other extras you can implement on your forums.