Forums

Enable On-line Conversations with Forums

Integrate forums into your website and enable visitors to participate in discussions, share their opinions, give you feedback or get help from other users. Starting active conversations is an essential step for building a healthy and expanding on-line community. On-line forums also create an environment for peer-to-peer help and knowledge sharing which lowers the number of support calls.

All Forum Features You Need

Kentico CMS provides all the typical features expected from a contemporary forum solution, including:

user avatars and signatures
post quotation
formatting via BBCode
abuse reports
bad words
file attachments
question-answer forums with a "mark as answer" button
private messaging
recognize users with activity points and badges
lock a thread and disallow further posts
stick a thread so that it's always displayed at the top
RSS or ATOM feeds

Pre-defined or Ad-hoc Forums

You can either pre-define a forum and display it somewhere on your website or utilize "ad-hoc" forums bound to a specific document. Ad-hoc forums are generated automatically when visitors post the first comment and usually allow users to give their opinion about an article, ask questions about a product etc.

Easy On-Site Administration

You can moderate forums, move threads or split posts into new threads directly from the live website.

Granular Security Model

You can limit which users are permitted to read, post or perform other actions on specific forums. This allows you to create private forums.

To prevent the activity of spam bots, CAPTCHA verification can optionally be required when posting new messages.

Moderation

Configure sensitive forums to be moderated and all posts will require approval before they become visible. You may designate users as moderators to grant them the power to manage and enforce the rules of your forums.

Forum Search

If forums are complex or have a high degree of activity, visitors may sometimes have trouble finding the information they need. With Kentico CMS, the content of forums can be included in website searches using our Smart Search module.

Example of a forum post returned in search results

Subscriptions and Favorites

List of forum favorites and subscription dialog

Forum users may leverage certain features to help keep track of forum content:

forums or individual posts can be added to easily accessible lists of favorites
subscription ensures that users receive notification e-mails whenever a new post is added to the designated section of a forum

Friendly URLs

You can configure Kentico CMS to use friendly URL addresses when navigating through forums and their threads. A friendly URL format can improve the user experience when browsing forums and also brings benefits when it comes to search engine optimization.