The Forum Plug-in

The Escenic Forum plug-in enables all of the above types of forums to be created and managed as part of an Escenic publication. In the Forum plug-in, a forum is simply a kind of content item, defined in the content-type resource along with other content types. A posting, on the other hand is a special object type, and is usually stored in its own database.

The Forum plug-in supports two different moderation schemes:

Pre-moderation

Postings are not published until they have been approved by a moderator.

Post-moderation

Postings are published immediately, but may be subsequently withdrawn by a moderator.

Moderation is, however, dependent upon another plug-in, the Dashboard plug-in. If this plug-in is not installed, then no moderation is possible. For further information about this, see Creating a Forum Content Type.

Any posting submitted to a forum that is not a reply to an existing posting initiates a new thread. The thread consists of all the responses to that posting, plus any responses to those responses and so on, recursively. This results in a tree of postings, all related to the original unprovoked posting, which is called the thread's root posting.

Any content type in a publication can be made "commentable" by adding a parameter to its definition in the publication's content-type resource. It will then be possible to add a comment submission form to content items of that type, allowing readers to comment on the items. For further information see Commentable Content Types.