Last modified on 09/16/98

The Board's Forum System


The Board comes with a program called tbforum.  This program is used to run a
forum.  It is exeuted with the forum number as an argument.  Upon execution
it loads the config files into memory and displays the main forum menu.
Forums are defined in the file dat/forums.dat, or whatever you specify in
theboard.dat.  The forums.dat file is a list of full paths and filenames to a
forums main config files.  They are listed one per line and the line l\number
is the forum number.

The forums main config file consists of different sections.  each section is
started with a [TITLE].  Right now the two setions used in the file are
[MISC] and [FILES].

This is the format of the [MISC] section:

	[MISC]
	The Linux Forum			-Title of the forum
	linux				-Shortname.  Used for filenames and stuff
	darren				-Logon name of the Forum Sysop.
	/theboard/forums/linux/intro	-Intro file(Not used yet)
	/usr/bin/slrn -n		-command line for reader

This is the format of the [FILES] section:

	[FILES]
	/theboard/forums/linux/file	-Full path to file area config
	/theboard/forums/linux/mesg	-Full path to message area config
					 (Not used anymore)
	/theboard/forums/linux/news	-Full path to forum news file
	/theboard/forums/linux/info	-Full path to bulletin area config
	/theboard/forums/linux/user	-Full path to forum userlist(Not used)

This file will probably be changing with versions and we will update it here.

The Bulletin areas config is just a list of file names with there full path
of filles you want to display to the users in the bulletin menu.

The file area config is setup with one file area definition per line.  The
definithion consists of the files area name to be displayed to the users and
the full path to the directory where the files are for that directory.  So
if you want to make a file are called Computer Games - DOS and the files
were in /files/dos/games then this would be the line you would put into the
config file.

Computer Games - DOS:/files/dos/games

The message file is no longer used but you will need to files in the forum
directory for the message areas to work.  They are arealist and
newsrc.default.  The area list lists all of the newsgroups for that forum
one per line.  The newsrc file is the default .newsrc file to give users
when they join the forum for the first time.  This should be a list of
newsgroups that you want a new user to a forum to be automatically suscribed
too.  For most forums it will probably be the same as the area list.  If you
have any questions look at the files in the sample forum.

Each forum can be assigned a forum sysop.  This will allow you to give any
user on your system a forum that he or she can run.  When the forum sysop is
in the forum they can type '*' to invoke the forum editor.  This will allow
them to modify alot of the different options of the forum.  Right now the
editor is very incomplete.  At the moment all that really can be done to edit
the bulletins and news files.  We are working on adding the ability to add
and delete bulletins, file areas, and message areas.  Also the file area
editor is work to some point.  This will allow you to add files in the
configured directory to the file listing.  It even has support to extract the
FILE_ID.DIZ out of ZIP files and view graphics images in the editor(with
zgv).

The forum system has a menu option Forum Settings.  This has not been written
yet but will contain user specific settings for the forum.  It basicly will
deal with interface options and a few other things.

If you want to create a new forum you will need to create a new directory
under your forums directory.  You will then need to create a config file in
that directory.  Follow the pattern above.  The format is very strict, so
leave it in the same order as above.  After that you will need to create the
file, message, and bulletin area config files that you specified in your
the new forums config file.  Also you will want to create a news file to
display news for that forum to the users.  You will also need to create a
arealist and newsrc.default file for the forums newsgroups(see above).
After you have set all of that up you need to add the full path and filename
to the file forums.dat.  You will be able to refer to the forum by it's
forum number which is the line number it is on in the forums.dat file. 
Add it to the end of the file so you don't have to touch any of the lines
that are already there.

If you have any questions you can post them in The Board's Support Forum
message areas which are located on my server or you can post to the message
boards on our web site at http://theboard.ml.org.  Plus you can get in touch
with me directly via email at <dbraun@gte.net>.


