ocPortal Tutorial: Keeping on track with busy forums
Written by Philip Withnall, ocProducts
Once you've got a community set up and running, and it has attracted lots of members, it can get quite hard to keep up with discussion on your forums. However, OCF provides several methods to aid you in keeping up with the activity. This tutorial only applies to websites using OCF
.
Virtual forums
Virtual forums are basically a special type of forum that lists topics in a distinctive and hard-coded way. An example of this would be the "personal topics" virtual forum, which instead of listing normal topics, lists all the personal topics the current member has access to.
Posts since last visit
The link to see posts since your last forum visit
|
A sample of the interface
|
The "posts since last visit" virtual forum handily displays all the posts that were made since you last loaded a page (visited) your site. The virtual forum displays the posts as a list of links to the respective topics, with all the normal trimmings, such as topic icon, jump to first unread link, previews, etc. Clicking on one of the listed links would take you straight to the first new post in the specified topic.
Topics with unread posts
The link to see topics with unread posts
|
A sample of the interface
|
The "topics with unread posts" virtual forum displays any topics on the forum that have unread posts - posts that you have not viewed. Again, the virtual forum displays the posts as a list of links to the respective topics, with all the normal trimmings, such as topic icon, jump to first unread link, previews, etc. Clicking on one of the listed links would take you straight to the first unread post in the specified topic.
Read status
How the read/unread status of a topic works
|
A topic can either be "read", or "unread". If a topic is unread, it is emboldened in the topic listing, and is at the top. It also has a "jump to first unread" link. However, if a topic is read, it is not emboldened, and is ordered as normal in the topic listing.
Marking as unread
The button to mark a topic as unread
|
Marking as unread is a convenient way to tell yourself to come back to a topic without any hassle. When you open up a topic, it is automatically marked as "read" - it is unemboldened in the forum view, and taken out of both the "posts since last visit" and "topics with unread posts" virtual forums. However, you may want to make the topic appear emboldened again, perhaps for the aforementioned reasons. To do this, you need to mark the topic as unread. Simply click the mark topic as unread link.
Note that this function is available for forums as well as topics, and the method used to execute such functionality is identical in all cases.
Marking as read
The button to mark a topic as read
|
Marking as read is a function only available for forums, to save you the hassle of going through each topic and reading them when you might not want to, or they might not be relevant. Simply go to the forum view of the forum you want to mark as read (or any of its parents, such as the root forum), and click the mark as read button.
Note that this function is not available for individual topics, as to reach the button, you would be marking the topic as read anyway.
Tracking
The button to track a forum
|
Options for tracking a topic in your member profile
|
Tracking allows you to mark topics for notification; when a new reply is posted, you will be notified by e-mail of its presence. There are automatic tracking options (options for automatically marking things to be tracked) are in your Personal Zone, and allow you to choose when alert e-mails are sent out. You can choose to have an e-mail sent to you whenever anybody posts anywhere on the forum, just when somebody posts in a topic you've posted in, or not at all.
As well as automatic tracking, you can tell ocPortal to track topics manually, by clicking the track topic button in the topic view.
The button to track a topic
|
You can also mark whole forums to be tracked, by clicking the track forum button in the forum view. Note that if you mark a forum to be tracked, all sub-forums will be marked to be tracked too.
Untracking
The button to untrack a forum
|
The button to untrack a topic
|
As well as tracking topics and forums, you can easily mark them to not be tracked, using the untrack buttons. To untrack a topic, just click the untrack topic button in the topic view, and to untrack a forum, click the untrack forum button in the forum view. Note that if you mark a forum to not be tracked, all sub-forums will be marked to not be tracked too.
Concepts
- Virtual forum
- A special, separate forum view that lists special types of topic, such as personal topics.
- Tracking
- By tracking a topic, you get e-mail notifications when there are new posts to that topic. Also known as subscribing in some forum systems.
See also
