Forum

Inserting the Forum server control onto a page

Prerequisite

You must have installed the server controls. See Installing server controls into Visual Studio Toolbox.

1. In Visual Studio, choose View > Toolbox.
2. Click the Ektron server control tab to display the server controls.
3. Drag the Forum server control and drop it into the desired location on the page.

   NOTE: You also can place the cursor on the page where you want the server control, then double click the server control that you want.

   <CMS:Forum ID="Forum1" runat="server" />

4. Click on Forum in the code to display and modify the control’s properties using the Properties window of Visual Studio. The page is updated as you modify the property values.
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Forum properties

The following are Ektron-specific server controla server control uses API language to interact with the CMS and Framework UI to display the output. A server control can be dragged and dropped onto a Web form and then modified. properties. For information about native .NET properties such as font, height, width and border style, use Visual Studio^® help.

• AllowAnonymousPost (Boolean)

  Set to True to allow site visitors the option of posting anonymously to the forum. When true, a Post Anonymous checkbox appears above the text editor used to create a post.

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  If a site visitor adds a check mark to this box, the word Anonymous appears where the Display Name normally appears. The default is True.

  • True. Display Post Anonymous checkbox when site visitors create a post.
    
  • False. Disable Post Anonymous checkbox.
• BoardID (Long)

  The ID of the discussion board to display on this page if one is not defined in a query string parameter. If you don’t know the ID, click Ellipses (), then sign in and select a discussion board.

• CacheInterval (Double)

  The number of seconds that a server controla server control uses API language to interact with the CMS and Framework UI to display the output. A server control can be dragged and dropped onto a Web form and then modified.’s data is cached. The default is 0 (zero). For example, if you want to cache the data for 5 minutes, set to 300. See also: Caching with server controls.

• CustomOrderBy (String)

  Provide a property’s Friendly Name to order search results by that property. For example, if you define DocAuthor, results will be sorted by the document’s author. Results can be ascending or descending based on OrderDirection. If you enter an invalid property, no search results are returned. If you specify both CustomOrderBy and OrderBy, the OrderBy property is ignored.

• DefaultObjectID (Long)

  The Static ID of a community group.

• DoInitFill (Boolean)

  By default, Fill occurs during the Page_Init event. Set to false if you want to postpone the fill-action until later. In this case, Fill is automatically called during the Page Render event. You might do this if you need to set or change a property on the control in code-behind and have it render with your changes shown.

• DynamicForumParameter (String)

  Gets or sets the QueryString parameter to read a forum ID dynamically. The default is “f”. Note that a Forum resides one level below a discussion board.

• DynamicGroupParameter (String)

  Gets or sets the QueryString parameter to read a group’s ID dynamically. The default is “g”.

• DynamicObjectParameter (String)

  Dynamic Parameter for the community group id. Default is “id”.

• DynamicParameter (String)

  Gets or sets the QueryString parameter to read a discussion board’s ID dynamically. Set to None - Use Default. If you want to always display the default discussion board. Note that a discussion board is one level above a Forum.

  • boardid. Reads a Threaded discussion board’s ID dynamically.
  • None - Use Default. Use the default discussion board’s ID.
  • ID. Reads a discussion board’s ID dynamically.
• DynamicThreadParameter (String)

  Gets or sets the QueryString parameter to read an individual thread’s ID dynamically. The default is “t”. Note that a Thread resides 2 levels below a discussion board and one level below a Forum.

• EditorCSS (String)

  Set the style sheet for the Editor when a site visitor creates or edits a post. By default, this property is blank. When a style sheet is not supplied, the style sheet defined in the Theme property is used.

• EditorToolbar (String)

  Enter a comma separated list of items that you want to appear on the Editor’s toolbar. The default is StyleMenu, FontMenu, ParagraphMenu, TextFormatMenu, LinkMenu, ClipBoardMenu, SymbolsMenu, EmoticonSelect, WMV, Table. See also: Adding and removing toolbar items from the editor.

• EnableForumQuickSelect (Boolean)

  If you set this property to true, a drop-down list of all forums appears below the topic list. The site visitor can click a forum and jump immediately to it.

• EnableThreadRating (Boolean)

  If you set this property to true, a ContentReview server control appears on any topic screen run by this server control. The site visitor can use the control to rate the topic thread. An average rating for the thread appears next to each topic on the forum screen.

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• ExcludeList (String)

  Enter a comma-separated list of custom user properties to exclude from the Forum’s profile page. For example, to suppress the Subscriptions field value, enter subscriptions.

• FilterXslt (String)

  Enter the path to an XSLTExtensible Stylesheet Language Transformations file used to filter forum content, such as, HTML Attributes, Tags and unwanted words in a user’s forum post. The path can be relative or absolute. The user’s post is filtered when the user clicks Submit.

  By default, this property points to <webroot>/siteroot/Workarea/Xslt/ForumFilter.xslt. This file removes hrefs with javascript:, vbscript: and “on” events in the link. You can modify this file or create a new one.

  WARNING! Files stored in the siteroot\Workarea folder are overwritten (or deleted) when you upgrade Ektron. To avoid problems, copy the default file to a folder outside the siteroot\workarea folder then edit it. If there is no default file, create the file outside the siteroot\workarea folder. Next, in this property, enter the path to that file relative to the site root folder.

• Hide (Boolean)

  Hides or displays the output of the control in design time and run time.

  • True. Hide the control output.
  • False. Display the control output.
• HideUserProfile (Boolean)
  • True. Hide user profiles from non-administrator users.
    
  • False. Display user profiles for non-administrator users.

  The default is True. An administrator can view a profile regardless of how this property is set.

  On the other hand, if the Private Profile is set to Private for any user, the profile information is not visible, regardless of this setting. If Private Profile is set to Colleagues, only colleagues can see profile information. When the profile is visible, only properties and their values not listed in the ExcludeList property (above) appear.

• JavascriptEditorHeight (Integer)

  Set the height in pixels for the eWebEdit400 editor. The default is 400. The minimum height is 300.

• JavascriptEditorWidth (Integer)

  Set the width in pixels for the eWebEdit400 editor. The default is 625. The minimum width is 500.

• Language (Integer)

  Set a language for viewing content; shows results in design-time (in Visual Studio) and at run-time (in a browser).

  Set property to -1 if you want the Forum server control to display topics from all available languages.

• ObjectType (String)

  Describes the type of forum displayed by this server control.

  • CommunityGroup. Used for forums inside a Community page.
  • DiscussionBoard. Used for forums on templates that are not Community pages.
• OrderBy (String)

  The order of search results. For example, you want to sort search results by last modified date.

  • Title. Content title (alphabetical).
  • ID. Content ID number.
  • Date Created. Date the content was created.
  • Date Modified. Date the content was most recently modified.
  • Editor. User who last edited the content (alphabetical).
  • Rank. Rank assigned to the content.

  NOTE: The OrderDirection field determines the direction of the search results. For example, if you sort by ID and OrderDirection is set to Descending, the results sort by ContentID number with the highest number at the top of the list.

  IMPORTANT: Specifying a CustomOrderBy property overrides this property.

• OrderDirection (String)

  The direction in which search results are sorted. The default is Ascending.

  • Ascending. Alphabetical results from A to Z; numeric values low to high; dates from oldest to most recent
  • Descending. Alphabetical results from Z to A; numeric values high to low; dates from most recent to oldest
• ProfileLink (ItemLinkTargets)

  Enter a link to the user’s social networking profile page, a part of Ektron’s community platform. This allows a user to click another user’s name link or avatar and be taken to the user’s profile page. The link has 2 variables that represent the user’s ID and display name.

  • {0}. User ID
  • {1}. User display name

  You need to have both variables in the link. The Web form can be relative or absolute. For example:

  userprofilepage.aspx?uid={0}&dn={1}

  The default for this property is ?g=profileu={0}.

  When the default for this property is used, users are forwarded to a user’s profile page that is included with the forum control.

• ProfileLinkTarget

  Determines the type of window that appears when you click a link in the server control.

  • _Self (default). Opens in same window.
  • _Top. Opens in parent window.
  • _Blank. Opens in new window.
  • _Parent. Opens in the parent frame.
• ShowCategories (Boolean)

  If set to True, when this server control appears, the user see a Filter by Category option. This option helps a site visitor zero in on relevant content. If False, the Filter by Category option does not appear.

• Stylesheet (String)

  Enter the style sheet that will determine the appearance of the menus. FlexMenus use an .xsl file to control their behavior, and a .css file to control their display. Ektron provides several sample menus, and each has a .css file. If this is a new menu, you may find it easier to copy and edit a .css file provided with a sample menu. See also: SampleMenu.

  WARNING! Files stored in the siteroot\Workarea folder are overwritten (or deleted) when you upgrade Ektron. To avoid problems, copy the default file to a folder outside the siteroot\workarea folder then edit it. If there is no default file, create the file outside the siteroot\workarea folder. Next, in this property, enter the path to that file relative to the site root folder.

• SuppressWrapperTags (Boolean)

  Suppresses the output of the span/div tags around the control.

  • True. Suppress wrap tags.
  • False (default). Allow wrap tags.
• TaxonomyCols (String)

  Use this property to determine the number of columns on the Taxonomy screen available from this discussion board. In the illustration below, taxonomya content-level categorization system that uses one-to-many relationships (such as Ronald Reagan is to Actor, Governor, and President) to create a scalable organization of content. A taxonomy lets your site visitors navigate content independent of the folder structure. categories are arranged in 3 columns (the default value).

  

• TaxonomyMarkupLanguage (String)

  Enter the template markup file (.ekml) that controls the display of this server control. To use the default .ekml file, leave this field blank.The default file follows this pattern: \siteroot\Workarea\template\this object\objectname.ekml. For example, \siteroot\Workarea\template\collection\collection.ekml.To customize the default .ekml file, copy it to a folder outside the siteroot\workarea folder and edit it. Next, in this property, enter the path to that file relative to the site root folder.See also: Ektron Markup Language

• Theme (String)

  Enter the custom theme’s folder name. The theme can be relative to the site root or located in the current folder. For example:

  • Relative. Theme=”/workarea/csslib/themes/winter”
  • Current Folder. Theme=”mytheme”

  If you do not specify a theme, the property uses the location defined by the discussion board’s CSS theme property in the Workarea. See also: Using a custom theme

• WrapTag (String)

  Lets a developer specify a server control’s tag.

  • Span (default). Designate an inline portion of an HTML document as a span element.
  • Div. Apply attributes to a block of code.
  • Custom. Lets you use a custom tag.

Updating the page Command

To prevent an error from appearing when a user posts a reply to the Web page that hosts the Forum server control:

1. Open the Web form onto which you inserted the Forum server control.
2. Access Source view.
3. Go to the top line of the Web form, which begins with @ Page.

   <%@ PageLanguage="VB"AutoEventWireup="false" 
   CodeFile="Default2.aspx.vb"Inherits="Default2" %>

4. Near the end of the line, enter validaterequest=false.
5. Build the page.

Using a custom theme

This property lets you specify a custom location for your themes. By doing so, you prevent them from being overwritten when you upgrade.

If you do not specify a theme in the server control, Ektron uses what is defined in the discussion board’s properties CSS Theme field.

To create a custom theme:

1. Create a new subfolder on your site. In this example, we use a winter theme:

   <web root>/<your site>/Workarea/csslib/winter.

2. Copy all files in the /Workarea/Threadeddisc/themes folder to the winter folder.
3. Change the image files to match your theme. To find the name of an image:
   1. Right click on it while viewing it in a browser.
   2. Select Properties. The name appears at the top of the dialog box.
4. Change the discussion board’s .css file to match your theme and save it with a custom name. (You do not need to do this if an existing .css file meets your theme’s needs.)

   IMPORTANT: Make sure the CSS theme property in the Workarea is pointing to the proper CSS file.

5. View the discussion board in a browser to see the changes.

Adding and removing toolbar items from the editor

IMPORTANT: You cannot create new buttons and add them to the Forum Editor. You can only add and remove existing buttons.

IMPORTANT: This section is only applicable if you are using the eWebEdit400 editor.

You can add and remove toolbar items on the Forum Editor by editing the EditorToolbar property. This property contains a series of string values that represent each item, listed below.

• StyleMenu. Display a list of paragraph styles. Users can select from the list to apply a style to selected text.
• FontMenu. Display a list of available font styles, sizes and colors.
• ParagraphMenu. Controls the display of buttons that affect a paragraph. This includes:
  • Numbered List
  • Bullet List
  • Outdent
  • Indent
  • Align Left
  • Align Center
  • Align Right
  • Justify
  • Horizontal Rule
• TextFormatMenu. Controls the display of buttons that format text. This includes:
  • Bold
  • Italics
  • Underline
• LinkMenu. Controls the display of buttons that allow a user to add and remove hyperlinks links and work with the library. This includes:
  • Hyperlink Manager
  • Remove Link
  • Library
• ClipBoardMenu. Controls clipboard buttons that allow a user to cut, copy, and paste content. This item also controls the Undo and Redo buttons.
• SymbolsMenu. Controls the display of the Symbol button, which allows users to insert symbols and special characters.
• EmoticonSelect. Controls the display of the Emoticon button.
• WMV. Controls the display of the Insert WMV button.
• Table. Controls the display of the Insert table button.