Basic tab (basic view)

Contact Information

Contact Name: In this box, enter your full name or the name by which you want the users of your discussion board to address you. In the case of an error message and on the bottom of the contact moderators screen, the name you enter here will be displayed.

Contact E-mail: In this box, enter your e-mail address. In the case of an error message and on the bottom of the contact moderators screen, the e-mail address you enter here will be displayed.

Access Control

Access control regulates who is permitted to view your topics page, and whether your topics page will show all of the topics or just those topics that a user is permitted to read. This section also allows you to configure whether there will be an initial login screen for your board, or whether the topics will come up immediately without the need for a login.

Control who is permitted to view the topics display on your board: Choose any of the three following options to regulate access to your board topics screen.

• Restricted access (registered users/moderators only): A login screen will be presented to anyone attempting to access the topics page of your board. Only registered users and moderators will be able to access the topics page. Note that the login screen is bypassed if the user or moderator has the "cookie option" enabled in their profile, as they are automatically logged in by virtue of the stored username and password.

• Public access (display topics immediately): The topics page will be brought up immediately without any login screen. Users and moderators will be able to log in when posting, attempting to read a restricted topic, etc.

• Display login screen with guest access option: A login screen will be presented, with options to enter a username and password, register for a new account (if self-registration is enabled), and recover a forgotten password (if forgotten password recovery is enabled). There will also be a button to "Enter as Guest" that unregistered guests can use to gain access to the discussion system without an account.

Control which topics are displayed to a user on the topics display: If you are using read-restricted topics on your discussion board, you can choose whether or not your visitors can see those topics until they've supplied login credentials sufficient to allow them to gain access to those topics.

• All topics on board: All topics on the board will be shown. If a visitor clicks on a topic that he or she is not permitted to read, he or she will be prompted to log in.

• Only those topics that a user is authorized to view: Shows only those topics that a visitor is currently logged in to read. This option is generally useful only in conjunction with a login screen.

IP Banning

IP banning is a way to ban a specific IP address or a range of IP addresses from accessing CGI scripts on your discussion board. This is recommended only in the case of abusive visitors that you cannot otherwise keep away from your system. IP banning prevents accesses to CGI scripts; however, any public reading topics can still be read even by banned individuals.

To add a new IP address or range to ban: Enter the IP address in the "IP address" box. You can use any of the following formats:

• Banning a single IP address: Enter 1.2.3.4 to ban this one particular computer.

• Banning a single IP host: Enter hostname.domainname.com to ban this one particular computer. For this to work, your web server must support host name lookups. Note that banning an IP address and the corresponding host is redundant and unnecessary.

• Banning with wildcards: Enter *.domainname.com to ban all hosts from domainname.com, or enter 1.2.3.* to ban 1.2.3.0 through 1.2.3.255. The "*" wildcard matches any number of any character. You can use the wildcard as many times as you wish. Note that banning just "*" will ban everyone, including yourself, which is generally not a good idea.

• Caveats: Discus Pro IP banning calculations do NOT perform subdomain calculations or range lookups. Patterns such as "1.2.3.4/255.255.255.0" or "1.2.3.0-1.2.3.255" will therefore not work as advanced network administrators might expect they would just by looking at them.

  When adding a new IP address, you can optionally add a comment, to remind yourself later why the IP address was banned. When you save your options, the newly banned IP address will appear on the list, and a blank box will appear to allow you to ban additional addresses. There is no limit on the number of IP address you can ban.

  If you manage to ban yourself inadvertantly, you will need FTP or telnet access to the server to let yourself back in. The procedure to let yourself back in is described in the Discus Knowledge Center:

  http://support.discusware.com/center/resources/help/banned-myself.html

To remove a ban on an address or pattern: Uncheck the box next to the pattern whose IP ban you wish to remove, and then save your options. Unchecked patterns will disappear entirely from the list.

Maintenance Mode

If checked, the following services on the board are disabled:

• Posting of new messages
• Searching
• Editing profiles
• Administration by moderators other than the board administrator

Time Zone

This section allows for you to adjust the dates and times displayed by your discussion board for differences in time zone between where your server is located and where the majority of your users are located. The number that you supply in the blank can be either positive or negative, becoming on whether you want to add hours or subtract hours from the server's time.

For example, let's say that your server is located in California, but you and your users are located in New York. Since New York is three hours ahead of California, the server's clock will be three hours behind your clock. Therefore, you need to add three hours to the server's clock to make it display the same time as your clock. To do this, you would type the number "3" into the box.

Reversing the situation, if you are in California and your server is in New York, you would need to subtract three hours from the server's time to match your time. You would therefore type "-3" into the box.

Use GMT time in computations: If checked, all calculations relating to the time will be made in GMT time. This means that you need to enter the number of hours that your time zone is different from GMT into the time zone box. For example, the city of Indianapolis does not experience semi-annual time changes, but is always five hours behind GMT time. An administrator in Indianapolis could therefore enter "-5" into the time zone adjustment box and check the option to use GMT time to avoid changing the setting every spring and fall if the server is in a location where time changes occur. Note that the ability to use this option depends upon your server being set up to calculate GMT time properly.