Posting tab (basic view)

Message Options

Activate links and e-mail addresses in messages: If checked, when a user enters a URL or an e-mail address in the text of their message, the program will "activate" the URL by creating a link to it. In the "Window Control" list, you can choose whether you on the new link to replace your board's frame set in the current window, open a new window, or replace the contents in the current frame (no window control). If you want to ensure that the user will not leave your board by clicking a link on a post, he should choose to have the links open in a new window.

Allow posts as "Anonymous": If checked, your "Add a Message" forms will have a box allowing the poster to post a message as "Anonymous." Note that the program will still keep a log of who the poster is regardless of whether or not you check this option. If you check this option, the anonymous posting feature may still be disabled through the Access Manager. If you uncheck this option, anonymous posting will be disabled everywhere on your board. The "Anonymous posters can choose displayed name" option is an advanced operation documented in the following comment.

Formatting panel on message forms (in skins that support it): If checked, in the skin that you have selected supports the use of the formatting panel, a basic formatting panel will be displayed with all "Add a Message" forms. The formatting panel is considered an experimental feature in this release of Discus.

Post ratings on posts (on skins that support it): The ability to rate posts is a new Discus Pro feature that is available only in select skins (the DiscusWare 'tables2' skin contains the ability to rate posts). If you enable this option, each post can be rated on a scale of 1 to 5. The post's rating will be computed and tabulated in real-time, with the overall rating and number of votes available for display with the post.

Username in (parentheses) on posts: If checked, posts by registered users and moderators are placed after the full name on the post to indicate that the post was made by a registered user or moderator. This option was recommended in previous versions of Discus to prevent forgery, but it's largely been replaced with the capability of skins to display the poster's username, and the Discus Pro feature to prevent unregistered guests from impersonating registered users.

Users may delete their own posts within __ minutes: This is a Discus Pro feature. If checked, users may delete their own posts within the time constraints you specify.

Users may edit their own posts within __ minutes: This is a Discus Pro feature. If checked, users may edit their own posts within the time constraints you specify.

Ordering of items

With this option, you can configure the order of items (subtopics and messages) that users add or post through the user interface. The "normal" order, applied when all boxes are unchecked, is that new subtopics are added to the bottom of the list, and new messages are added to the bottom of the list. You can reverse this order, meaning that new subtopics will be added to the top of the list, and new messages will be added to the top of the list. You can also choose to alphabetize the subtopics. (Choosing both to alphabetize and to reverse the subtopic order will result in the subtopic order being sorted from Z to A.)

Add new subtopics to top: New subtopics added by users via the "Create New Conversation" button are added to the top of the list, rather than the bottom of the list. Adding to the bottom of the list is the default.

Alphabetize subtopics upon addition: When new subtopics are added by users via the "Create New Conversation" button, all subtopics on the list are alphabetized if this option is checked. This option has precedence over the "Add new subtopics to top" option.

Move active subtopic to top of list: When any post is made to a subtopic and this option is checked, that subtopic is moved to the top of the subtopic list. In this way, active discussions are promoted to the top of the list.

Move active subtopic's parents to top of list: When any post is made to a subtopic and this option is checked, all of the subtopics above that message are moved to the top of their respective lists. Note that top-level topics are not reordered.

Add new messages to top: We have observed only a very few instances where reversing message order is desirable. Adding prayer requests to a list was one such instance. However, this is not a good choice for conversational flow, since your users will not find it intuitive to start reading at the bottom, scroll up to read a discussion, and then scroll all the way back down to the bottom to post their message. Thus, we discourage reversing message order unless you really know what you're doing.

Profanity Checking

Discus and Discus Pro contain profanity filtering features to prevent messages from containing words from a list you specify. Clever users always seem to find a way around profanity filters, from using symbols that look like the letters of the word they're trying to use to inserting spaces or other nonsense characters within the word. Several options are made available to the board administrator to prevent people from circumventing the profanity filter. The trade-off is, as you increase the security of your profanity filter, you also increase the possibility of false positive readings, which will inconvenience your normal users. Therefore, it is essential that you read the description of what each option does and evaluate your need for that option based on your intended audience.

Enable Profanity Checker: Check this option to enable profanity filtering on your board. No profanity filtering is performed if this box has not been checked.

If profanity is detected: You have two options for how to handle profanity that has been detected. You may choose to convert detected profanity into dots (the number of dots displayed is equal to the number of letters in the banned word). For more security, you may simply present an error message that indicates that profanity is not permitted and lists the words that have been detected as profanity.

Attachment/Image Uploading

A powerful feature of Discus and Discus Pro is the ability to allow visitors to upload images, and in Discus Pro attachments, along with their posts. This section allows you to configure whether your visitors will be able to upload these items, and if so, to put limitations on the size of uploaded items.

Attachment/Image Uploading Enabled: If you wish to allow image or attachment uploading on your board, you must check this box. If this box is unchecked, image and attachment uploading to posts is disabled.

Limit file sizes (in kb): You can place limits on the size of uploaded images and attachments. Separate settings are available for public posters (unregistered guests), registered users, and moderators. Type "0" into a box to allow unlimited upload size, or "-1" to disable uploading entirely.

... and/or limit dimensions: You can limit the dimensions of uploaded images. In the boxes, enter the maximum number of pixels to allow in the width and height, respectively, of uploaded images. To ensure optimal display on all screen sizes, DiscusWare generally recommends a setting of 640x480 here (your visitors can use their imaging software to reduce the size of the image).

Message Size Limitations

Readers of a discussion board can be annoyed by very long posts which take a long time to load. Fortunately, Discus offers protection against this situations by allowing the setup of message size limitations.

Limit message sizes: Enter a number into each box to set a maximum message size. Note that the number you enter will be multiplied by 1,000 and that result will be the maximum size of message that can be posted. A setting of "50" in this box limits message size to 50,000 characters, which is generally sufficient for most uses. As with other areas of the discussion board where limits are specified, a setting of "0" indicates that there is no limit on size, and "-1" disables all posting. Your setting can be separately set up for public posters (unregistered guests), users, and moderators.

Poster Names & Identification

If you allow both public posting and posting by registered users, you may run into a problem where an unregistered guest attempts to impersonate a registered user by typing that user's username or full name without a password. Since public posting is, by definition, the ability to post with any username, this is allowed. This section of the Options Manager puts some limitations on the names that can be used by unregistered posters.

Public posters may use:

• Anything at all as the username: Allow the public poster to use any name at all, regardless of whether it is the username or full name of a registered user or moderator.

• Anything except the exact username of a registered member: A user may enter any name that is not the exact username of a registered member. For example, with this option checked, a public poster would probably not be able to use "admin" as a name when posting.

• Anything except the exact full name of a registered member: A user may enter any name that is not the exact full name of a registered member. For example, with this option checked, a public poster would probably be able to use "admin" but would perhaps not be able to use "Board Administrator".

• Anything except the exact username or full name of a registered member: A user may enter any name that is not the exact full name or exact username of a registered member. For example, with this option checked, a public poster would probably not be able to use either "admin" or "Board Administrator".

• Anything that does not resemble the username or full name of a registered member:

  This option attempts to perform a "fuzzy" pattern match to determine how "close" a public poster's name is to the username or full name of registered users. The algorithm is imprecise at best, as the human mind is excellent at discerning immediately what is "close" but a machine is not capable of such intelligence.

  For this reason, you are asked to specify a "threshold" which will be used to decide whether to reject a name or not. Your threshold is a number from 1 to 100, with lower numbers being more strict (more likely to reject a name). DiscusWare recommends a setting between 40 (strict) and 60 (rather loose) for most implementations, if this option is used.

  Enabling this option will slow the performance of your discussion board, especially if you have a large user list. This is because a complex pattern for each user's username and full name must be built up for comparison against the entry.

  Do not check against single-word full names: Single-word full names within profiles, such as "John" or "Bob," frequently match many unregistered guest names. With most settings, a full name of "Bob" would prevent any posts by any unregistered users named "Bob." To avoid these problems, check this box to ignore single-word full names when performing the comparison.

  Treat non-English characters as the English letter they resemble: A common trick to defeat this sort of filter is to use a non-English character to make the name be different (although to the human eye, it looks very similar). Using the Discus author as an example, consider that "Kevin Paulisse" was a registered username. A public poster might try "Kevín Päulissé" to get around the filter, but to the human eye, there is very little difference between these names. With this box checked, i and í (and all of the other characters that look like the letter "i") are all treated as a single letter.

Spell Checker

The ability to perform spell checking of posts is a Discus Pro feature. Setting up the spell checker requires the following steps:

1. Obtain a word list, which is a list of every correctly spelled word in your language, with one word per line. These files are generally available as dictionary files on the server.

2. Add your word list(s) to the Discus spell checker "vocabulary."

3. Any user or moderator who wishes to use spell checking must enable spell checking in their profile (or you can force spell checking on -- read about forced profile settings on the documentation for the Profiles tab).

To begin using the spell checker, check the "Enable Spell Checker" box and click the "Initialize" button. The Options Manager screen will refresh and the status of your spell checker dictionary should change from "Not Ready" to "Ready (contains 0 words)".

Once you have initialized your dictionary, you must add your word lists to the dictionary. You do this by typing the path to the dictionary file in the text box next to "Add File>>" and then clicking on the "Add File>>" directory.

If you know the full path to your server's dictionary file, enter that path in the box. On some servers, this will be /usr/share/dict/words or /usr/dict/words. Note that if you had the spell checker set up in Discus 3.10 or before, you already found these dictionary file locations and typed them into your discus.conf file.

If you have your own word list to add, you can upload it to your "msg_index" subdirectory of your administration directory (transfer the file in ASCII mode). Then type the file's name (if you uploaded a file named "words" to your "msg_index" directory, enter "words" in the blank).

You will know that your file has been successfully added if you see that the total number of words in your dictionary has increased.