Administration Instructions - Options Manager 'General' tab

The General tab controls activation of scripts, display of dates, and optionally a character set to be encoded on all pages generated by the discus scripts.

Administration enabled: If checked, moderators will be able to access the administration program normally and will be able to use all administrative tools that they are normally able to use. This is the default option. If unchecked, only the board administrator will be able to log in to administration (moderators will get a "Denied" message). This is useful for shutting down a board.

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

This setting is intended to be invoked by the board administrator during periods of temporary downtime (such as regeneration of the board, major administrative actions, reindexing, backing up, or moving the board from one server to another). It prevents users and moderators from altering the data structure of the board.

Posting enabled: If checked, moderators, users, and the public will be able to post messages according to the posting privileges you have established in the Access Manager. This is the default option. If unchecked, no one will be able to post new messages to your board -- this transcends all settings from the Access Manager. This is useful for shutting down a board.

Day of month: If checked, anytime that the day of the month is less than 10, the number 0 will be displayed before the day. For example, the 7th day of the month would be displayed as "07" with this option checked, and "7" without this option checked. The day "11" would always be displayed as "11" regardless of whether or not you have checked this option.

Hour: If checked, anytime that the hour is less than 10, the number 0 will be displayed before the hour. For example, the hour 7 would be displayed as "07" with this option checked, and "7" without this option checked. The hour "11" would always be displayed as "11" regardless of whether or not you have checked this option.

Number of month: If checked, anytime that the number of the month is less than 10, the number 0 will be displayed before the month. For example, the month 7 (i.e., July) would be displayed as "07" with this option checked, and "7" without this option checked. The month "11" (i.e., November) would always be displayed as "11" regardless of whether or not you have checked this option.

Comments:

The actual date formats used on the discussion board are defined in the language.conf and lang40.conf files. These cannot be edited through the Options Manager.
For your changes to the date format to take effect throughout the board, you must regenerate your board using the Appearance Manager after saving your options.

If required for the correct display of the language, you can specify an international character set in the blank. Whatever you type into this blank will be placed on all message pages and all other user interface screens. This setting is placed into the "charset" META tag.

Comments:

For your changes to the character set to take effect throughout the board, you must regenerate your board using the Appearance Manager after saving your options.
The skin you are using must implement this option in order for it to work. The default DiscusWare skins implement this within the "dynamic_top" section of the skin. If you save a setting here but it does not show up in the source of your pages, even after regeneration, the skin you are using may not support this tag.

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.

Comments:

Your changes to the time zone will take effect immediately in the search screen and other utility screens.
For your changes to the character set to take effect throughout the board on messages and subtopic lists, you must regenerate your board using the Appearance Manager after saving your options.
In all cases where the date and time are stored, the Discus program stores the server's time in the unix time format (expressed as the number of seconds since January 1 of 1970). Thus, it is possible to change the time zone or method of time reference as many times as needed to get it right.
If you switch to another server in another time zone, dates recorded from your old server will be off by the number of hours difference between your new server and your old server.
All dates within Discus are stored in and referenced from the unix time format, which is Y2K compliant. Even if the administrator chooses to display only the last two digits of the year (or not display the year at all), this information remains available should the date format be changed.