Forum_XH – User Manual

Forum_XH facilitates the embedding of simple forums on a CMSimple_XH site. The user management relies on Memberpages or Register_XH. Posting requires to be logged in as member, though the forums can be viewed publicly. This way no further provisions are necessary to avoid spam, and posting doesn't require any additional input such as user name, email address etc. Forum_XH features a markup editor allowing basic BBCode markup. All data are stored in flat files which are protected from concurrent access by pessimistic locking of the whole forum, so Forum_XH is not suitable for heavily frequented forums. Furthermore common advanced forum features such as user signatures, PMs, subscribing to topics etc. are not available.

Important Notice

Forum_XH couldn't be tested so far in various environments. It is a so called beta version. Use with caution!

Requirements

Forum_XH requires CMSimple_XH ≥ 1.6.3 with the Fa_XH plugin and PHP ≥ 5.4.0 with the JSON and Session extensions.

Installation

The installation is done as with many other CMSimple_XH plugins. See the CMSimple_XH wiki for further details.

Backup the data on your server.
Unzip the distribution on your computer.
Upload the whole directory forum/ to your server into CMSimple_XH's plugins directory.
Set write permissions to the subdirectories css/, config/ and languages/.
Navigate to Plugins → Forum in the back-end to check if all requirements are fulfilled.

Settings

The plugin's configuration is done as with many other CMSimple_XH plugins in the website's back-end. Select Plugins → Forum.

You can change the default settings of Forum_XH under Config. Hints for the options will be displayed when hovering over the help icons with your mouse.

Localization is done under Language. You can translate the character strings to your own language if there is no appropriate language file available, or customize them according to your needs.

The look of Forum_XH can be customized under Stylesheet.

Usage

Inserting of a forum on a page is done with the following plugin call:

{{{forum('name-of-the-forum')}}}

You can have as many forums as you like, but only one per CMSimple page. The forums are distinguished by their name, which may contain lowercase letters (a-z), digits (0-9) and hyphens (-) only.

After switching to view mode you'll see the forum, and if it already contains topics, you can navigate through them. Posting new comments requires that you're logged in via Memberpages or Register_XH. Then you can also edit and delete your own posts. The CMSimple_XH administrator can edit and delete the posts from all users, but in order to post new comments he has to log in additionally as member. No additional admin functionality is provided in the back-end.

BBCode

To allow users to markup their comments, basic BBCode is available. The following elements are supported:

[b]bolded text[/b]

bolded text

[i]italicized text[/i]

italicized text

[u]underlined text[/u]

underlined text

[s]strikethrough text[/s]

~~strikethrough text~~

[url]http://cmsimple-xh.org/[/url]

http://cmsimple-xh.org

[url=http://cmsimple-xh.org/]CMSimple_XH[/url]

CMSimple_XH

[img]http://cmsimple-xh.org/userfiles/images/flags/en.gif[/img]

[size=150]large text[/size]

large text

[list][*]One [*]Two[/list]

[list=1][*]One [*]Two[/list]

[quote]quoted text[/quote]

quoted text

[code]monospaced text[/code]

monospaced text

Note that nesting of the same kind of elements is not allowed (e.g. nested lists are not possible). The HTML created by the BBCode converter is always valid and secure (i.e. no script injection is possible). If any nesting of BBCode elements would result in invalid HTML, the offending elements will simply be ignored.

The usage of the markup editor should be pretty much self explaining. Please note that a simple preview is available via the right most button. If JavaScript is not available in the user's browsers, the editor is not available, but using BBCode in the textarea is still possible.

License

Forum_XH is licensed under GPLv3.

Credits

The plugin logo is designed by Dezinerfolio. Many thanks for publishing this icon as freeware.

The emoticons were taken from the LED icon pack. Many thanks for publishing these icons under CC BY-SA.

Many thanks to the community at the CMSimple_XH forum for tips, suggestions and testing. Especially I want to thank Traktorist and Old for many good suggestions.

And last but not least many thanks to Peter Harteg, the "father" of CMSimple, and all developers of CMSimple_XH without whom this amazing CMS wouldn't exist.