How to Configure Your Portal

forumwise · Admin Joined: 28 Jul 2005 $ 78.57

Forum administrators have the ability to add a custom Portal front-end to their forums. When enabled, the Portal feature provides a new dynamic homepage driven by activity in the forums and optional custom content specified in HTML. Click this link to see an example Portal.

To activate the Portal for your forum, go to your admin panel and select General Admin -> Portal Config.

Read the information at the top of the Portal Config page, and when you are ready to activate the Portal, just set it as "Active" in the Portal Status section.

Although placement of all modules is fixed, there are many options and settings for the Portal and, with custom HTML support, the options are limitless.

Portal Link Option - You may optionally add a link to your forum pages that links back to the Portal homepage. This provides an integrated navigation solution. When activated, this link will appear in the top center part of most forum pages.

Blog/News Module - This is the central feature of the Portal. Select the Number of Articles to display. The news/blog entries are taken from one or more of your public forums. You control who can contribute news and what subforums feed the articles with the News Forums parameter, a comma separated list of forum numbers. You can find the number of any forum by looking at it's URL, for example 2, in this case:

support.forumwise.com/support-forum-2.html

Example setting: 2
Example setting: 1,2,4,12,15

Welcome Module - This optional module can be used to display a welcome message, additional images or logos, links and more. The title of the module may be customized. The custom content is specified in HTML, up to 8000 characters. Some example HTML commands:

To make a new paragraph or space between lines use the break tag: <br>
Images can be specified like this: <img src="http://somewhere.com/image.jpg">
Links like this: <a href="http://somewhere.com">Click Here</a>

For custom HTML areas the only restriction is no javascript, no popups, no advertising or anything that interferes with normal unfettered operation of the page.

Navigation Module - This module displays important links for your list, you may customize the Navigation Title or disable the module.

Custom Modules - These optional modules can be used to display affiliate banners and links to important parts of your website, etc. Up to 5000 characters of HTML can be used to define it's layout and there is a customizable title as well. Very similar to the Welcome Module, except displayed in the left and right columns, so try to keep this content somewhat narrow for layout compatibility using lots of HTML breaks: <br>.

Search Module - You can optionally display a Google web search block. There 3 color options to help you blend it with your style: White, Grey and Black.

Recent Post Module - Unlike the Blog/News Module which only displays new posts, this module can be used to highlight new posts and replies. This block can be displayed in a Static format or Scrolling, as well as Off. A list of forums to exclude from display can be specified. Forum view permissions are automatically respected. The title of the module can be customized.

Poll Module - This block can display the latest poll from selected forums. You can optionally turn it off. Select a forum for choose the latest poll from with the Poll Forums parameter, a comma separated list of forum numbers. You can find the number of any forum by looking at it's URL, for example 2, in this case:

support.forumwise.com/support-forum-2.html

Example setting: 2
Example setting: 2,3,4,7,8,13,14,15

The Recent Topics Feature - The Portal's Navigation block contains some common forum links, plus a link to a new ForumWise feature, Recent Topics. This module automatically displays all posts made in the last 24 hours, but can be configured via URL to display different time periods.

For example, the following displays posts made over the last seven days:

http://support.forumwise.com/recent.php?hours=168

This URL can easily be adapted to your forum by changing the access name from "support" to your own. You can then adjust the number of hours to your liking and display this link in one of the Portal's custom HTML content areas.

Please use our dedicated Portal Support forum for all issues related to this feature. We hope you enjoy our advanced Portal feature.
_________________
Mark

Thank you for choosing ForumWise.

Please don't private message me for support or chit-chat, use the forums.

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