Forum Server Control

Warning! After placing a Forum server control on a page, follow the procedure described in Updating the Page Command. Otherwise, the user may get an error when posting a reply.

The Forum server control displays a Discussion Board on a Web page.

Forum Server Control Properties

 

Note: The following table only lists Ektron-specific properties. It does not describe native .NET properties such as font, height, width and border style. For documentation of these properties, see Visual Studio help.

Property

Value

Data Type

AllowAnonymousPost

Set to True to allow site visitors the option of
posting anonymously to the forum. When true, a Post Anonymous checkbox appears above the text editor used to create a post.

If a site visitor adds a check mark to this box, the word Anonymous appears where the Display Name normally appears. The default is True.

 

True - make the Post Anonymous checkbox available to site visitors when they create a post.

False - disable Post Anonymous checkbox.

Boolean

Authenticated

Indicates if you are logged in to CMS Explorer and can use it to browse to Content, Collections, etc.

Boolean

BoardID

The ID of the Discussion Board to display on this page if one is not defined in a query string parameter.

If you don’t know the ID, click Ellipses (), then sign in and select a Discussion Board.

Long

CacheInterval

Sets the amount of time, in seconds, a server control’s data is cached. The default is 0 (zero).

For example, if you want to cache the data for five minutes, set this property to 300. See Also: Caching with Server Controls

Double

CustomOrderBy

Provide a property’s Friendly Name defined in the Indexing Service to order search results by that property. For example, if you define DocAuthor, results will be sorted by the document’s author. Results can be ascending or descending based on OrderDirection. If you enter an invalid property, no search results are returned. If you specify both CustomOrderBy and OrderBy, the OrderBy property is ignored. The Friendly Name of a property can be found in Computer Management > Services and Applications > Indexing Service > Your Index > Properties > Friendly Name column.

String

DefaultObjectID

The Static ID of a community group.

Long

DynamicForumParameter

Gets or sets the QueryString parameter to read a forum ID dynamically. The default is “f”. Note that a Forum resides one level below a Discussion Board.

String

DynamicGroupParameter

Gets or sets the QueryString parameter to read a group’s ID dynamically. The default is “g”.

String

DynamicObjectParameter

Dynamic Parameter for the community group id. Default is “id”.

String

DynamicParameter

Gets or sets the QueryString parameter to read a discussion board’s ID dynamically. Set to “None - Use Default” if you want to always display the default discussion board. Note that a Discussion Board is one level above a Forum.

boardid - reads a Threaded Discussion Board’s ID dynamically.

None - Use Default - use the default discussion board’s ID.

ID - reads a discussion board’s ID dynamically.

String

DynamicThreadParameter

Gets or sets the QueryString parameter to read an individual thread’s ID dynamically. The default is “t”. Note that a Thread resides two levels below a Discussion Board and one level below a Forum.

String

EditorCSS

Set the style sheet for the Editor when a site visitor creates or edits a post. By default, this property is blank. When a style sheet is not supplied, the style sheet defined in the Theme property is used.

String

EditorToolbar

Enter a comma separated list of items that you want to appear on the Editor’s toolbar. The default is StyleMenu,FontMenu,ParagraphMenu,
TextFormatMenu,LinkMenu,ClipBoardMenu,
SymbolsMenu,EmoticonSelect,WMV,Table

See Also: Adding and Removing Toolbar Items From the Editor.

String

EnableForumQuickSelect

If you set this property to true, a dropdown list of all forums appears below the Topic list.

The site visitor can click a forum and jump immediately to it.

Boolean

EnableThreadRating

If you set this property to true, a ContentReview server control appears on any topic screen run by this server control. The site visitor can use the control to rate the topic thread.

An average rating for the thread appears next to each topic on the forum screen.

 

Boolean

ExcludeList

Enter a comma-separated list of custom user properties to exclude from the Forum’s profile page. For example, to suppress the Subscriptions field value, enter subscriptions.

See Also: Custom User Properties and Suppressing User Information from the Forum Profile Display

String

FilterXslt

Enter the path to an XSLT file used to filter forum content, such as, HTML Attributes, Tags and unwanted words in a user’s forum post. This path can be relative or absolute. The user’s post is filter once he clicks Submit.

By default, this property points to <webroot>/<siteroot>
/Workarea/Xslt/ForumFilter.xslt

The above file removes hrefs with javascript:, vbscript: and “on” events in the link. You can modify this file or create a new one.

Warning! If you want to edit this file, it is strongly recommended that you make a copy, change its name and move it outside of your Web site’s Workarea folder. If you make changes to this file and do not move it out of the Workarea folder, this file and the changes will be lost when you upgrade.

For additional sample code used to create a filter XSLT, see the following KB article:

http://dev.ektron.com/kb_article.aspx?id=485

String

Hide

Select False to display this server control on the page. Select True to suppress it.

Boolean

HideUserProfile

Set to True to suppress user profiles. The default is True.

True - hides user profiles from non-administrator users.

False - displays user profiles from non-administrator users. However, an administrator can view a profile regardless of how this property is set.

On the other hand, if the Private Profile is set to Private for any user, his profile information is not visible, regardless of this setting. If Private Profile is set to Colleagues, only colleagues can see profile information.

When the profile is visible, only properties and their values not listed in the ExcludeList property (above) appear.

For more information, see Suppressing User Information from the Forum Profile Display.

Boolean

JavascriptEditorHeight

Set the height in pixels for the eWebEdit400 content designer. The default is 400. The minimum height is 300.

Integer

JavascriptEditorHTMLMode

Note: As of version 7.6, the JavaScript editor has been removed from Ektron CMS400.NET. This property has been deprecated.

Set to True to allow users to edit their posts and replies in HTML. The default is False.

String

JavascriptEditorToolbar

Note: As of version 7.6, the JavaScript editor has been removed from Ektron CMS400.NET. This property has been deprecated.

Decide which buttons are available in the JavaScript Editor.

String

JavascriptEditorWidth

Set the width in pixels for the eWebEdit400 content designer. The default is 625. The minimum width is 500.

Integer

Language

Set a language for viewing content. This property shows results at run-time (in a browser).

Setting this property to -1 (negative one) causes the Forum server control to display topics from all available languages.

Integer

ObjectType

Describes the type of forum displayed by this server control.

CommunityGroup - Used for forums inside a Community page.

DiscussionBoard - Used for forums on templates that are not Community pages.

String

OrderBy

The order of search results. For example, you want to sort search results by last modified date.

Title - The content title (alphabetical).

ID - The content ID number.

Date Created - The date the content was created.

Date Modified - The date the content was most recently modified.

Editor - The user who last edited the content (alphabetical).

Rank - The rank assigned to the content. See Also: Search Result Ranking

Note: The OrderDirection field determines the direction of the search results. For example, if you sort by ID and OrderDirection is set to Descending, the results sort by ContentID number with the highest number at the top of the list.

Warning! Specifying a CustomOrderBy property overrides this property.

String

OrderDirection

The direction in which search results are sorted. The default is Ascending.

Ascending - Alphabetical results from A to Z; numeric values low to high; dates from oldest to most recent

Descending - Alphabetical results from Z to A; numeric values high to low; dates from most recent to oldest

String

ProfileLink

Enter a link to the user’s social networking profile page, a part of ektron’s community platform. This allows a user to click another user’s name link or avatar and be taken to the user’s profile page. There are two variables used within the link that represent the user’s ID and the user’s display name.

{0} - represents the user’s ID.

{1} - represents the user’s display name.

You need to have both variables in the link. The Web form can be relative or absolute. Below is an example.

userprofilepage.aspx?uid={0}&dn={1}

The default for this property is ?g=profileu={0}.

When the default for this property is used, users are forwarded to a user’s profile page that is included with the forum control.

ItemLinkTargets

ProfileLinkTarget

Determines the type of window that appears on this Web form when a user clicks an item in the Friends control. The default is _self.

_Self - opens in same window

_Top - opens in parent window

_Blank - opens in new window

_Parent - opens in the parent frame

String

ShowCategories

If set to true, when this server control appears, the user see a Filter by Category option. This option helps a site visitor zero in on relevant content.

If false, the Filter by Category option does not appear.

See Also: Filtering Search Results by Category

Boolean

SuppressWrapperTags

Suppresses the output of the span/div tags around the control. The default is False.

True - Suppress wrap tags.

False - Allow wrap tags.

Boolean

TaxonomyCols

Use this property to determine the number of columns on the Taxonomy screen available from this Discussion Board.

In the illustration below, taxonomy categories are arranged in three columns (the default value).

Integer

TaxonomyMarkupLanguage

If you want to use an .ekml file to format the Taxonomy screen available from this Discussion Board, enter it here.

If the *.ekml file is located in the same folder as the Web form containing the server control, just enter its name. If the file is in another folder, enter the path relative to site root. For example, \CMS400Developer
\workarea\customfiles\markup\mylistsummary.ekml
.

See Also: Controlling Output with Ektron Markup Language

String

Theme

Enter the custom theme’s folder name. The theme can be relative to the site root or located in the current folder. For example:

Relative - Theme=”/workarea/csslib/themes/winter”

Current Folder - Theme=”mytheme”

If you do not specify a theme, the property uses the location defined by the Discussion Board’s CSS theme property in the Workarea.

See Also: Using a Custom Theme

String

WrapTag

Allows a developer to specify a server control’s tag.

The default is Span.

Span - The <span> tag is used to designate an in-line portion of an HTML document as a span element.

Div - The <div> tag is used when you want to apply attributes to a block of code.

Custom - Lets you use custom tag.

String

Updating the Page Command

To prevent an error from appearing when a user posts a reply to the Web page that hosts the Forum server control, follow these steps.

1. Open the Web form onto which you inserted the Forum server control.

2. Access Source view.

3. Go to the top line of the Web form, which begins with @ Page.

<%@ PageLanguage="VB"AutoEventWireup="false" CodeFile="Default2.aspx.vb"Inherits="Default2" %>

4. Near the end of the line, enter validaterequest=false.

5. Build the page.

Using a Custom Theme

This property allows you to specify a custom location for your themes. By doing so, you prevent them from being overwritten when you upgrade.

If you do not specify a theme in the server control, Ektron CMS400.NET uses what is defined in the Discussion Board’s properties CSS Theme field located in the Workarea.

To create a custom theme, follow these steps.

1. Create a new subfolder on your site. In this example, we use a winter theme:

<web root>/<your site>/Workarea/csslib/winter.

2. Copy all files in the /Workarea/Threadeddisc/themes folder to the winter folder.

3. Change the image files to match your theme.

Note: To find the name of an image, right click on it while viewing it in a browser. Next, select properties. The name appears at the top of the dialog box.

4. Change the Discussion Board’s .css file to match your theme and save it with a custom name. (You do not need to do this if an existing .css file meets your theme’s needs.)

Important: Make sure the CSS theme property in the Workarea is pointing to the proper CSS file. See Also: Working with Discussion Boards and Subjects

5. View the Discussion Board in a browser to see the changes.

Adding Video to a Post

A user can add video to a post by clicking Add Video () in eWebEdit400. The following prerequisites must be in place for a user to perform this action:

the embed tag must be added to the Accepted HTML property in the Workarea Forum’s properties. See Also: Accepted HTML

a user must be using eWebEdit400

the video must be in the .wmv format

the video must reside in a hosted location. For example,
http://www.example.com/myvideos/fridaylunch.wmv

Once you click Add Video (), enter the path to the video in the dialog box and click OK. A place holder is then added to the post.

Adding and Removing Toolbar Items From the Editor

Warning! You cannot create new buttons and add them to the Forum Editor. You can only add and remove existing buttons.

Toolbar items on the Forum Editor can be added and removed by editing EditorToolbar property. This property contains a series of string values that represent each item, listed below.

String Value

Item

Description

StyleMenu

Display a list of paragraph styles. Users can select from the list to apply a style to selected text.

FontMenu

Display a list of available font styles, sizes and colors.

ParagraphMenu

Controls the display of buttons that affect a paragraph. This includes:

Numbered List

Bullet List

Outdent

Indent

Align Left

Align Center

Align Right

Justify

Horizontal Rule

TextFormatMenu

Controls the display of buttons that format text. This includes:

Bold

Italics

Underline

LinkMenu

Controls the display of buttons that allow a user to add and remove hyperlinks links and work with the library. This includes:

Hyperlink Manager

Remove Link

Library

ClipBoardMenu

Controls the clip board buttons that allow a user to cut, copy and paste content. This item also controls the Undo and Redo buttons.

SymbolsMenu

Controls the display of the Symbol button which allows users to insert symbols and special characters.

EmoticonSelect

Controls the display of the Emoticon button.

WMV

Controls the display of the Insert WMV button.

Table

Controls the display of the Insert table button.

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