This control panel allows you to alter the various system settings of the forum. Pay careful attention to what you are doing while making changes on this control panel, since it possible to break your forum by entering wrong values in certain places.
Due to the importance of that control panel there is basic help for every option on the control panel itself.
This toggle shows you whether or not your forum is enabled as well as allows you to enable and disable your forum.
When your forum is disabled the users will see the message you put inside Disabled Reason when they try to access any of the forum's pages.
When your forum is disabled this message, which can contain HTML will be displayed to anyone trying to access the forum's pages.
This is where all the compiled forum include files (*.inc) will be placed.
Do not alter this option unless you are % certain of what you are doing.
If you change this directory make sure the webserver has write permissions to it.
Safe Mode users also must make sure the directory is owned by the same account as the webserver.
This is the base URL of your forum.
Do not alter this option unless you are % certain of what you are doing.
This is the directory where the forum's error logs will be stored.
Do not alter this option unless you are % certain of what you are doing.
If you change this directory make sure the webserver has write permissions to it.
Safe Mode users also must make sure the directory is owned by the same account as the webserver.
Inside this directory the bodies of all message, normal & private are stored.
Do not alter this option unless you are % certain of what you are doing.
If you change this directory make sure the webserver has write permissions to it.
Safe Mode users also must make sure the directory is owned by the same account as the webserver.
This is the directory where any temporary forum files will be placed.
Do not alter this option unless you are % certain of what you are doing.
If you change this directory make sure the webserver has write permissions to it.
Safe Mode users also must make sure the directory is owned by the same account as the webserver.
Inside this directory all the file that are attached to forum's messages are stored.
Do not alter this option unless you are % certain of what you are doing.
If you change this directory make sure the webserver has write permissions to it.
Safe Mode users also must make sure the directory is owned by the same account as the webserver.
Various settings file that are created by the forum are stored inside this directory.
Do not alter this option unless you are % certain of what you are doing.
If you change this directory make sure the webserver has write permissions to it.
Safe Mode users also must make sure the directory is owned by the same account as the webserver.
Mogrify is an ImageMagick utility that allows you to manipulate images. If you have such a utility specify the full path to it in this option. By doing so, you will gain the ability the scale down user uploaded avatars if they exceed the dimensions you've specified.
ImageMagick and its utilities can be downloaded freely from ImageMagick website.
The IP or UNIX Domain Socket of your database server. We recommend using the UNIX Domain Socket since it is much faster then TCP/IP.
If you decide to specify a UNIX Domain Socket you need to put ':' in front of it. For example: :/tmp/mysql.sock
Use persistent connections when connecting to a database. This is a performance enchanting feature which if enabled will make your forum somewhat faster. Improvement is the result of PHP not needing to open a new database connection each time a script is executed, but rather use an existing connection instead.
This option does have it's drawbacks, on forked web servers such as Apache, every Apache child will create a persistent socket for itself. This can potentially exhaust number of allowed database connections if the number of Apache children with open connections to database exceed the allowed number of database connections, thus preventing topics without an open connection to connect to the database server.
How many file attachments a user can attach to each private message. Setting this option to 0, will disable file attachments for private messages.
The maximum size, in bytes, of the file(s) a user can attach to their private messages.
Whether or not smilies/emoticons in private messages will be converted to their graphical equivalents.
This option allows you to limit how many images can users include inside their private messages.
This limit will only work if the tag style is FUDcode, won't work if you allowed your visitors to use HTML.
What kind of text formatting options are available to the user.
FUDcode Users can use FUDcode styling tags to format their messages.
HTML The users can use HTML inside their messages.
NONE only plain text is allowed.
The path of cookie used by the forum. Outside of this path the cookie will not be accessible.
By default the cookie path is the path to the forum. For example, if your forum URL is "http://mydomain.com/forum/" the cookie path will be "/forum/". If you wanted your entire site to be able to access the forum's cookies, change the value of this option to "/".
The domain name for which a cookie is being set, the domain MUST be the same as the one used to access the forum, as specified in the WWW_ROOT option.
For browser compatibility this values MUST have no less the two '.' in it.
Do not alter this option unless you are % certain of what you are doing.
The name of the cookie that will be used by the forum. By default a random value is picked for this option to prevent conflicts with any other cookies you may already have. In the very unlikely event that you already have a cookie with such a name, change the value of this option to something else.
This is the period of time, in seconds after which the browser will remove the cookie. The user who's cookie expired will then need to re-login in to the forum.
By default the cookies are set to expire 7 days they are set. Each time the user access the forum the cookie is renewed for another 7 days.
If cookies are not used or are not available sessions will be used instead. They work by passing the information normally stores in a cookie via GET/POST across the forum. Each time a user access' a page their session gets renewed.
This option defines the amount of time, in seconds after which the session expires and a user will be required to re-login. For security reasons do not set this to a high number.
By default, sessions will expire after 30 minutes.
This toggle defines whether or not the administrator(s) need to approve all the URL & Uploaded avatars before they are activated.
Leave this option set to YES, unless you have absolute faith in your users and are certain they will follow the size limitations you've defined.
FUDforum 2.3 allows for a number of ways that a user can specify their avatar, if avatars are allowed. This option allows you to define is avatars are allowed and if so, what type of avatars the users may use.
The URL & Uploaded avatars will first need to be approved by the administrator before they are activated, unless you specified in the Avatar Approval option, that the administrator does not need to approve those avatars.
URL The user can specify their avatar by entering a URL of an image.
Uploaded The user can upload an image from their hard drive to be their avatar.
Built In The user choose an avatar from the ones available in the forum's avatar gallery.
You can add avatars into the avatar gallery via the Avatar Manager control panel.
ALL The user can specify their avatar by specifying a URL to an image, uploading one to the server or choosing from the forum avatar galleries.
OFF The avatars are disabled.
The actual control panel will have additional values allowing you choose a combination of any of the first three options.
This is a limit, in bytes, on how big of an image a user can upload as their avatar.
This the maximum width x height dimensions of the avatar the user can specify.
The uploaded avatars can be scaled down by the administrator during the avatar approval process if the path to Mogrify utility is specified.
Whether or not forum users can specify signatures that will be appended to their messages.
What kind of text formatting options are available to the user.
FUDcode Users can use FUDcode styling tags to format their messages.
HTML The users can use HTML inside their messages.
NONE only plain text is allowed.
Whether or not smilies/emoticons in signatures will be converted to their graphical equivalents.
Whether or not the spell checker is enabled.
This option will only work if your PHP has the pspell module enabled.
Allow the users to send e-mails to other forum members using the forum's internal e-mail client.
Whether or not to use FUDforum SMTP gateway to send email instead of standard PHP mail() function.
Not recommended, unless you need SMTP AUTH or wish to use alternate SMTP server on UNIX systems.
If your SMTP server requires SMTP Authentication, use this field to specify the login name that will be used when accessing the SMTP server.
If your SMTP server requires SMTP Authentication, use this field to specify the password that will be passed to the SMTP server.
If enabled each new registration will need to be confirmed via email. A special URL will be sent to the e-mail specified by the user during registration, which once accessed will activate their account.
Unconfirmed accounts will be removed after a set amount of days as defined by the UNCONF_USER_EXPIRY option.
All of the system e-mails sent from the forum, such as e-mail post notification, registration confirmation etc... will come from this address.
If enabled, then e-mail notifications will include the complete HTML body of the message, allowing the user to read the message's text via their e-mail client as well as reply to the message by clicking on the reply/quote buttons.
In the event the user's e-mail client does not support HTML, the e-mail contains a text version of the message as well.
The maximum number of smilies/emoticons to show shortcuts for on the message posting forms. To see the rest the user will need to click on the "list all smilies" link.
Toggle the showing of the partially resolved host name of the message's author to other users. For example:
me.myself.com will appear as .myself.com
This may slow down the posting process, especially, if the user's host mask takes a while to resolve.
The maximum number of characters of a user's location to show on all pages with the exception of user info page.
Whether or not the list of currently logged in users is displayed. By default this list is shown on the forum's front page.
The amount of time, in minutes, after which a user is considered to be no longer logged in.
If enabled it allows other forum users to see what their counterparts are doing on the forum at the time.
This option requires that the Logged in List be enabled.
If enabled, this option will indicate whether a user is online or offline beside all their message.
If enabled, each user would have the ability to specify a nick name other then their login name, the specified nick name, would then be displayed on the forum instead of that user's login name.
If enabled, this option would allow the user to have more then 1 simultaneous logged in sessions from different browsers/computers. This is useful, if many of your users use more then 1 computer to connect to your forum and do not wish to re-login each time they switch between computers.
By default this option is disabled, because a left over session on a computer could allow another person with access to that computer use the forum under the logged in person's account. Normally, when a user logs in, all of that user's other sessions are immediately invalidated by this action.
If enabled the users, will be required to indicate whether or not they are older then 13 years of age before registration. If they are not, then their legal guardians will be required to confirm the the account via Fax or E-mail.
All US based sites must leave this option enabled to comply with the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998 (COPPA)
Whether or not to allow tree view of the thread listing. Since this form can be fairly cpu intensive, if you have a high traffic forum and/or limited cpu capacity, it is adviseable to leave this feature disabled.
This option defines how many topics to show per page, on the thread listing in a tree format. This option is seperate from the Topics Per Page option, since the tree view will generaly take up more screen space then flat view.
If a a tree reaches a level greater then this number, a 'more' link will be drawn and further levels will not be displayed beyond that point.
Subjects longer then the specified length, will be trimmed to the length specified in this option. This is done to prevent long subjects from ruining the layout of the form.
Allows the administrator to specify the default message and topic view.
Flat View thread and message list Standard bulletin board view.
Tree View thread and message list Draws a tree like view of the messages. Similar to how messages in the newsgroups are displayed.
Flat thread listing/Tree message listing The thread listing will be displayed in flat format, while the individual threads will be drawn as trees.
Tree thread listing/Flat message listing The thread listing will be displayed in tree formar, while the individual threads will be drawn in flat format.
The last two options will only be avaliable if the Allow Tree View of Thread Listing is enabled.
This setting defines on how many characters to wrap message bodies on, any text string longer the the number of characters specified in this option will be broken down into 1 or more strings using a space as a separator.
Set this to 0 to disable word wrapping.
The number of days unconfirmed forum members are held in the database. They will be removed from database after this period of time.
The minimum time delay, in seconds between message posting. This option is used to prevent automated posting scripts that would attempt to post many messages at once.
The number of days to show a pointer of a moved topic from the original forum to the new forum. The pointer will be removed after this period of time.
If enabled the users will be able to do full text searches on the content of the posted messages. If you wish to increase the speed of the posting process or save on space used by MySQL you should turn this option off.
In the event Forum Search is disabled the search index will not be populated at the time of posting. If you later on decide to enable the search engine you will need to Rebuild Search Index.
If enabled it will allow forum visitors to search for registered forum users by login and/or email.
How many page links to display beside a topic that exceeds 1 page in length as defined by the THREADS_PER_PAGE option.
This is the number of direct links to pages that will be shown in the pager, excluding << < > >>.
If enabled then all the messages that were later edited by the author of the message will have an indicator showing that the message was edited by it's author.
If enabled then messages edited by the moderator or the administrator will have an indicator indicating showing that the message was edited by someone other then the message author.
The time limit, in minutes, past which the users will no longer be able to edit their own messages.
Set the value to 0 to give unlimited editing time.
Whether or not to display the IP address of the message's author for all forum users.
All forum administrators and moderators will be able to see the IP of the message author regardless of this option.
The maximum number of images a user may include in their forum messages.
This limit will ONLY work if the FUDcode style is being used.
An indicator of how many forum moderators to show beside each forum on the front page.
If enabled, at the bottom of each page forum users will be able to see how long it took to generate the page as well as how many MySQL queries were ran and their timings.