The secret of successful online business is building an active community of of browsers, buyers and sellers discussing ideas, sharing concepts and helping one-another. A key part of fostering a community is discussion forums, which is why we wanted to open our technology up and enable groups to create FlowerGoss forums for their public (or private) use. The following guide explains exactly how you can do this, so you can harness the power of FlowerGoss's active community for your own benefit.
Setup your forum
The first step towards starting your own uber-powerful, fast forum system which taps into the FlowerGoss's community is navigating to the group profile which you control. If you are a profile leader, you will see a grayed out forum tab. Click the forum tab, and then click the "setup" link to begin the setup process.
Fill in your forum description
You should now be presented with a screen like the one below. Fill in all of the details and click save. The forum logos you see on this page, are little logos which you can allow your forum members / admins to pick to display alongside members usernames / avatars. A demo is provided in the below screen.
Layout your forums categories and boards
The hard work is done, now it is time to add categories and boards for your members to start threads in. The image below provides examples of the different areas of a forum.
Adding a category
Super easy, just fill in a category name and submit. There is no limit to the number of categories you can add, however a category will only show up if it contains active, open boards.
Adding a board
Again super easy, fill in the board name and details including:
- Status: open, closed, staff only
- Name / Description
- Access url (not recommended to change)
- Icon
There is no limit to the number of boards you can add, and you can control if the public and profile staff can access each board.
Updating the forum layout
Once you have added at least one category and board, you can open your forums and unleash the FlowerGoss community on them. You can also quickly and easily shuffle things around and change names as required.
Managing members permissions
Once your forums are running, you have control over what members can view and do. You can ban members, you can make it so they cannot start threads only post, you can give them access to staff forums and all manner of things. You can also update their signature, status logos - everything!
Promote your forums / community integration
Finally once you have your forums running we highly recommend you promote them and encourage your community to join the discussion. Add links on your homepage, get people to favorite your forums, that way they will be notified when things change and can keep tabs on the latest chat. In future the ability to template your forums and embed them on your homepage is a possibility - contact us if this interests you. Happy posting!
