Installing Your Message Forum:

The Message Forum service can be installed easily by following these steps:

1. Register the Message Forum service in your Member account
2. Copy the special code we provide to you
3. Open your webpage in whatever HTML editor you prefer to use
4. Paste the code onto your webpage where you want the service link to appear
5. Save your page and publish it to your site
6. The service link will appear on your page, ready to use.

Getting Started:

The first step, once you have registered your Message Forum service in your Member account, is to customize the look and feel and set up your various service options. All of that is done in the Message Forum manager, in your Members Area. Login to your account with your Username and password and you will be shown the main Members Area menu. Click on the Service Manager link to begin.

Setting Up Your Free Service Options:

The Message Forum Service Manager is broken into several sections. Let's look at the various sections and go over what you can do in each section.

General Settings

In General Settings you can set up several different options. Start at the top of the General Settings page and go through each option. Make sure you set each to the option you prefer. You can set a variety of options on this page, including turning on and off the Profanity Filter (Pro only), email notification of new posts, allowing HTML in posts, displaying IP addresses, allowing smilies in posts, and whether or not your visitors can search by keyword for information in your forum. In addition, you can also select to allow your visitors to choose whether they want the threaded or standard board style forum layout, or you can choose the layout you prefer and make that the default.

Once you have finished with your option selections, be sure to click on the Save changes button at the bottom of the page to make your changes permanent.

Colors & Fonts

This area allows you to define the various colors on your Message Forum pages. Use the Color Picker wizard and the Style tool to help you set up how the font should look, how big it is, and what color it should appear in. You can also enter the color information manually with either the standard hex color code (#000000 for black, for example) or the standard color name (blue, for example).

Custom Images

This section allows you to set up your own existing web images to use in your Message Forum service. All you need to do is type in the full URL (web address) of your image, in each section. You can use your own Title and Background Images, but each image MUST be stored on a webserver. Images stored on your own computer won't work, there is no way to link to them on your computer. If you need space on the web to store your images, register the Bravenet Photo Center service and link to your images there.

Edit Displayed Text

Here you can enter the actual text that you want to display to your guests for your Message Forum Title and Description. Your title should be fairly descriptive and not overly long. Try to keep it less than 100 characters in total (including spaces). The description field is quite large so use that for long explanations or introductions.

Manage Questions

There are 5 fields you can use to define your own questions that visitors are prompted to answer when they post in your forums. You can define all of them here in this section of the Message Forum service manager. Each question field is limited in size so try to keep the questions limited to a one or two word prompt like 'email:' or 'address:'... something obvious yet brief.

In addition you can also assign one of 4 different field types (email, website, instant messenger and text). When you select one of these, the requirements for the input field will change to match your selection. An email field will require a valid email address, and so on.

Once you are finished adding your questions, click on the Save Changes button at the bottom of the page to make your changes permanent.

Manage Message Posts

In this section, all of your messages are displayed with checkboxes to the left of each topic. Click in the box of any topic you wish to remove (click the topic to read the specific message) and once you have selected all the messages you wish to remove, scroll down to the bottom of the page and click on the Delete Selected Entries button. Remember, once a message is deleted it is gone forever, we do not keep backup copies of your messages.

Password Protection

If you want to password protect your Messaga Forum, you can choose to implement one of two different types of password protection, No access or Read Only, by selecting the type you want and typing in your password:

1. No access: this blocks all access to the forum unless you have the correct password. Posts are not viewable.
2. Read only: this blocks all access to posting messages unless you have the correct password. The forum and all posts are visible as per normal, just no posting is possible.

Choose Template

Use this option to select how you want your Message Forum to be laid out. We offer two different layout styles, classic threaded forum style and the non-threaded board style. Click on the radio button beside the template that best suits your needs. Once you have chosen your template here, click the Save Changes button to make the changes permanent.

Display Statistics

On this page you can view how many posts per month your Message Forum receives and how many replies get posted. This can be handy for community related sites interested in seeing how well their site tools are being used, and how effective their traffic building strategies are.

Customize Navbar

The Navbar used to move around your Message Forum service can be customized with whatever colors and text you would like to use. Use the Style picker on this page to select a color you like, or enter the color name or hex code, for your color in the input box provided. Enter the text you want to appear on each button. Keep in mind that the buttons can only be so wide before the text in them starts to wrap strangely. Keep your button text at no more than 9 or 10 letters and you should have no problems with it.

Once you have finished with your option selections, be sure to click on the Save changes button at the bottom of the page to make your changes permanent.

Message Forum Keywords

If you have selected to have your Message Forum displayed in our Message Forum Index service (a listing of our members forums by topic or category) then you will need to define some keywords that your visitors will use to help them find your Message Forum in the Index. if you do not add keywords, your site will not be displayed in the Index.

Enter single keywords separated by commas. Do not enter phrases or separate words with spaces. Your keywords should be entered like this:

peanut,butter,honey,sandwich,yummy

Professional Options

Upgrading to the Professional version of the Message Forum service removes all of our advertiser's ads from your Message Forum and it allows you to store many more forum messages than the free service allows. Professional Message Forums can hold as many as 1,000 messages!

For more specific details about the Message Forum Service, please Search the Knowledge Base.

For Information on the sections under 'UTILITIES', please click here