What will I learn to do?
The visitors of your site can react to its content through the forums.
Forums bring life to a site and build up loyalty with the readers. Numerous visitors will come back to your site simply to read the responses or reactions to the messages that they posted there.
As an administrator, you can require that they first register before taking part to the debate, or not; you can also, if you wish to, allow them to become editors and produce articles.
You are responsible for configuring the level of participation for your visitors.
In this lesson you will learn how to configure the forums and the editors applications in SPIP, according to the specific requirements of your site.
What is the appropriate moderating method for my public forums?
The forum available after each article provides an area to discuss the issue(s) presented in the article.
As an administrator, you will be responsible for the messages that are posted on the forum. You will sometimes have to reject some of these messages.
This process of control and potential removal of messages is called moderation.
There are two methods for moderating a forum:
Post-moderation
With Post-moderation, the comments are published on your site as soon as they have been posted by the visitors. All your audience can see them.
Post-moderation is the SPIP default method.
If you want to use Post-moderation:
Click on the Configuration icon in the top banner
Click on the "Interactivity" tab
In the block “Default operation mode of public forums” select “Immediate publication of messages”
If the block “Advanced options” appears, choose “to all articles without any exception”
Click on Submit
Configure the Post-moderation method
To test this configuration:
Go to the article and post a message in the forum
You will notice that it is immediately visible in the forum
It is also visible in the forums follow-up page. If you choose to, you can reject it.
Check that the forum is now working in post-moderation mode
Pre-moderation
Pre-moderation means that the forum is moderated beforehand: visitors’ comments are stored but not displayed immediately. They only appear after being validated. You will need to use SPIP forums follow-up page to validate, or reject, each message.
If you want to use Pre-moderation:
Click on the Configuration icon in the top banner
Click on the "Interactivity" tab
In the block “Default operation mode of public forums” select “Pre-moderation”
In the block “Default operation mode of public forums” select “Immediate publication of messages”
Click on Submit
Configure the Pre-moderation method
To test this configuration:
Go to the article and post a message in the forum
You will notice that it is not visible in the public area
It is however visible in the forums follow-up page. If you choose to, you can publish it.
Check that the forum is now working in pre-moderation mode
Choosing between pre and post moderation for a forum depends largely on what your site is about, as well as the community which has developed around your site.
With post-moderation, it is necessary to monitor closely the comments as people put messages directly on the site, and then you go in and review them afterwards. Irrelevant or even rude messages may end up on your site.
Pre-moderation offers more control: messages are only published if they have been validated.
Thus moderating becomes less time-critical, but your forum may appear less interactive - depending on how often you validate the messages.
Pre-moderation is also a preferable option to protect your forum from spams.
If you address sensitive or controversial topics, we recommend using pre-moderation first, at least as you start the forum on your site.
