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Some web site only has discussion forums. This tells us how complicated this featurelet can be. This is also why we want to talk about this in a seperate section to give it a bit more attention.
Under EasierWeb's access control scheme, only users in "member" role or above can post messages to the forum. This is common to discussion forum in general. The forum topics are open to the same level as the page. If you don't want the public to see the forum, you can set the page to "member" level. Since the forum is part of the part, it is automatically protected.
When you include the discussion forum into the page, only the topic list is shown as part of the page. The topic list shows the topic itself, the user who started this topic, the number of replies to the topic, the number of times this topic has been viewed, the time of the last reply and the user who replied the last.
Once the user clicks on "New Topic" link to create a new post, a post editor will show up. The post editor is similar to the page editor but much simplified. The post can include images too. Just like the page, the images are added after the post is created.
When the user clicks on a topic, the page will transform into a full flege post viewer page. The original featurelets, if any, will not be displayed. The topic title will become a sub-title of the page, giving viewers an idea what this topic is.
For each post, editing function is avaiable on a need-to-have basis. The user who views the post can reply to the post. The user who did the posting will also have the ability to edit the post, or add images to the post. If the user logs on as author or above, the "Posted Message" tool bar will show up. The user can then either suspend the post so nobody else can see that anymore, or remove the post all together.
The post also gives information on what post this one is replying to. Click on the "a reply to" link will bring the user to the post this reply is for.
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