CREATING FORUMS:

Can we create new discussion forums like we did for posts and topics? Let's try: Click on the "New Forum" submenu item of "Discussion Forums" in the left-nav bar. (LeftNav->DiscussionForums->NewForum). It will return a message:

This is because creating new forums require admin privileges. At the moment we are only a member, hence we cannot do that.

What is interesting is, if we click on LeftNav->DiscussionForums->NewTopic we still get the same message, telling us we are not allowed do that. Didn't we just create a new topic a minute ago? Well, that particular submenu also requires admin privileges. We will get back to that in a minute.

Let's log on as admin then, so we may create new forums. Click on the LeftNav->Login. It will snap back:

Normally people would not have this problem since they don't keep switching between accounts. But if you are an admin, with multiple accounts or identities this is one trick you can use to remember who you are: Trying to re-login will give you your username. Now let's log out as told, and log back in as admin (username 'admin', password 'admin') and go to the discussion forums. Click on LeftNav->DiscussionForums->NewForum. It should bring a window we already became familiar, with a title 'Create New Forum'. Viola!, we can create a new forum! Let's put that aside for a moment.

Now click on LeftNav->DiscussionForums->NewTopic. We can do that as well, which we couldn't do as a member a minute ago:

This 'New Topic' window is very similar to the one we saw earlier while entering a new topic, however with an additional field of 'Forum' for forum IDs. That is because as an admin --who is always supposed to know what he/she is doing--, you are allowed to take shortcuts and directly enter topics for forums even in the cases where the particular forum may not even exist as an entity in the database. We will elaborate on this later. In a nutshell though, do not use this link before becoming an absolute expert and start developing your own applications for Bora.

Let's test the forum creation now. Click on LeftNav->DiscussionForums->NewForum, enter a title, say, "A forum about discussion forums", and a description of your taste. Submit. It should open the same window again, thinking that you will create more forums. Well, we will not. Go back to LeftNav->DiscussionForums. You should see the forum you just created listed there at the very end:

That is all there is to know about Discussion Forums. This is a very simple --albeit a very powerful-- notion, and if implemented properly it can be applied into many different applications easily. We will see some of them later.

For the time being though, next in line is the Product Application: