Holiday changes and sharing configurations, test forum

The best way to do this is to create a test forum on your site. This allows you to try different configurations without disturbing the normal operation of your forums. You can even solicit responses from your forum members and see if they like any changes being considered. It also gives them the opportunity to see if certain functions work for all before they are instituted on your other forums.

This is an especially good idea with features that might deny access, such as mandatory registration with validation. There is a wide variety of browsers out there, though Netscape and Microsoft dominate the market. These other browsers might be used by some of your forum participants. Also, the various configurations of computers and networks, with firewalls, different operating systems, and other variables, mean that even some people using the top two browsers can have problems with certain features. Testing restrictive features in a test forum first give you the opportunity to identify any problems before they deny access to any of your members.

Another use for a test forum can be to prepare esthetic changes for your forum(s), either temporary or permanent ones. I create holiday themes, principally Halloween, Christmas & Chanukah, and New Years in my test forum, save them in a template (conf file) and then regenerate the appropriate portions in my other forums at the right time. After the holiday, it's a simple matter to restore each forum to it's original appearance.

For those administrators working on longer term ("permanent") changes to either the appearance or functions of their forums, a test forum gives them the opportunity to continue to try different things until they feel they have it just right. Then, when everything is just as they want it, the other forums can be reconfigured in a matter of seconds to incorporate those changes.

Whether you use a test forum or make temporary changes , there is a step you should take. Once you have each forum on your site as you like it, save that configuration as a template. You do this by using the Save configuration as a template named x in the Forum configurations section of the administration screen. Specify a name for the template (x) and then save it. Be sure to save new templates if you make changes of a long term nature to your forums.

Templates are similar to the forum configuration files (.forum_cfg) except that they don't store forum specific information such as name, passwords, paths, etc.

This allows you to share templates with other Anyboard administrators, and this forum provides the medium to do it in. Naturally, you can use templates to reconfigure several forums on your site also. If you have any graphics, including backgrounds, used in conjunction with a particular theme (like Halloween or Christmas graphics), be sure to include them with the template. One way is to include the template (conf) file and the graphics in a zipped file and upload it here.

Sharing this information increases the appeal of Anyboard by sharing the creative talents of its many users. There are some great looking forums out there using Anyboard, and its rapid reconfiguration makes holiday and other timely themes easy to do.