Vanilla Forums are open-source, standards-compliant, customizable discussion forums.
How to get access to the forum
Anyone can read the forums at http://forum.opensourceecology.org/
However, to be able to post new discussions or to comment on existing discussions, you'll have to apply for a forum membership.
I'd like to allow any user to join our forum without the need for manual approval, but this would turn this forum into a paradise for spammers, and would require more time from us to remove spam messages and delete the corresponding user accounts.
 | Applying for a forum membership
- First, create a new login on the forum by clicking on one of the login icons (Facebook, Google, OpenID or Twitter) or by clicking on the Apply for Membership button;
- You'll be asked to confirm your email address (the system will send you an email with a confirmation link that you must visit);
- Please check your spam folder, as some people have reported that the confirmation message sent by our forum was classified as spam. The message has this subject: "[Open Source Ecology Forums] Confirm Your Email Address"
- Once you have confirmed your email address by visiting the confirmation link, your chosen login name will be added to the list of pending applicants;
- Whenever a forum admin opens the list of applicants, he will either approve or decline your request;
- If you are approved, you'll receive an email to let you know.
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Posting for the first time
- You can only post after your forum membership has been manually approved by a forum admin (see green box above)
- If you try to log in before being approved, you'll receive an error message similar to "Permission denied"
Usually, all forum applicants are approved, except those whose email looks suspicious (me@test.com, skseopclwq@yeah.net) and those with a suspicious membership request text. By that, I mean:
- empty text
- sentences that do not make sense, like "And she navigation boldly arrested. Furniture frequently slow night."
- messages asking me to buy "purple moncler vest", "green ski jacket", "cheap viagra", "cialis", and so on
- canned messages (those that look like they were copy/pasted from a collection)
In essence, all applicants are approved except those who look like a spam bot or a spammer, according to the admin's intuition.
Tips
| Tips for using our discussion forum
- Hover your mouse over Discussions (at the top) to see a clickable category menu
- A category contains discussions (a.k.a forum posts) related to a given topic
- You can click on Discussions itself to see a list of the latest discussions, or click on one of the categories to see discussions for that specific category
- Under section Discussion Views (right sidebar), you can change the view to see a list of latest discussions or latest discussions by category
- Create an email subscription to a category of your interest by clicking on E-mail Subscriptions
- By subscribing to a category, you make it work more like a mailing list
- You can vote for the most important discussions by clicking on the Votes blue box, at the right side of the discussion title
- Click it again to remove your vote, in case you have changed your mind
- To bookmark (subscribe to) a particular discussion, click on the Follows blue box, at the right side of the discussion title
- You can choose to receive email notifications when there are new comments on your bookmarked discussions
- You can see the number of people who bookmarked a discussion right under Follows
- Click on your login name (top left side) to access your account page and change your preferences.
- Change your email notification settings by clicking on My Preferences on your account page
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Email Notifications
You can receive email notifications when:
- There's a new discussion or comment on any of the categories you have subscribed to
- people comment on your bookmarked discussions.
- people mention you in comments (by using (@login)
- people mention you in discussion titles (by using @login)
- people write on your wall.
- people reply to your wall comments.
- someone sends you a private message.
- you are added to private conversations.
- people comment on your discussions.
Plugins we use
- Email Subscribe
- Facebook
- Google Sign In
- Twitter
- Gravatar
- FileUpload
- Flagging
- ...
See Also
Posting for the first time