Using the Message Boards

You can add a Message Boards widget to a page from the Add () menu’s Widgets → Collaboration section. The Message Boards interface is similar to other message boards that populate the Internet. In any case, it can’t hurt to explore how to use Liferay DXP’s Message Boards and discover its features.

Figure 1: The Message Boards widget lets you explore its categories, interact with message threads, and post new messages.

Threads can be viewed many ways. At the top of the widget is a set of tabs:

Categories: The message board’s categories.

Recent Posts: Posts from all categories, sorted by date.

My Posts: The current user’s posts.

My Subscriptions: Lets users view and manage their thread subscriptions.

Statistics: The number of categories, posts, participants, and a list of the top contributors. You can also access this from the same tab in Site Administration’s Message Board app.

You can also use the search bar at the top of the widget to search for threads and posts. Although search works on threads and posts within categories, it doesn’t work on categories themselves.

Posting New Threads

Follow these steps to post a new thread:

1. Click the Message Boards widget’s New Thread button. Alternatively, click the Add button () and select Thread in the Message Boards app in Site Administration. Either way, the same Add Message form appears.

   

   Figure 2: The Add Message form lets you create a new thread.

2. Give your thread a title in the Subject field.

3. Create your thread’s content in the Body field. This field uses the same editor as the Blogs app, except that it uses BBCode instead of HTML. For further instructions, see the documentation on using the editor. Also note that you can mention other users by entering the @ character and their user name.

4. If you want to add attachments, open the Attachments section and add them via drag and drop or the Select Files button.

5. If you want to associate a tag with the message, open the Categorization section and use the Select button to select an existing tag. You can also create a new tag by entering it in the Tags field and clicking Add. See the documentation on tags for more information.

6. If you want to select an existing asset in the portal (e.g., a media file, blog post, etc.) to relate to your thread, open the Related Assets section and use the Select button to select that asset.

7. Open the More Settings section and select the settings you want to use:

   Mark as a Question: Whether to mark this thread as a question. This lets you later select a post in the thread as the answer.

   Anonymous: Whether this thread is posted anonymously.

   Subscribe Me: Receive notifications for activity on the thread.

   Priority: The thread’s priority in the Message Board. By default, you can choose Urgent, Sticky, or Announcement. Additional priorities can also be configured in the Message Boards app in Site Administration.

   Allow Pingbacks: Whether pingbacks are allowed for your thread.

8. Open the Permissions section and set the thread’s permissions. Possible values in the Viewable by selector are

   • Anyone (Guest Role)
   • Site Members
   • Owner

   You can also click the More Options link to select additional permissions:

   Delete: Remove the thread.

   Permissions: Grant/revoke thread permissions.

   Update: Edit the thread.

   Subscribe: Receive notifications for thread activity.

   View: View the thread.

   Note that you can revisit the thread’s permissions after posting it. To do so, select the thread’s Actions menu () and select Permissions.

9. Click Publish to publish the thread. Once it’s published, it appears along with the other threads in the category.

Participating in Message Board Threads

To find message board threads that interest you, browse a message board’s Categories or Recent Posts tabs. In the Categories tab, you can view a category’s thread listing by clicking the category’s name. Within a category, you can subscribe to an RSS feed and/or emails that inform you about activity in that category. The Recent Posts tab also lists threads, except they’re the latest threads across all categories.

Click a thread to view it. Messages appear in a threaded view so that replies are aligned under their parent thread. This makes it easy to follow conversations. Thread replies are indented under their parent thread.

Figure 3: A thread's view displays author information and thread content, for the thread and all replies to the thread.

Subscribing to a thread causes Message Boards to send the user an email whenever a new message is posted to the thread. If you have enabled the mailing list feature for the thread’s category, users can reply to these messages to post back to the thread without having to visit your site.

Most threads get more interesting as users reply to them. Follow these steps to reply to a message in a thread:

1. Click the Reply button. This opens the quick reply form, which only contains a text field for entering your reply.

2. Enter your reply in the text field. To access more options for your reply, click the Advanced Reply link. This opens the full editor from the add/edit thread form.

3. Click Publish to publish your reply.

In addition to replying to a message, you can rate it or flag it as objectionable. A message board moderator can evaluate flagged messages and decide how to handle the messages and their authors.