Issue: I'd like to have something like member blogs on my forums, but I don't want to use an off-site blog service.You can easily make a forum that has some blog features right on your board. You will have a forum where the threads are arranged alphabetically by member name (making it easy for everyone to find the member they are looking for), and everyone's most recent "blog" entry will be the first post in their thread. It can even be a hidden forum.
Method: Make a new forum that has all regular member permissions.
ACP > Forum Control > New Forum
[Option: Make the new forum hidden, and put a link to it in the Portal bar (next to Help) with this code:
http://support.invisionfree.com/index.php?showtopic=12068To make a hidden forum, you will have to put it under a parent category that is hidden.]
At the bottom of the set-up options, you will see:
Default date cut off for topic display - Choose SHOW ALL
Default sort key: Choose TOPIC STARTERS NAME
Default sort order: Choose ASCENDING (A - Z)
(Make sure you have all the desired permissions checked before continuing. Everyone who uses the blog forum must be able to read/post/reply. Tip: Don't use the global settings...they just mess things up.)
In order to make your forum operate in a more "blog-like" way, you can install this code to change the POST ORDER for that forum only.
Footers: (Change red to the forum number of your blog forum:)
[Note: host website no longer exists. Please download the unhosted code from the download link at the bottom of this post:]This will reverse the posting order and cause the last post made to be the first in the thread.
Some suggestions:
- Make a pinned topic or use Forum Rules text area to explain to your members how the blog forum operates.
- Allow members only ONE thread in the blog forum.
- Suggest members start by making 15 posts (or whatever the threads/per page number they have chosen) before they start their actual "blogging". That way, those 15 threads will become the "last page" of their thread and they can use it as a storage file, putting information, important links, picture galleries, whatever they would like to store. The "storage area" can then always be easily accessed by clicking on the last page number of their thread.
- The reply issue: some people will want comments to their blogs, and some will not. As anyone will be able to reply to blog entries, you might suggest to those who DO NOT want replies to their "blogs" to put something like "Please do not comment" in their topic description when they set up their blogs. Or, you could just make a "no comments" forum rule, and make another way for members to comment. Such as...
- Pin a thread at the top of the blog forum where members can comment and recommend each other's blogs. OR...Install a special shoutbox in the forum rules that can be used for that purpose. (See this topic for instructions on how to install a shoutbox in the forum rules.)