Extension:AWC's Forum

What can this extension do?
This extension allows the display of a standalone forum within MediaWiki.

It uses MediaWiki's user authentication system so the forum users details are identical, and the log in process is transparent and perfectly integrated.

Users, can create new threads/topics, where others may posts replies to. Users may also quote posts, and edit their own posts (permissions dependent).

Moderators can edit, delete and move threads. Moderators can also make these threads 'stickys' or 'locked'.

Admins, can give and remove the permissions required to be a moderator, and may add and remove many restrictions on users forum accounts. Admins may also make changes to the forums, such as add and delete categories and forums, make 'announcements', make changes to many forum configuration settings and do general 'maintenance'.

Feature List
This feature list is just a highlight, it is not all-inclusive, for full list.
 * Traditional forum style layout
 * Wiki Forum Tag  - for displaying latest forum posts anywhere in wiki
 * Forum Wiki tag Page Title - for embedding wiki pages within a forum thread/post, still editable like normal, and redirects after saving back to the forum thread
 * Permission based restricted forums (All, only Members, only Moderators/Admin, only Admin)
 * Stickys, Announcements, Lock and Moving of threads
 * New activity indicators
 * Emoticons
 * Forum search - including thread/forum and user specific
 * Maintenance: thread pruning, forums display of thread and post count recalculation
 * Easily edited Language file
 * Configuration: guest viewing signature and avatars, cut-off limits; thread title lengths, number of posts in thread, number of threads in forum, displaying post, thread and Wiki edit counts, 'ROBOTS' META info, min search chars, search word filter and more...
 * Moderator abilities
 * Add/Change Avatars - Three methods available: URL linking, wiki img tag, forum upload (depends on Admin settings and server restrictions)
 * Option to view Avatars, Signature or Signatures only once per-thread.
 * PM System
 * Display of MediaWiki:Edittools if installed.
 * Display of FCKeditor if installed.
 * Thread and Forum Subscriptions

Successful Testing
MediaWiki Versions:

1.12, 1.11, 1.9.3, 1.7, 1.6

PHP: 5.2.5 (cgi), 5.2.3 (cgi-fcgi), 5.2.1 (isapi), 4.4.8 (cgi)

MySQL: 5.0.45, 5.0.24, 4.1.18

Download & Installation

 * 1) Download the AWC Forum extension
 * 2) Upload the files
 * 3) Add the following to LocalSettings.php:
 * 4) Run the installer
 * 5) Delete the installer
 * 6) Go to your "Special pages" and you will now see a link to your forum

User rights
In order to install this extension you must be a Sysops.

User Instruction Manual
The user manual will detail every feature, where they are located and how to use them.

At this point, it is still being written, so not everything is covered, but contributions are welcome to speed up this process, so to make it easier for others using this extension, hence the reason for using a wiki medium. It should also be pointed out, that as this extension is changing rapidly, some sections have not been documented as of yet on purpose, due to known forthcoming changes/recent changes, and there are parts of the manual that may already be outdated.

The User Instruction Manual is available here

Support

 * Working example of v2.3 can be found here (Also used for testing and debugging purposes)
 * AWC's official webpage can be found here
 * Forums discussing AWC's forum extension as well as other MediaWiki extensions made by AWC, can be found here