friendica_2019-12_sharedHosting_hotFix/doc/Forums.md

Forums
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Friendica also lets you create forums and/or celebrity accounts. 

Every page in Friendica has a nickname and these must all be unique.
This applies to all forums, whether they are normal profiles or forum profiles.

Therefore the first thing you need to do to create a new forum is to register a new account for the forum.
Please note that the site administrator can restrict and/or regulate the registration of new accounts.

If you create a second account on a system and use the same email address or OpenID account as an existing account, you will no longer be able to use the email address (or OpenID) to log in to the account.
You should log in using the account nickname instead. 

On the new account, visit the 'Settings' page.
Towards the end of the page are "Advanced Account/Page Type Settings".
Typically you would use "Normal Account" for a normal personal account.
This is the default selection.
Community Forum/Celebrity Accounts provide the ability for people to become friends/fans of the forum without requiring approval.

The exact setting you would use depends on how you wish to interact with people who join the page.
The "Soapbox" setting lets the page owner control all communications.
Everything you post will go out to the forum members, but there will be no opportunity for interaction.
This setting would typically be used for announcements or corporate communications.

The most common setting is the "Community Forum".
This creates a forum page where all members can freely interact. 

The "Automatic Friend Account" is typically used for personal profile forums where you wish to automatically approve any friendship/connection requests. 

Managing Multiple forums
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We recommend that you create group forums with the same email address and password as your normal account.
If you do this, you will find a new "Manage" tab on the menu bar which lets you toggle identities easily and manage your forums.
You are not required to do this, but the alternative is to log out and log back into the other account to manage alternate forums.
This could get cumbersome if you manage several different forums/identities. 

You may also appoint a delegate to manage your forum.
Do this by visiting the [Delegation Setup Page](settings/delegation).
This will provide you with a list of contacts on this system under "Potential Delegates".
Selecting one or more persons will give them access to manage your forum.
They will be able to edit contacts, profiles, and all content for this account/page.
Please use this facility wisely.
Delegated managers will not be able to alter basic account settings such as passwords or page types and/or remove the account.


Posting to Community forums
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If you are a member of a community forum, you may post to the forum by including an @-tag in the post mentioning the forum.
For example @bicycle would send my post to all members of the group "bicycle" in addition to the normal recipients.
If you mention a forum (you are a member of) in a new posting, the posting will be distributed to all members of the forum, regardless of your privacy settings for the posting.
Also, if the forum is a public forum, your posting will be public for the all internet users.
If your post is private you must also explicitly include the group in the post permissions (to allow the forum "contact" to see the post) **and** mention it in a tag (which redistributes the post to the forum members).
Posting privately to a public forum, will result in your posting being displayed on the forum wall, but not on yours.

Additionally it is possible to address a forum with the exclamation mark.
In the example above this means that you can address the bicycle forum via !bicycle.
The difference to the @ is that the post will only be sent to the addressed forum.
This also means that you shouldn't address multiple forums in a single post in that way since it will only be distributed by one the forums.

You may also post to a community forum by posting a "wall-to-wall" post using secure cross-site authentication.

Comments which are relayed to community forums will be relayed back to the original post creator.
Mentioning the forum with an @-tag in a comment does not relay the message, as distribution is controlled entirely by the original post creator.