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Apr
05
2010
Add a Discussion Forum to Joomla
Joomla Tutorials
Written by Open Source Training   
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Lots of websites use a discussion forum to help their users.

  • Some websites have forums for people to chat freely on whatever topic they choose.
  • Other websites use forums to provide support. People post their questions and staff members reply with the answer.

Our choice of discussion forum for Joomla is Agora from JVitals.com. We use Agora to support our Joomla training students and in this tutorial we're going to show you how to set it up on your site.

Agora Forum

Installing Agora

  1. Agora can be downloaded from the downloads section of JVitals.com.
  2. Download the Agora component to your desktop. It will have a file name similar to com_agora_3.0.12.zip
  3. In your Joomla site, go to Administrator >> Extensions >> Install / Uninstall and upload Agora.
  4. Go to Components >> Agora Forum and you should see a Control Panel in front of you:

Agora Forum

Configuring Agora

The first place to start with Agora is to make it visible so that you can see how it appears on your site:

  1. Go to Menus >> Your choice of menu >> Click "New"
  2. Click "Agora Forum", enter a title for your menu link and click save.
When you visit that link on the front of your site, you'll see Agora but without any content. The first thing you need to do is add some categories. If you're running a movie forum, these might be "Romance", "Action" and "Drama". As we run a Joomla forum, we have "Extensions", "Templates" and more.
  1. Go to Components >> Agora Forum and click "Categories & Forums"
  2. Agora classifies "Forums" as the top-level and "Categories" as the second-level. This is an example of how ours are set-up. "Drupal" and "Wordpress" are Forums. "Newcomers" and "Anything" are categories and this is what people post into:

    fandc

  3. To set these up, start by clicking on "Add Forum" in the top-right corner.
  4. Once your forums are set-up, you can click "Add Category" to finish your set-up.

Agora Groups

You can create groups of users who have access to different forums and categories. For example, we allow our Drupal students access to the Drupal support forum but not Wordpress or Joomla:

  1. Go to Components >> Agora Forum >> Groups. Click "New" and name your group.
  2. Go to Components >> Agora Forum >> Categories & Forums and open a particular category.
  3. Click "Add Group" in the top-right corner and you can give that group access to the category.

 

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Comments  

 
#1 mparrott84 2010-04-06 16:12
What benifits do you see for Agora over Kunena and why do you still use Kunena on this site?
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#2 Shairyar 2010-04-09 10:15
Yes i want to know that too
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#3 John Terpening 2010-05-05 06:42
Though improved from the Fireboard days (let's be honest, they merely changed the name, tweaked a few things, and made it J! 1.5 compatible), Kunena required a TON of SQL queries to compile each and every page.

It's been awhile since I played with it, but upwards of 200+ queries for the category page?!?
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#4 JoomNewb 2010-05-13 02:28
Sorry, complete Joomla newb here, but I'm stuck at step 1 of your Configuring Agora section.

When you say 1. Go to Menus >> Your choice of menu >> Click "New"

I don't have an option called "Your choice of menu" or know what that means.

2. Click "Agora Forum", enter a title for your menu link and click save.

I don't see "Agora Forum" as an option.

Appreciate any help. Thanks.
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#5 Steve Burge 2010-06-25 11:02
Hi Shairyar mparrott84

I personally find Agora easier to use. There's been a lot of work on Kunena recently so that might have changed, but Agora has been very ease for our clients.

Nothing against Kunena - it still works and I've seen no reason to remove it from this site.

Hi Joomnewb

"Your choice of menu" is a phrase not an actual button. Choose any menu such as Main Menu or Top Menu.
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#6 sam123 2010-07-30 05:03
Hi.
I have started using Agora recently. but i was searching for few answers on google and found your website. It would be great if you could help me out with it. My question is

1) when someone post a topic, it should go to the administrator to approve it
2) when a new topic is posted, there should be an email generated that goes to all the regeistered memebers.

Is this possible in Agora?
Thaanks
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#7 Jaap Verduijn 2010-08-05 16:36
Hi!

"Your choice of menu" is not a link. It just means that you should pick a menu and proceed from there.

Be well!

Jaap Verduijn.

Quoting JoomNewb:
Sorry, complete Joomla newb here, but I'm stuck at step 1 of your Configuring Agora section.

When you say 1. Go to Menus >> Your choice of menu >> Click "New"

I don't have an option called "Your choice of menu" or know what that means.

2. Click "Agora Forum", enter a title for your menu link and click save.

I don't see "Agora Forum" as an option.

Appreciate any help. Thanks.
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#8 Arnel piquero 2010-08-11 16:50
thanks for the tutorial steve, I have used kunena in my site, what is the difference between kunena and agora? Which is more easy to used?

In kunena, Can I used jce editor?
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