Beginners: Links at Top Right of Forum

[GregChapman]

When a visitor first encounters a Nabble forum they will see up to four links at the top right of the forum page. These are:

Refresh | Permalink | Login | Register

The functions and reasons for these appearing is explained below:

Register:
By default, any visitor may view and post anywhere on a Nabble forum. If you do not wish to restrict access to any part of your forum, and will never want to contact privately those who post, then you need not alter the default User Permissions (See: Options > Users > Change permissions).

Most forum administrators will wish to manage the use of their forum in some way, for example, to stop casual visitors posting or viewing the content of certain areas (aka sub-forums/sub-categories). To achieve this users are placed in "User Groups" and members of these groups are given different sets of permissions. These may allow or prevent, amongst other things, viewing the forum or sub-forum, creating new topics or replying to posts.

After "Anyone", the next level of User Group is "Registered". Membership of both of these groups is totally in the hands of the forum user, not the forum administrator. The main purpose of having these two groups is that it provides a mechanism to control access to particular functions (e.g. viewing and posting) in a forum to those who provide a valid email address.

The register link takes the user to a screen where they can record basic details, a user name and email address,  that will identify them to the system and thereby grant them access to the areas the forum administrator determines for the "Registered" group of users.

Login:
This link takes you to a login screen. It allows the system to identify the user and so determine which User Groups to which they belong. Nabble provides a number of groups by default,:

Anyone:  a member of the general public
Registered: someone who has logged basic id details on the system
Administrator: the creator of the forum and any other user placed in that group by an Administrator.
Member: any user placed in this group by an Administrator

Further groups can be created by a user in the Administrator group. There is more information about groups in a post in the Moderating Free Forum topic.

Once a user logs in the "Login" and "Register" links become redundant and these are replaced with the link to the user's "Username" on that forum. The "Username" link accesses a menu that allows a user to change their id details, see a list of their posts, add an avatar, signature, and a number of other features related to their id on Nabble.

It is possible for a user to see a fifth link to the top right of the forum. This appears to the right of the other links after an unregistered user makes a post. The link will be the name provided when the user made their post and takes the user to a profile screen where they are prompted to register.
Note: If you are trying to test for this feature you'll find the unregistered user link is controlled by a cookie that ceases to exist should you login with some other id afterwards. Not only that, the post you made as an unregistered user becomes adopted as a post of the id with which you then logged in.

Permalink:
This vital link only appears when the forum is embedded.

If the forum is not embedded the address bar of the visitor's browser will reveal the URL of the point within the forum that is being displayed. When the forum is embedded, the address bar will only show URL of the page in which forum is embedded. A mechanism is needed so that users can post links to a particular place within the forum.

The Permalink link opens a dialogue box that provides the URL to the currently viewed area, topic or post in the forum. This can then be copied and used pasted anywhere, either within the forum or anywhere on the Internet to provide that link. (If the link is to a place that only authorised forum members may view, then that link will take them to either a login screen or a "Request for Access" screen depending on the permissions set or the location pointed to by the link.)

Refresh:
This important link only appears when the forum is embedded.

The link is needed to reload an individual forum page. Many users will keep a tab open in their browser that displays a popular topic with many posts. They will need to refresh the forum page to see the latest posts.

When the forum is embedded if the browser's refresh/reload facility is used it will reload the original embedded page, not the sixth page of a topic in a sub-forum several levels down into the structure of the forum. The "Refresh" link provides a way of updating the forum page, without reloading the page in which it is embedded.