Create your first Forum Group

Forums Menu > Create New Group
Your forums need to be contained in forum Groups so before you can create your first forum - you need to create your first forum group. After that, you can define all the forums you need!

If your user requirements are more complex

User Groups Menu > Create New User Group
Two default User Groups were created during the install ('Members' and 'Guests') which is often enough to get started. But if your forums need to be a little more complex than this then we do recommend creating your User Groups and Permissions Sets before creating forums.

If you need to carefully Control Who Can Do What

Permissions Menu > Add New Permission
Like User Groups, a handful of Permission Sets were created during install ('No Access', 'Read Only', 'Limited', 'Standard', 'Full' and 'Moderator'). These define what a user can see and do and are often sufficient but if your Access Control requirements are more complex then creating the needed Permission Sets to match your User Groups before adding Forums is the best way forward.

Do spend a little time investigating the options

Options Menu
Here in the Options menu you will fnd some of the most important settings that control key behviours of your forum. We always strongly advise new users to just spend a few moments taking a look through the administration panels to familiarise themselves with the optional settings and to ensure that they are set as they would prefer them.

Remember - for extra help, each admin section has a 'help' button that will pop up more descriptive and detailed text that explains what is needed in the way of data and settings.