FogBugz 7.0 Online Help

Setting up discussion groups

You can set up as many discussion groups as you want by logging on as an administrator and clicking Discuss | Customize.

Each discussion group contains the following options:

Full Name

A complete name for the discussion group which will appear in the headline

URL Name

A short name for the discussion group which lets you make a simplified URL people can use to access the discussion group. For example, if your URL name is cats and your web server is running at http://fogbugz.example.com, this discussion group will be located at http://fogbugz.example.com/?cats (notice the question mark).

Tagline

A brief description of the discussion group, which will appear below the headline. May contain HTML tags.

Sidebar

Text which will appear in the left-hand sidebar of the discussion group. May contain HTML tags. This can be used to make links to other popular locations, to provide guidelines and FAQs, or for a picture of your cat.

Posting Guidelines

Text which will appear right below the message text entry field telling people some basic rules for posting to the discussion group.

Days on Home Page

A number determining how many days worth of topics will be listed on the main page. For busy discussion groups, use a low number like 7 to keep the main page manageable. For new discussion groups, 60 is a good start. Anything older than this number of days will disappear from the main page (although it will still be visible in the archive). When posts disappear from the main page, they are closed to discussion. This prevents spammers from attaching advertisements to old topics that aren't actively being reviewed by moderators.

Sort Posts

Determines whether FogBugz will automatically attempt to delete posted spam and hold suspicious posts for moderator approval. More about moderation.

Permissions

Determines who can participate in the discussion group.

Internal Users: you can open the discussion group to all logged-in, normal users in FogBugz, or you can restrict it to a particular group. Groups can contain community users, allowing you to determine which external users have access to which discussion groups. This is useful when running a discusssion group for a private beta test. You can allow your registered testers to have access without using FogBugz licenses.

External Users: if your FogBugz site is available to the internet at large, you can open up discussion groups to outside users.

Admins

You can set up administrators (a.k.a. moderators) for this discussion group. Discussion group administrators are able to modify all aspects of this discussion group including the HTML layout. They can also moderate discussions, see deleted posts, etc.