Key concepts

Forumera is built around a few core concepts that keep discussions structured and searchable over time. This page explains how they fit together and how they show up in the UI.

Forums

A forum is the top-level container for a community. Each forum has:

• Its own members and roles.
• Its own categories, boards, threads, and posts.
• Its own settings and analytics.

Most URLs you see under app/forums/[forumSlug]/... belong to a specific forum.

Categories and boards

Inside a forum, content is organised into:

• Categories – high-level groupings (for example: "Announcements", "Support", "Course weeks").
• Boards – concrete places where threads live.

Categories and boards are rendered using components like CategoryList, BoardList, and are managed by admins in the Forum Structure Manager.

Typical patterns:

• One category for Announcements, with boards like "Changelog" or "Product updates".
• One category for Discussion, with boards like "General", "Ideas", "Q&A".
• One category per module or week in a course community.

Threads and posts

Within each board:

• A thread is a focused discussion about a single topic.
• A post is an individual message inside a thread.

Threads are listed using ThreadList and rendered with ThreadView. Posts are rendered via PostList, and written with the PostEditor, which supports rich formatting and markdown.

Good thread hygiene:

• Start a new thread when the topic is distinct.
• Use clear, descriptive titles so people can find the thread later.
• Keep posts focused on the thread topic.

Archive and canon

Over time, important threads can be:

• Archived – preserved but de-emphasised for day-to-day browsing, via the ArchiveView.
• Turned into canonical summaries – curated, high-signal write-ups using CanonSummary.

This lets forums evolve into a long-lived knowledge base rather than a firehose of short-lived discussions.

Public vs private visibility

Every forum has a visibility model:

• Public forums expose some content to non-members.
• Private forums require membership to see most or all content.

Admins can configure visibility per forum, board, and sometimes per thread using tools like VisibilitySelector and LayerSelector. This is handled internally by Forumera's permissions system.