I have created a Website Ministry page for the duration of time before we go live with the site in June, and I put a forum on the page last night for members of the church and ministry leaders to use in talking about the site and getting buy-in from people for the new site.

Adding the forum brings up the question: How do I control the posting of comments and whatnot for language and other content that is not desired? And is there a way to be notified by email whenever a new post needs to be approved? Doesn't this get out of control later on when several dozen people could be communicating on the forums?

Hi Jason,

If you are using the Discussion Forum (as opposed to CHC Forum), it offers a lot of control over who can post and who cannot. You can set it up so only logged in users can post, or just certain users. It comes with spam word filtering built-in, and you can extend if you would like. You can also set it up as "moderated" and so the moderator has to approve every post before it is on the site.

I would recommend to read the documentation, and most of the options are available in the Flexform (when you add the plugin to the page, if you edit it, you will see this form with tabs Main-Options-Spam-Administrator-etc).

If you have any more questions, please ask.

-Dave

Jason,

Just so you know, we have thousands of frontend users on our church website and places all over our website where people can post. But it does not get out of hand. However, we also use the features Dave is referring to and we monitor all places where people can post to our website.

In Him,
Mark

This is probably another issue, but I am not able to create a user account. Was I wrong to assume I could do this without first setting something up in the backend area?

Please let me know how I can set up something where I don't have to approve a general list of people who want to create an account with the church. I probably need to know what kind of security controls I can put limits on people... but I can try to figure this out over the next few weeks since the site is only being introduced to a few people in the church at this point.

Jason,

Here is training on Frontend user management:
http://webempoweredchurch.com/support/classes/workingwithfrontenduseraccount/

Here is training on Backend user management:
http://webempoweredchurch.com/support/classes/setupbackendusers/

In Christ,
Mark