Request Your Forum

Once you've identified the purpose and users of your forum, you're ready to request that your forum will be created. We'll walk through each of the questions you'll need to answer in order to create your forum.

Forum Name

This is the name of your academic or administrative department, center, lab, conference, journal, etc. This name will be listed on the Forums Index.

Category

Forums@BU provides several choices to categorize forums. We do this to make the Forums Index a bit easier to navigate. If you do not see an appropriate category, submit your request anyway, but include a note in the comments.

Description

This text will appear below the forum name on the Forums home page.

Example descriptions are shown below the Forum Names

Moderators

We'll cover the specifics later in the course, but essentially they have the rights to moderate discussion on a forum. This includes the right to edit any post, prevent future replies to a topic, etc. Only users with a BU Login name may request to be moderators.

Public Forum

Anyone who browses to Forums@BU, including non-registered users, may view the forum. Only registered users may post, but anyone with an email address may register in Forums@BU.

Private Forum

Only those specified by a forum moderator may read or post topics and replies to the forum. Once the forum is created, moderators can add or remove members at any time.

Announcements-only forum

An Announcements-only forum is one where only moderators may post topics or replies. Other users may not post at all, but may participate in polls. This is sometimes used as a replacement for a mailing list.