Glossary

The following are terms used throughout this tutorial and in help material for Forums@BU.

Forum

A collection of topics and replies concerning a particular subject.

Moderator

Person or group of people in charge of a forum. Moderators can edit existing posts and grant and revoke access to private forums.

Topic

A message posted directly to a forum which may or may not have replies.

Reply

A message posted in response to a topic.

Subject

Like the subject of an email, this functions as a title for your post. The Subject is what will displayed on the Topic Index page.

Message body

This is the body text of a post. The message body will be displayed on the list of replies to a topic.

Announcement

A type of topic posted by a moderator that always appears at the top of the forum. If the forum has multiple pages, the announcement will appear on each page.

Sticky

A sticky is a topic and its replies that appear ahead of all other topics. If a forum has multiple pages, a sticky will only appear on the first page.

Poll

A poll is a topic with a question and several options attached. Polls can be replied to like any other topic.

Post

Generic term for any of the following messages: topic, reply, poll, announcement, or sticky.

Subforum

Identical to a forum except that it is categorized beneath another forum.

User

Anyone with the ability to post to Forums@BU. We allow for anyone with an e-mail address to post, but users without a BU Login Name need to register before doing so.

Usergroup

A group of users with access to a private forum. Moderators grant access to private forums by adding new users to the Usergroup for that forum.

Private Message

A message posted to a user instead of to a forum. At times, you may want to communicate directly with a member of the Forums@BU community, but will not know their email address. A private message allows you to use the forum software to post a message that that user will be able to view the next time he or she logs in.

Lock Topic

Prevent any future replies to a topic.

Split Topic

Take a topic with many replies and split it into two separate topics with as many of the original replies as you would like.