Hopefully I will have a site live soon which inlude the CBB forum for registered members.

I am a bit nervous about setting the forum limits and wondered if any Xoopsters had a dummy's guide to running a forum.

There are three points that are concerning me in particular:

1) Custom Avatars - Yes or No?

Is it safe to allow custom avatars in Xoops? (will be version 2.0.13.2 + Protector). I was going to allow 100 x 100 px and 30 Kb - animated or static - plus the usual warnings about decency, copying webmaster's avatar etc. Personally, I like custom avatars.

2) Should I allow attachments?

CBB does a nice job of restricting uploaded images to the forum column width by generating an intermediate click-to-enlarge image. I was going to set a 100 KB filesize limit. That should be enough to upload a screenshot I think. Users can attach ZIP files too and I can see the value in that, but note that it isn't allowed here on Xoops.org.

I can't see a way to stop people adding external images with the [ img ] tag, so I was just going to set some dimension and filesize rules and ask members to report abuse.

3) Post as anonymous - good idea?... bad idea?

Personally, I can't see the virtue of a registered user being able to post some caustic comment without it being linked to his/her ID. But am I missing something? Could this feature be useful?

Any links to FAQs or other tips from seasoned forum-masters would be appreciated.

One thing i'll definately say... anonymous posting is not a good idea

i have to agree with david. anonymous posting is definitely a bad idea. you get all kinds of freaks and spam on your board.

for me, i'd say that custom avatars are a must. everyone using the same stock images is boring.

i'd say allowing image and file uploads is a bad idea. from what i hear, there's an increased security risk. but the main reason i think it's a bad idea is that if your forum grows with a lot of members and traffic, you'll start having some serious bandwidth problems.

Quote:

The only time I've seen this to be a useful feature is when I setup an intranet for a company that then had to make a large portion of its staff redundant. I then had to setup a forum where employees were able to post "as anonymous" to protect their identities from management when certain "sensitive" issues were discussed.

Management never knew that the ID was linked to the post anyway and this allowed several issues to be discussed openly (i.e. management sucked).

Posting "as anonymous" is not the same as anonymous users posting. The former requires a user to be registered to able to post with the difference being that the username is not displayed against the forum post (which I think you knew about Peekay).

HTH.

Cheers.

If you where running a site with a tricky subject line.. example: physical assault in families - I can see the advantage of wanting to post anonymously...

But otherwise... nope.