Mura Integration
Meld Forums is a fully integrated application, meaning that the forum's core functionality is tied directly into the Mura application itself. Meld Users are Mura Users, Meld images, attachments and avatars are all Mura files, and permissions are all based upon standard Mura groups. This makes it easy to manage your Forums and take advantage of all of Mura's extra functionality. For instance, the standard Meld Forums user login is actually the Mura login screen. When a user updates their profile information, they are actually updating their Mura user information.
Conferences & Forums
Unlimited Conferences and unlimited Forums. Forget those false ceilings other forums build into their applications; with Meld Forums you can add as many discussion areas as you need without having to pay more. Conferences allow you to group and organize your forums. Forums contain the discussions and responses (threads and posts) of your members. You have a great deal of control over who can participate and to what level, and this can be adjusted at both the conference and forums level.
Settings
Settings allow you to control the basic functionality of Meld Forums. You can choose the search method (Verity/Full Text, Search Engine Full Text, or Simple). You can also define limits on file sizes, attachment types, and how Avatars are sized. The Meld Forums caching system can be adjusted here, allowing you to fine-tune perfomance settings to suit your site's traffic and hardware.
Configurations
For even finer-grain control, each Conference and Forum can have its own configuration file. Configurations allow you to set access permissions, such as being able to read, post to or moderate discussions. Because you can adjust these settings for each conference or forum, it's easy to manage the conversations that go on in Meld Forums. For instance, you can allow casual members to create discussions without attachments in a general forum, but let advanced members attach files in another.
Themes & Skins
Nobody want's their site to look generic or common. We've built Meld Forums from the ground up to support a wide variety of styles and layouts. The layouts are entirely CSS-based, making it easy to create a unique style for your site. Themes allow you to customize the entire layout and even functionality of your forums. Skins build upon the theme by modifying images, colors and any other CSS-accessible feature. Changing themes is as simple as clicking on the one you want.
Converse With Power and Security
We have integrated the sophisticated MarkItUp! BBML editor into Meld Forums. This allows your members to post messages with style ... literally. BBML is a safe method of adding styles such as bold or italics, colors, links and the like to messages. It's easy for your members, and because it doesn't allow HTML Meld Forums prevents many of the abuse and hacking methods that less scrupulous users might otherwise try. Added to this is the ability to attach files in the formats you have allowed.
Profiles
We've added a comprehensive profile manager to Meld Forums. Members can manage their profiles, email subscriptions, avatars and other settings here. It also allows managers to post direct messages to members, as well as quickly moderate a member's settings or contributions. The profile is almost entirely based upon their Mura membership, so site managers can manage these accounts through Mura just as could any other Mura membership.
Moderation
Key to managing any forums application is the ability to moderate the content. Meld Forums is no different. Site managers can assign moderation permissions to any private or public group. Moderators can not only edit and disable content but also add announcements, delete avatars, edit user profiles, and post administrative messages. It is even possible for a moderator to disable a member's entire contributions with the click of a button.
Other Features
There are many other features in Meld Forums. Included in these is full support for internationalization (both front-end and administrator), comprehensive search options, wide-ranging control over how avatar and other image uploads are handled, and caching. Extensive security features are built into Meld Forums, from permissions-checking to anti-code injection and full data validation. To experience Meld Forums, please visit our online discussion area.
