Champ › Guides › Forums, topics & posts

Forums, topics & posts

Your community is built from four pieces:

  • Forums are rooms, one per subject.
  • Categories are optional headings that group forums together.
  • Topics are conversations inside a forum.
  • Posts are the replies inside a topic.

This guide shows you how to set up and arrange each one.

Creating a forum#

  1. In the Champ dashboard, open Forums.
  2. Click Create forum.
  3. Fill in Name of the forum. Keep it short and clear: "Recipes", not "The Northwind Supply Recipe Exchange".
  4. Fill in Description. Write one line that says what belongs in this forum. This line shows under the name on your forum's main page. It is the best way to keep posts on-topic.
  5. Click Save.

To change the order of your forums: on the Forums page, use the up and down arrows next to each forum. Customers see the forums in the same order.

Categories#

Categories are headings that group your forums. They help when you have more than about four forums and the list gets hard to read.

  1. In the Champ dashboard, open Settings and find Categories.
  2. Turn on Display forums in separate categories.
  3. Type a category name in Category title and click Add. Repeat for each category.
  4. Open each forum (in Forums) and pick its category in the Category box.

The Category box on a forum only appears after you turn on Display forums in separate categories. If that setting is off, your forums show as one list. Forums without a category are listed at the bottom.

Category headings have their own colours. You set them in Design, so the headings stand out from the forum rows. See the design and customization guide.

Who can see and post in a forum#

Each forum has a Permissions section with the setting Who can view and post. For example, you can let anyone read but only signed-in customers post.

Members-only forums. Some options limit a forum to customers with a certain Shopify customer tag. Choose one of those options, then type the tag in Customer tags.

You manage these tags in your Shopify admin, on each customer. For example:

  • Tag a customer wholesale in Shopify, and they can see your wholesale forum.
  • Remove the tag, and they can no longer see it.

Use this for VIP customers, course groups, beta testers, support plans or staff-only rooms.

Make the whole forum sign-in only. In Settings, under Forum path, turn on Restrict access to forum pages to logged in users. Then only customers signed in to your store can see any part of the forum, including reading.

The users guide explains tags in more detail.

Note If a customer cannot see a forum, they also cannot see its topics in Latest, Unread or search results. The forum is truly hidden from them, not just left off the list.

Topics#

A topic is one conversation. Your customers start topics. You and your moderators manage them:

  • Pin a topic to keep it at the top of its forum. Use this for rules, announcements, or a FAQ.
  • Lock a topic to stop new replies. People can still read it. This is often better than deleting an argument, because the useful answers stay.
  • Move a topic to a different forum if it was posted in the wrong place.
  • Hide a topic to remove it from view without deleting it.
  • Delete a topic when it should not exist at all.

Topics can also have:

  • A poll — a question with answers to choose from. Each member gets one vote. Turn it on per forum with Enable polls.
  • Tags — see Tags below.
  • Upvotes — turn on Enable topic upvoting in Settings, under Topic settings.

Pinned topics always stay at the top of their forum.

The order of replies in a topic#

Each forum has a Post order setting. It has two choices:

  • Latest posts at the end (default) — replies read from oldest to newest, like a conversation.
  • Latest posts at the beginning — the newest reply is at the top. The reply box also moves to the top.

Posts#

Posts are the replies in a topic. Members can format their posts with Markdown (simple formatting such as bold text and lists).

Posts can also have:

  • Reactions — emoji responses. A quick way to agree without writing a "+1" reply.
  • Upvotes — these also earn points.
  • @mentions — type @ and pick a member. That member gets a notification.
  • Quotes — reply with part of an earlier post quoted.
  • Images — after you connect Cloudinary (a free image-hosting service).
  • Signatures — a short line added under each of a member's posts. Turn it on in Settings, under User profiles.

These three pages show content from all forums at once. They help returning customers catch up:

  • Latest shows the newest activity in every forum they are allowed to see.
  • Unread shows what is new since their last visit.
  • Search finds words in topics and posts.

Search is off when you install Champ. To turn it on, open Settings, find Search and turn on Enable search. We recommend it: once you have a few hundred topics, search is how people find old answers.

Tags#

Tags group topics across forums. For example, a mk2 tag collects every topic about the mk2, whichever forum it is in. Each tag has its own page that lists its topics.

By default, only you and your moderators can tag topics, and you can use any tag.

To let members tag their own topics:

  1. In Settings, find Tagging.
  2. Turn on Enable user tagging.
  3. In Defined tags, type the tags members can choose from, separated by commas.
  4. Click Save.

Members can only pick tags from your Defined tags list. They cannot make up new ones.

Next#