Using Joomla

Discussion Forum: Set Up an Integrated Discussion Forum Using Kunena

• Extension: Kunena

• Website: http://www.kunena.com

• Cost: Free

• License: GNU/GPL

• Minimum requirements: Joomla 1.5, PHP 5.0.3+ (5.2+ recommended), MySQL 4.1.20+ (5.0+ recommended)

Discussion forums are a great way to build a community of users around your site. Helen has decided she wants to provide her site users a way to interact and she’s chosen the popular forum software Kunena.

We’ll assume that you have already downloaded Kunena and have installed it using the Extension Manager in the same way other extensions are installed. You should see something like Figure 18-56.

Figure 18-56. Kunena: Control Panel

It may look like a lot of options, but there are only half as many as it appears because the side links are duplicates of the icon links in the center. Let’s examine what’s behind each item:

Kunena Control Panel

This is where you are at the moment. Like the Joomla Control Panel, it’s the launching point for all the features.

Kunena Configuration

There is a very detailed configuration screen for Kunena that allows you to customize just about every aspect imaginable. We recommend that you really take your time and read through this page and the help notes next to each and every item. It’s divided up in to nine sections: Basics, Frontend, Security, Avatars, Uploads, Ranking, BBCode, Integration, and Plug-ins. We’ll get into some ...