Note: as the mwForum software is highly configurable, not all of the features mentioned below are necessarily enabled in this installation.

Forum

The forum is the whole installation, and usually contains multiple boards. You should always enter the forum through a link that ends in 'forum.pl' (not 'forum_show.pl') to let the forum know when you start a new session. Otherwise the forum won't know when to display posts as new or old.

User

A user is anyone who registers an account in the forum. Registration is usually not required for reading most boards, but depending on configuration only registered users will have access to certain boards and features.

Group

Users can be granted membership in user groups. Open groups can also be joined by users themselves. The groups in turn are granted member or moderator rights in selected boards, allowing members of the group to read and write in or moderate those boards.

Board

A board contains topics, which in turn contain the posts. Boards can be set to be visible to registered users or to moderators and board members only. Boards can optionally allow posts by unregistered guests. Announcement boards can be read-only, so that they only allow posts by moderators and members, or reply-only, which means that only moderators and members can start new topics, but everybody can reply. Another option for boards is moderation. If this option is activated, new posts will be invisible to normal users until a moderator approves them.

Topic

A topic, otherwise known as thread, contains all the posts on a specific subtopic, that should be named in the topic's subject. Boards have expiration values that determine after how many days their topics will expire or get locked after their last post has been made. Moderators can also manually lock topics, so that no replies can be made and no post can be edited anymore.

Post

A post is a public message by a user. It can be either a base post, which starts a new topic, or a reply to an existing topic. Posts can be edited and deleted, which may be limited to a certain time frame. Posts can be locked by moderators, making it impossible to reply or edit. Posts can be reported to the moderators in case of rule violations.

Private Message

In addition to the public posts, private messages may be enabled in a forum. Registered users can send each other these messages without knowing the email addresses of the recipients.

Administrator

Administrators can control and edit everything in the forum. This means they can also act as moderators globally. Administrators are listed on the forum info page.

Moderator

Moderators' powers are limited to specific boards. They can edit, lock, delete and approve posts, lock and delete topics, and check the list of posts reported for rule violations. The user groups whose members have moderator rights in a board are listed on the board's info page.

Polls

The creator of a topic may be able to add a poll to that topic. Each poll can contain up to 20 options. Polls can allow one vote per registered users per poll, or alternatively multiple votes for different options at different points in time. Polls can't be edited, and can only be deleted as long as there haven't been any votes.

Icons

	Yellow icons indicate new posts or topics and boards with new posts. In this forum, 'new' means a post has been added since your last visit. Even if you have just read it, it is still a new post, and will only be counted as old on your next visit to the forum.
	Checkmarked icons indicate that the post or all posts in a topic or board have been read. Posts are counted as read once their topic had been on screen or if they're older than a set number of days. Since new/old and unread/read are independent concepts in this forum, posts can be new and read as well as old and unread at the same time.
	Indicates posts or topics that are invisible to other users, because they are waiting for approval by a moderator.
	Indicates posts or topics that have been locked. No replies or edits are possible anymore.

Markup Tags

For security reasons, mwForum only supports its own set of markup tags, no HTML tags. Available markup tags:

[b]text[/b]	renders text bold
[i]text[/i]	renders text italic
[tt]text[/tt]	renders text nonproportional
[url]address[/url]	links to the address
[url=address]text[/url]	links to the address with the given text
[img]address[/img]	embeds a remote image (if enabled)
[img]filename[/img]	embeds an attached image
[img thb]filename[/img]	embeds an attached image's thumbnail (if available)

Smileys

The following emoticons can be displayed as images: :-) :-D ;-) :-( :-o :-P

Quoting

mwForum uses email-style quoting. To quote someone, simply copy&paste a line of text from the original post and prefix it with a > sign. It will then get highlighted in a different color. Please don't quote more text than necessary to establish context. Some forums may also have automatic quoting enabled, in that case please also trim down the quoted text to a minimum.