Isn’t it funny how requirements are like London buses and always come along 3 at a time. The Storm Forums have been out for around 18 months now and from original release users needed to have Contributor site permissions or above to be able to create new topics and replies. This seemed good to us as we envisioned the forums being used mostly in collaboration environments. We use 7 lists for the forums – most of which are hidden, so we decided to use permissions at the Site level rather than having to set them at 7 different places.
All was good until around 2 months ago we had 4 different companies come to us and say they wanted users with Read-Only site permissions to be able to create new replies + topics. When 1 person suggests a feature you take note, but when 3 or 4 mention it in such a brief period of time you understand it is something worth implementing – so that is what we have done.
If you download the latest version of the forums in the web part toolbar properties you’ll notice two new checkboxes:
Now you can choose exactly what Read Only site users can do. You can decide if you want them to be creating new topics, or just replying to existing ones.
If you are an existing customer you can get the new version from the Downloads page after logging in, or pick up the trial from the Storm Forums homepage.
Let us know your feedback once you’ve tried it, and remember if you have an idea make sure you shout it over to us 🙂
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