ModBlog group

The secret of successful game and mod development projects (aside from awesome gameplay) is an active community of creators and players discussing ideas, hunting bugs, sharing concepts and helping one-another. A key part of fostering a community of fans is discussion forums, and whilst the majority of projects listed on the Mod DB have forums, we wanted to open our technology up and enable teams to create Mod DB forums for their teams public (and private) use. The following guide explains exactly how you can do this, so you can harness the power of Mod DB's huge active game development community for your projects benefit.

Setup your forum

The first step towards starting your own uber-powerful, fast forum system which taps into the ModDB's community is navigating to the game, mod, engine or group profile which you control. If you are a profile leader, you will see a grayed out forum tab. Click the forum tab, and then click the "setup" link to begin the setup process.

Fill in your forum description

You should now be presented with a screen like the one below. Fill in all of the details and click save. The forum logos you see on this page, are little logos which you can allow your forum members / admins to pick to display alongside members usernames / avatars. A demo is provided in the below screen.

Layout your forums categories and boards

The hard work is done, now it is time to add categories and boards for your members to start threads in. The image below provides examples of the different areas of a forum.

Adding a category

Super easy, just fill in a category name and submit. There is no limit to the number of categories you can add, however a category will only show up if it contains active, open boards.

Adding a board

Again super easy, fill in the board name and details including:

• Status: open, closed, staff only
• Name / Description
• Access url (not recommended to change)
• Icon

There is no limit to the number of boards you can add, and you can control if the public and profile staff can access each board.

Updating the forum layout

Once you have added at least one category and board, you can open your forums and unleash the Mod DB community on them. You can also quickly and easily shuffle things around and change names as required.

Managing members permissions

Once your forums are running, you have control over what members can view and do. You can ban members, you can make it so they cannot start threads only post, you can give them access to staff forums and all manner of things. You can also update their signature, status logos - everything!

Promote your forums / community integration

Finally once you have your forums running we highly recommend you promote them and encourage your community to join the discussion. Add links on your homepage, get people to favorite your forums, that way they will be notified when things change and can keep tabs on the latest chat. In future the ability to template your forums and embed them on your homepage is a possibility - contact us if this interests you. Happy posting!