Mingle Forum allows you to easily and quickly put a Forum on your Wordpress site/blog.
== BEFORE ALL READ THIS ==
Hi !
I'm Xéfir Destiny, the "hacker" of this plugin.
I made huge modifications from the 1.0.34 version of the original plugin by cartpauj.
Some great new features is included, like the sub-forums capabilities or the wordpress editor for posts writing (with BBCode support !)
It's pretty stable now, even if there are still performance issues.
Unfortunatly, i don't have time anymore to work on it now, so i decide to release as it's, but it's at your own risks ;-)
== Description ==
Have you been looking for a Forum Plugin for WordPress that *just works*? Then look no further! Mingle Forum has been modified to be lightweight, solid, secure, quick to setup, easy to use, and best of all it now integrates seamlessly with or without the Mingle social networking plugin (by Blair Williams). The mission of Mingle Forum is, to **KEEP IT SIMPLE** There are a handful of Forum Plugins for WordPress available but they are either super buggy, difficult to install, or so bloated with features and settings that its a nightmare setting them up. Dont do that to yourself!!! You can be up and running with Mingle Forum fully installed and configured in as little as 5 minutes -- pretty cool eh?
= Donate =
[GET A FREE PLUGIN WHEN DONATING](http://cartpauj.com/projects/cartpauj-post-hits-plugin/)
[Get More Mingle Forum Skins](http://cartpauj.icomnow.com/forum/?mingleforumaction=viewforum&f=5.0 "cartpauj.com Mingle Forum Skins")
= Features =
* **NEW!** Limit SPAM by setting a time interval users must wait between posts
* Create a corresponding Forum post when you create a WordPress post
* User Signatures (instead of Bio)
* Lock entire forums
* Image uploads on New Posts and Replies
* SEO Friendly forum URLs
* Forum Sitemap (../wp-content/plugins/mingle-forum/sitemap.php)
* Integrated HTML areas for adsense or affiliate links
* Media embedding into forum posts (like Youtube, Flickr, Photobucket...)
* RSS Feeds
* Quick Reply
* Wordpress 3.x ready!
* Categories with sub-forums
* User Groups
* User Levels (EX: Newbie, Beginner, Advanced, Pro)
* Moderators
* Skins
* Captcha
* BB Code
* Smilies
* Custom Forum Search
* Guest posts (See Mingle Forum Guest Info add-on by wpweaver)
* Hot/Very Hot topics
* Sticky (Pinned) Topics
* Move, Edit, Remove and Close topics
* Email notifications on Replies to Topics
* Email notifications on new Topics in Forums
* Recent posts widget (or PHP shortcode for your theme)
* Integrates nicely with most themes (Its tough to make it work for all themes so some skin modifications may be required for your site)
* Allow/Dis-allow other users to view your profile from the Forum
* Supports internationalization/localization
= Notes =
* Mingle forum 1.0.32 uses a new email subscription system. All old subscriptions will be lost after upgrading. This will allow much better email support for the future.
* If you use Wordpress 2.9.2 or older you will need to download Mingle Forum vs. 1.0.27 as of 1.0.28+ only Wordpress 3.0+ is supported
* As of Mingle Forum Vs 1.0.03 the skins directory has been changed to /wp-content/mingle-forum-skins/ [Tell Me More...](http://cartpauj.icomnow.com/forum/?mingleforumaction=viewtopic&t=64.0)
* If youre switching from WP Forum or Forum Server you will lose your skin and settings but you will NOT lose your categories, forums, groups, or topics which makes it very easy to make the transition :)
= Translations =
* NOTE: If you want to help with translations click [HERE](http://cartpauj.icomnow.com/forum/cartpauj-general-group2/translating-my-plugins-forum15/how-to-translate-my-plugins-to-your-language-thread25/)
* Arabic
* Brazilian Portuguese
* Bulgarian
* Croatian
* Czech
* Danish
* Dutch
* Estonian
* Finnish
* French
* Georgian
* German
* Hebrew
* Hungarian
* Indonesian
* Italian
* Japanese
* Latvian
* Persian
* Polish
* Romanian
* Russian
* Simplified Chinese
* Slovak
* Slovanian
* Spanish
* Swedish
* Thai
* Traditional Chinese
* Turkish
== Installation ==
* Great [setup videos here](http://cartpauj.com/projects/mingle-forum-plugin/tutorials/) by cartpauj or use Roberts [text guide here](http://minglecommunities.com/mingle-forum-install-guide/).
* Download Mingle Forum
* Create a new page for your forum to display on
* Head to the page you just created for the forum, paste [mingleforum] and save, (NOTE: Its best to paste that under the HTML tab of your page editor)
* Head to Dashboard -> Plugins -> Add New -> Upload
* Browse to the .zip file you downloaded and click open
* Click Install
* Click Activate
* Youll now see a new admin menu called Mingle Forum
* Configure your Mingle Forum options, Set a Skin [HOW TO](http://cartpauj.icomnow.com/forum/?mingleforumaction=viewtopic&t=36.00), create your Categories and Forums
* DONE! Its that easy
Need help?:
[Cartpauj Support Forums](http://cartpauj.icomnow.com/forum "Cartpauj Support Forums")
* **My users can't register?** - Dashboard -> Settings -> General -> Anyone can register -> Save
* **Help! I can't create new topics** - Make sure you have watched the setup videos and have created both categories AND forums.
* **How can I hide the sidebar on the forum page?** - When editing the forum page, if your theme supports it, you should be able to change your Template to a full-width one. If you don't see this option, either hire a developer to make one for you, or bug your theme author to add it.
* **I made customizations to the forum, but they get overwritten on every update** - If you customize anything inside of the /mingle-forum/ folder it will be overwritten, there's no way around that. If all you're changing is CSS, then put it somewhere else, like at the bottom of your theme's styles.css file (which gets overwritten when you upgrade your theme FYI).
* **My skin looks bad/funny** - Your theme is most likely causing a conflict with the forum's table styles. We do our best, but can't possibly make the forum work for every conceivable WordPress theme. Find a friend who knows a thing or two about CSS and see if they'll help you get some custom styles set to fix the issue.
* **Can I put different forums on different pages?** - No. Not right now, and maybe not ever.
* **SEO friedly URL's are not working** - Make sure you have permalinks enabled in WordPress. Any setting but "default" should work. We personally like Day & Name for blogs, or Postname for non-blogs.
* **Google isn't indexing my forum pages** - Step 1: Set WordPress Permalink settings to anything but default, then enable SEO Friendly URLs in the forum's options. Step 2: Make sure you don't have Canonical URLs enabled on the forum page by another plugin like All In One SEO Pack. Mingle Forum implements some of its own SEO features making this unneccessary.
* **I can only see the front page of the forum. No matter what I click, it goes back to the front page** - Step 1: Make sure the forum isn't the home page of your site. Mingle Forum does not currently work when set to the home page. Step 2: Try enabling or disabling SEO Friendly URL's in the Forum Options. Step 3: Are you using WP SEO by Yoast? If so, disable the option to rewrite ugly permalinks.
* Added Feature - Cartpauj PM now fully integrates with the Forum for Private Messaging (Requires Cartpauj PM vs 1.0.09 or greater)
* Changed Mingle Forum to only allow Moderators or Admins to "Remove" posts
= 1.0.14 =
* Fixed a syntax error causing a fatal error when trying to Post a new topic
= 1.0.13 =
* Fixed another registration link bug
* Fixed userrole redundancy
* New CAPTCHA system that doesn't use PHP Sessions so it should work for everyone :)
* Added Persian translation (Big thanks to [Mostafa Soufi](http://iran98.org/))
* Updated Danish translations (Big thanks to [GeorgWP](http://wordpress.blogos.dk))
= 1.0.12 =
* Fixed a number of translatable strings
* Fixed some other profile related bugs
* Fixed Show/Hide header bug
* Security Fix - email address being sent out in notification emails
* Modified Profile linking and simplified some of the code for it
* Updated Japanese tranlsation (Big thanks to [Kayoko Furukawa](http://www.design-cupola.com))
* Updated Bulgarian translation (Big thanks to [DD Art](http://ddart-bg.com/))
* Added Hungarian translation (Big thanks to [Laszlo Szamosi](http://www.sutesfozes.blogspot.com))
* Added Danish translation (Big thanks to [Thomas Sindberg](http://dagpengeregler.dk))
= 1.0.11 =
* Fixed bug causing logged in users name to show on all topic replies (Thanks to Gene for spotting this before I left for vacation!)
= 1.0.10 =
* Added admin option to select the forum's public Display Name
= 1.0.09 =
* Fixed bug preventing pre 2.9 users from using the forum, these users can now use the forum but will not have access to media embedding
* Fixed bug preventing Moderators from being able to make topics sticky/closed
* Fixed some CSS in the default theme
* Fixed bugs preventing users with PHP 4 from using the forum
* Updated forum time to work with the users Wordpress settings instead of using GMT, this change doens't effect existing posts but all new posts will have the corrected time.
* Updated the way emails are sent out, now much more info is sent in HTML format instead of plain text
* Added spacing around smilie inserts to prevent them from not showing up properly
* Added Traditional Chinese translation (Big thanks to [Jackie Yeh](http://givelove.tellustek.com))
* Added Thai translation (Big thanks to [Sutee](http://woodloverclub.com))
* Added Bulgarian translation (Big thanks to [DD Art](http://ddart-bg.com/))
* Added Georgian translation (Big thanks to [Mirian Koridze](http://koridze.com/))
= 1.0.08 =
* Added some CSS Fixes to all the skins to help make the forum more compatible with various themes
= 1.0.07 =
* Added admin setting to allow hiding/showing the login form
* Fixed and re-published the admin setting to allow changing the time format the forum uses
* Added French translation (Big thanks to [Gobiel](http://gobiel.info/))
* Updated Italian translation (Big thanks to [Clay](http://clayworld.altervista.org))
= 1.0.06 =
* Fixed bug in video embed system causing the [url] & [img] BBCodes to break
= 1.0.05 =
* UPDATE TO 1.0.05 NOW - Fixed Embed bug that could bring down your entire forum!
* Fixed small bug in database creation
= 1.0.04 =
* Updated Swedish Translation (Big thanks to [Stefan Ljungwall](http://minablandadeinfall.se/))
* Updated Dutch Translation (Big thanks to @Jensr)
* Fixed Embedding Videos, now supports more than YouTube (see [THIS](http://codex.wordpress.org/Embeds) for more info on supported embeds and [THIS](http://cartpauj.icomnow.com/forum/?mingleforumaction=viewtopic&t=43.0) for a How To?)
* Fixed registration link bug
* Fixed bug related to Forum Database columns not being added properly
= 1.0.03 =
* As of Mingle Forum Vs 1.0.03 the skins directory has been changed to /wp-content/mingle-forum-skins/ [Tell Me More...](http://cartpauj.icomnow.com/forum/?mingleforumaction=viewtopic&t=64.0)
* Added smilies to the editor. (You'll need to re-download the themes to get the smilies)
* Updated German translation (Big thanks to [adiumac](http://cad.hieke.at/))
= 1.0.02 =
* Fixed a critical DB bug affecting international users and foriegn characters (Be sure to de-activate before updating)
= 1.0.01 =
* Added YouTube video embedding (to get this to work you must use the URL from the src= in the embed code)
* Updated Russian translation (Big thanks to [Verbena](http://xozyayka.ru/))
* Modified code to be more compatible with PHP 4 (have not tested with PHP 4 yet though)
= 1.0.00 =
* Heres all the changes Ive made since taking over from WP Forum (Big thanks to Eric Hamby for his previous contributions to this plugin as well!)
* Added Feature(s): Full integration with Mingle
* Avatars work with Mingle avatars
* Profile links take you to Mingle profiles
* Forum posts get posted as user activity in Mingle
* Forum replies get posted as replies in Mingle
* Forum posts deleted also deletes corresponding Mingle post