CourseForum and ProjectForum

Q: How do I....?

Just a reminder that our Frequently Asked Questions page contains a lot of information, particularly when it comes to installing or upgrading ProjectForum or CourseForum.

Q: Can I upload iWorks documents?

Documents from Apple's iWorks suite (Pages, Numbers, Keynote) are stored on your Mac as a directory containing several files, rather than a single file. The Mac finder just makes it appear to be a single file... applications work the same way. It's called a 'package', and you can see what's in a package by choosing 'Show Package Contents' from the context menu.

When you select one of these to upload, because its really a directory, the browser doesn't know how to handle it, and so they can't be uploaded directly. You'll first need to turn it into a single file, which can be done by choosing 'Compress' (or 'Archive' in 10.4) from the context menu, which turns it into a single zip file which can then be uploaded. Incidentally, when you try to attach a package in Mail.app, it will do this for you behind the scenes automatically. The browsers however don't do that.

Q: Is every comment in the forum emailed out?

At present, the contents of comments or other page changes are not mailed out; instead the email includes a link back to the page. The mechanism for sending works like this... people can add their email addresses to a specific page (or forum as a whole) along with a time (e.g. "notify me no more than once every four hours, once a day or whatever"). Then whenever the page changes -- any change -- the notification is sent out (respecting the "once per X" limits).

Of course, for on-demand updates, the page and forum RSS feeds are your best bet.

Q: Is it possible to share projects among groups?

Projects are attached to individual groups, so each can be in a single group only.

However, "group" here refers to workspaces in the software, rather than a single group of users (though there is usually a correlation). If projects are accessed by people from many different groups, one way to set things up is to have one groups for each of your teams, plus another group that everyone has access to. That last one could contain the projects you want shared.

Q: Can I spin-off a selection of pages into a new group?

Right now the only way to move a bunch of pages from one group to another is to do it manually (i.e. copy and paste).

Q: How do I reset the password for a user account?

This is for per-group user accounts; reset a password by loading the accounts screen, locating the name of the user you'd like to reset the password for, and then put a semi-colon after their name followed by the new password. Don't touch the lines for any other users. So it should look like:

Bob

Joe

Billy;newpass

Sue

Jenny

If you add semi-colons to other users it will reset their passwords. Similarly, if you delete them from the list it will remove their user account. So be careful to just change the one that you want.

Q: Can I publish my wiki "database" on external/public wiki sites?

On a public site running ProjectForum yes (e.g. our hosting service).

You can also export the wiki as a series of static HTML pages and associated images/files, which can then be uploaded to any website.

Q: What's the difference between free and demo licenses?

There are several variations of the software, differentiated by the type of license you have. Each has a different set of features available. You can compare the versions.

Where it can get confusing though is that it's just a single program that is downloaded; depending what kind of license key you plug into it, it will turn into the particular version.

So if you just download it and don't put in a license key, it's the "free" version. On our website you can request a demo license, which sends you a time-limited 10 group "standard" license to try out. So the demo license is really just a standard license, having the same set of features, just that it has an expiry date on it.

Q: I set a password on a page and I cannot edit it. Now what?

If you sign in as the administrator for the group, you'll be allowed to edit the page (what it will do is put the current lock password in the field for you)... and of course remove the lock password. This works similarly for administrator passwords also; if you've forgotten the admin password for a project, the group admin can get into the project admin area and retrieve or change it. Similarly, the site admin can get into any group to retrieve or change the group admin password. If you forget the site admin password though, you'll have to reset the site admin password, as described in our FAQ.

Q: Can I add META tags to the page?

At present, there is no 'hook' to allow adding additional material to the HEAD area of the HTML pages, where directives such as META tags would normally be placed. Adding material to other parts of the page can be done via the content includes within themes.

Q: Can I change the time zone in my group?

Normally, CourseForum and ProjectForum will use the time zone of the server machine running the software. On most platforms (Windows being the current exception), the site administrator can be change the time zone used, via the Site Administration pages. This change affects all forums across the entire site. At present, there is no way to change the time zone for just an individual group.

Q: Can the Category Template be changed to list the pages horizontally?

If you have enabled HTML formatting for the group, this can be done by inserting a small amount of CSS at the beginning of the page (or if you're using a custom theme, you could modify the stylesheet there). You can use the following:

===html===

<style  type="text/css">

.referenceslist li {display:inline;}

</style>

===html===

Q: How can I print multiple pages?

Beyond the obvious "print the first page, then the second..." of course. There is a markup feature that lets you include other pages into the current page. So create a new page that you'll use for printouts, and include in it markup that looks like this:

[include:name of page 1]

[include:name of page 2]

Q: Will ProjectForum run on Windows Home Server?

We don't have any experience with Windows Home Server. There's nothing in ProjectForum that is specifically built to fit into the application environment it provides, but it's entirely possible that it still runs fine on the system.

Is there anyone out there who has WHS who has given ProjectForum a try?

Q: Can I hide the site-wide login area if we're not using site-wide accounts?

The way it works, if there are no site-wide user accounts created, the site-wide user login area on the front page will not appear. The exception to this is if you're logged in as site administrator; you'll see the login area, even if your users won't.

What may be showing up for your users is a message and link saying "New user? Register" which prompts them to create their own site-wide user account. To turn that off, go into the main site administration page, and deselect the checkbox labelled "Users can register themselves."

Q: Does signing in to a site-wide account give access to every forum on the site?

Site-wide accounts are one of the new features in version 6. They complement the existing login security tools, but do not replace them (or circumvent them!). Signing in with a site-wide account does not automatically give you access to anything you didn't have access to before. So how are they used?

If you have an existing group that is set up to use "individual accounts", normally you specify each account by providing a full name. If instead of providing a full name you put in an email address (matching a site-wide account), that will give the user access to that group. So essentially, it's saying that the user now has access, without us having to create a separate (per-group) account for them.

Q: I upgraded to version 6, and the comments areas were unlocked?!#?

In other words, there was a forum where some pages were locked and required a password to either edit them or post comments; before that password was entered, you wouldn't see the comments area. That was the way it appeared in 5.x, but in 6.0 that changed.

The reality is that it did and it didn't. In previous versions, both regular users and administrators were being asked to enter the lock password before posting. This was contrary to the idea that administrators have access to everything; they could certainly go into the edit page and start editing without needing to enter the lock password for example. So in that respect, there was a bug.

In version 6, with the bug fixed, administrators are allowed to post without a password. However, your regular users will not see the comment form, and will still have to enter the lock password to post. In other words, to them it will behave exactly as before. Logout as administrator and try it out.

One other small change in this area: when a page is locked, the edit page will have a message saying "This page is locked." Before, it wasn't easy to tell if the page still permitted comments to be posted without entering the password. Now if it does, you'll see "(Comments still allowed)" added to the message.

Q: Is it possible to rename user accounts?

Not really.. it's basically just a delete and add. Any comment postings linked to the user's name in the wiki content wouldn't be changed in any case, since the comments are actually embedded in the page in wiki text.

Q: Can I run ProjectForum if my IP address keeps changing?

Normally, you would want to have a static IP address anytime you're running a server. But for a lot of home users, their internet provider doesn't guarantee them a static address, and so every once in a while it may change.

There's a solution to this problem called "dynamic DNS". You register an internet domain name, and then have the DNS managed by one of any number of dynamic DNS providers. You also install a small piece of software on your computer. This software detects if your IP address changes, and if so, lets the dynamic DNS provider know about the change. When people try to resolve the domain name, the dynamic DNS provider will ensure that it goes to your current IP address.

There are many different dynamic DNS providers out there (so do a search), e.g. DynDNS.

Q: Can I have a table of contents for a page, like in Wikipedia?

If you use headings (***Heading***), then at the very top of the page, you can put [toc:] which is short for table of contents... this will render a list of the headings with links to each one.

Q: I have two separate groups, can I merge them together?

Unfortunately, there is no way to automatically do this (the potential for conflicts, starting with the Home page, is quite large). The best thing to do is probably go into each page of the group to be merged, click the edit button, copy the contents out, and then paste it into a page in the group you'd like to merge it into.

Q: Can I have two separate web sites running from one ProjectForum server?

Each ProjectForum server will run a single site; however, that site can contain many different groups (depending on the size of your license). Let's say you have two different clients, and want to provide a wiki area for each of them.

Having completely separate sites would mean something like http://client1.yourdomain.com, http://client2.yourdomain.com, etc. This is not really supported; you'd have to purchase two single-group ProjectForum licenses and run two different instances of the ProjectForum server.

The normal way this is handled is to have everything running off one webserver, but each group having a separate area, e.g. http://wiki.yourdomain.com/client1, http://wiki.yourdomain.com/client2, and so on. Each area is completely independent - different set of pages, different user accounts, and everything. So there's very little reason not to run the multiple groups off of one site, using one ProjectForum server.

Q: How can I modify the HTML pages that are the foundation of the wiki?

Like many web-based systems, ProjectForum internally has a number of underlying HTML templates which data for the specific page is "poured into" to create the final page that you see if you do a "View Source" in your browser. These underlying templates however are strictly for internal use and cannot be modified (partly this is because some of the templates can be quite complex, reflecting a number of different scenarios and conditions they must accommodate).

People often want to access the underlying template to change what is displayed on the page or how it is displayed. The recommended way to do this is via a custom theme, which allows you to modify the stylesheet used to render the page. There are a number of posts in this blog which talk about specific things you might want to do, ranging from hiding elements or changing colors, to using Javascript to move entire sections of the HTML in the page from one part to another.

Q: How can I add a DNS entry to point to my wiki on port 3455?

It's not possible to use DNS alone to do what you want, as it only allows you to specify a name to address mapping, but doing anything with the port number is beyond the scope.

One solution is to use "domain forwarding" which is a feature supported by most DNS providers; essentially you can say that anytime someone puts "www.foo.com" in their browser, it should automatically redirect them to "www.bar.com:3455". In this case, they can type in the nicer address, but then will see the one with the port in their browser once they get to the page.

Another solution is to run ProjectForum on port 80. This can be a problem of course if you already have a webserver there; if you do have multiple IP addresses on the machine, you can set things up so that your existing web server uses one, and ProjectForum another.

Finally, you can have an existing webserver "proxy" the connection, so that incoming connections to your webserver that match the address you'd like to use get proxied to a copy of ProjectForum running on port 3455; ProjectForum sends the response back to your webserver which automatically forwards it along to the user's browser. To the user it's completely transparent. We have more information available about using proxying with ProjectForum.

Q: Why does http://192.168.x.x:3455 work inside our LAN but not outside??

We get this question a fair bit... people who have put ProjectForum on their computer inside their network, and other people can access it via their web browsers, using the IP address of the computer, such as 192.168.1.25 (so in their browser, they'd use "http://192.168.1.25:3455" and everything would be fine). But outside their network, this doesn't work.

What is happening here is that the IP address is only meaningful inside your local network, and cannot be accessed from outside. This is by convention... addresses starting with "192.168" (and some others, like "10.0") are reserved for use by internal networks only... so there are a huge number of machines with an IP address like 192.168.1.25, though each inside its own network.

To make ProjectForum accessible from outside, you'll need to either put it on a machine that has a public, external IP address, or configure a router, gateway or proxy machine that has such an address to route all network traffic intended for ProjectForum to your own machine inside the network (e.g. port forwarding). This way, even though your own machine only has an internal address, it will still be able to handle connections from outside. Your network administrators will have to be the ones to handle this.

Conversely, if you only want ProjectForum to be accessed by machines inside your LAN, make sure it goes onto a machine with only an internal address, and make sure that nobody has set up some kind of forwarding rule to redirect any external traffic to that machine.

There may be other issues you'll run into, most particularly firewalls that are deliberately blocking traffic between your users and the machine running ProjectForum, but as a first step you'll need to make sure you've got the right address.

Q: What exactly should I put in /etc/inittab on Linux?

In most versions of Linux, one of the common mechanisms to have a program automatically started when you first boot up the machine is by placing an entry in /etc/inittab.

For background, this is what it's all about. A program called "init" is the first program that runs when a Unix system first starts, and its job is just to start and babysit a bunch of other programs. Those are listed (on most systems) in the "/etc/inittab" file. Besides the name of the program and options it needs to run, you can specify there when the program should be run (e.g. always, just when we're starting up or shutting down, etc.) and what to do if it stops running. In some ways this is similar to other tools like 'cron', but has its differences. So while 'cron' is something that wakes up every so often and runs a program by itself, 'init' is always running, and so can keep an eye on any program its responsible for, starting it or stopping it as needed.

Depending how you want to run ProjectForum, exactly what you put in /etc/inittab will also vary. But here is a fairly typical example:

ptmp:2345:respawn:su -c '/home/pfuser/projectforum -directory /home/pfuser -nologo' pfuser

Let's dissect this:

• the "ptmp" is a unique identifier for every entry in /etc/inittab
  
• the "2345" specifies the "runlevel" at which the process should be running (2345 represents normal system operation, rather than for example the time when the machine is shutting down)
  
• the "respawn" says that if for some reason the process is terminated, it will be automatically restarted
  
• everything after the last colon is the actual command to be run, which in this case has several pieces:
  
  
  
  • the "su -c '...' pfuser" means that the process should be run not as the fully privileged root user, but by a user account pfuser; you could also accomplish this using a 'setuid' binary
    
  • the "/home/pfuser/projectforum" is the process that will be run (i.e. the ProjectForum application)
    
  • the "-directory /home/pfuser" provides the location where ProjectForum will write it's "Group Data" directory
    
  • the "-nologo" instructs ProjectForum not to write out any status messages like "listening on ..."
    
  
  

Again, because each system is different, you'll want to check for specifics; try "man init" and "man inittab".

Q: Can I give some users read-only permission?

To a certain degree, yes. In a forum's administration pages, you can specify that anyone not logged into the forum (whether via the shared password, or using individual accounts) can still get in, but only view the forum, but not make changes. Anyone who does get in via providing the appropriate password will have full read-write access to the forum. You can't say that certain accounts get read access, and certain others get read-write access.

If you would like this kind of fine-grained control, it is available in the Enterprise version of ProjectForum (or the corresponding Campus version of CourseForum). The way people login to the system is a bit different than in the standard version, but it does give you the flexibility to say exactly who gets what type of access (read, read-write or admin) to any forum on the site - group or project.

Q: Does ProjectForum work on Mac OS X Leopard?

Absolutely - in fact, currently ProjectForum will run on any Mac OS X system from 10.3.9 on up, both PowerPC and Intel.

For your users running Leopard, their web browsers will work just fine with ProjectForum. In fact, the version of Safari that ships with Leopard will allow you to use ProjectForum's new WYSIWYG editor (currently in beta). The editor is supported in Safari 3.x, which is also available in the very latest update to Tiger, but not in earlier versions. Recent versions of Firefox are also supported.

Q: Does ProjectForum support tags like in Flickr etc.?

ProjectForum doesn't use tags, but has a very similar mechanism called "categories". You can find information about categories both in the user's guide, as well as the online help that is loaded as part of each new forum.

Q: I upgraded to a new version, and now everything says it's archived... what's going on?

Most likely, the license you have doesn't cover the most recent version of the software. If this is the case, ProjectForum will revert to the free version, which archives all but one group. Once you provide a new license key that is valid for the version you're running, everything will go back to the way it was.

So before you upgrade, make sure that your license still covers the new version. Purchased licenses cover all versions released for one year from the time the license was bought. You can always check this by going into the "Site Administration" area; the first page will tell you when your license is valid until. And of course, if you're not sure, just ask us.

Q: I want to modify ProjectForum; if I buy a license, do I get source code?

Source code for ProjectForum is not available, with or without a purchased license.

In terms of making changes, you should of course check to see if the changes you want are already available through existing configuration options (look and feel changes, for example, are generally accommodated within the existing themes infrastructure).

As well, there are a number of other ways you may be able to modify ProjectForum's behavior, including calling out to other programs that can do the bulk of the work (via custom links). Browse some of the posts in this weblog to get a sense of these.

If you don't see what you like, please let us know about what kind of modifications you're looking to make. If it's something of general interest, we may want to add it to a future version of ProjectForum. If not, it might be possible to incorporate as a "hidden" feature (there are a few in there now). Or, we might be able to provide you a hook that will allow you to do what you want (and perhaps help with that). Depending on the scope of changes, this might even be something that is quick for us to add in. Plus, if we do the changes, we'll make sure things continue to work in future versions of ProjectForum.

Q: Are there any limitations if I host with you vs. run it myself?

The most obvious difference in using our hosting plans to run ProjectForum rather than doing it yourself is the limit on the number of groups as well as the amount of disk space you can use, which vary by plan. If you're running things yourself, the number of groups depends on the size of the license purchased, while you can freely use as much disk space as you have available on the machine running the server.

If you sign up for our "Good" hosting plan, rather than having a ProjectForum server all to yourself, you get assigned a single group on a shared server. That doesn't mean that other people on the server can get into your group of course; you set up the group's permissions as you see fit. However, it does mean that features within the realm of "Site Administration" are not available. This includes for example creating a new custom theme (themes are site-wide).

The other limitation is that at present SSL is not available on any of our hosting plans.

Q: Why do I get errors including a page from another forum?

So for example, trying to do [include:30#changes] produces a message "Could not include page", even if you have access to both the main forum and the referenced project.

The trick here is that to include something from another forum, that forum cannot have any read access restrictions on it. In other words, even though you may have access to it, that's not enough; it has to be open enough that anyone is able to view pages in the forum you're trying to include from.

Q: I run Ubuntu Linux... is there a .deb package?

No there is not. However, unlike most software for Linux, ProjectForum is a single executable, with no dependencies on anything else, which removes the pain of install/uninstall found in more complex packages (which the package managers are avoiding).

Q: Is there a calendar tool we can share on the forum?

There is no built-in calendar; different groups have vastly different needs when it comes to calendars, so it's almost impossible to include one that would come close to satisfying everyone. And the odds are, if you do need a calendar, you've probably already been using one.

If you already use an existing web-based calendar, you can obviously link to it directly from ProjectForum (and of course, link back from the calendar to ProjectForum, so that e.g. a scheduled meeting might link to a ProjectForum page with the meeting's agenda).

For groups who don't need a very complex calendar (e.g. a few group meetings a week), you may find it simple enough just to create a forum page named "Calendar" and place the appointments in that page, say as a list ordered by date and time. But for anyone who needs more than that, look at adding an external package to complement ProjectForum.

Q: How can I store my data on a network drive that is automatically backed up?

If you're running on Unix, the data will be stored in the current working directory, so simply change to that directory before starting ProjectForum. On Mac OS X, you'd need to use the (bundled) command line version, which would work the same. However, there are certainly performance implications for keeping the data you're using on a separate machine from the one you're running on, so it's not recommended.

On Windows - DON'T. Besides the performance issues mentioned above, the techniques that ProjectForum uses to store data (and to do it very quickly) unfortunately interact badly with some limitations on Windows when it comes to shared drives. Simply put, do not run ProjectForum over a mounted network share, or you risk serious corruption of your data.

You can of course copy the datafiles from your local machine to the remote drive so they will be backed up, just don't have ProjectForum using the remote drive itself.

Q: How do I upgrade to the service version? What effect does this have on my existing data or license?

Upgrading to the Windows service version of CourseForum or ProjectForum from the normal (GUI) one is quite straightforward. The main thing you want to do is make sure that you've exited the existing version completely (you can uninstall it if you want, though it's not necessary; if you do, don't delete your existing data in the process!).

After the GUI version is no longer running, you'd just install the service version. It will automatically pick up your existing data, including your license.

Q: Can I import a single project from one group into another?

Unfortunately, this isn't possible right now, but is something that we'll be considering for a future release.

Q: How can I listen on a single IP address?

If you have multiple IP addresses on your computer, by default CourseForum and ProjectForum (like most server applications) will listen for connections on all of them on the port you choose (default 3455). To listen on just a single IP address, you'll need to use one of the command line versions, and pass it the IP address you'd like to listen on via the "-address" parameter, e.g.

projectforum -address 192.168.0.29

Q: What features will be added in the next year?

While the facetious answer would be "we could tell you, but then we'd have to kill you", the reality is that we don't know exactly. While we do have an internal roadmap that gives us a pretty good idea at any given moment, the reality is that it's always changing. Because of that, it's our policy not to really discuss future versions, at least more specifically than "we're going to be looking at this area sometime in the future".

Things change for a lot of reasons... certain things are more difficult (or rarely, easier) than expected, a new design or approach changes how different features interact with each other, etc. Most importantly, we get new ideas or feedback from customers and other users, which is one of the main factors driving new versions. And of course, all these things cause priorities to shift around. This makes promising particular features in particular timeframes (unless specific arrangements are made) very difficult.

This question is also sometimes asked in terms of "I need to upgrade, so I need to know what will be coming in the next year to figure out if purchasing the upgrade is worth it". Again, while we can't give specifics, it's worth glancing through our changes log to give you an idea of the amount of changes (new features, enhancements and bug fixes) that have been made in the past year. This should give you at least some idea of the magnitude or scope of what's likely to change over the next year.

Having said that, two of the areas that we're going to be looking at sometime in the future are the page editing capabilities and individual user accounts...

Q: How exactly do I add HTML to a page?

Keeping in mind that adding HTML formatting to a page may not always be the best idea (see some earlier posts on this weblog), here's how you do it:

First, go into the 'Group Admin' area; on the main settings page, check the option reading 'Allow use of HTML tags'.

You should then be able to put HTML into the page. You'll find though that sometimes ProjectForum's own markup can "conflict" with your HTML code. In that case you need to tell ProjectForum that a certain bit is HTML, so please leave it alone. Do this using "===html===" dividers like so:

===html===
your html goes here
===html===

Q: What feature is in what version of ProjectForum?

There are two different things to consider. The first is whether a particular feature is included in the free version, or if it requires the basic or standard version. The feature list page shows you these differences.

The second thing is what actual version of the program (e.g. 4.4, 5.1, 5.6, etc.) did the feature first appear in? You can find a comprehensive list of changes between versions that will tell you this.

Q: What happens when the demo license expires?

Don't worry, all the existing material in the wikis that you have created won't be deleted or anything like that. The software does though revert back to the free version, which has a few less features than the full version which the demo license gives you access to.

So you won't be able to do things like add attachments or look at older versions of pages anymore. You'll also be limited to just a single editable wiki. If you've created more than one, the others will be automatically archived, so their content is still all there and readable, but you won't be able to make any changes.

If you then later purchase a license, all the missing features will be re-activated, and any groups that were automatically archived will be unarchived (subject to how large your license is) and available for editing again.

Q: Can I use your hosting service without paying with PayPal?

While PayPal makes it easy for both you and us (by automatically handling the monthly payments without any intervention), we can certainly handle things other ways. Some people choose to prepay (via a one-time credit card payment or a purchase order), usually for several months or up to one year in advance. But if you have your own preferences, please just contact us.

Q: Why don't you support underlining, or pink lettering, or...?

People who have used other wikis (some of which pride themselves on providing wiki-like markup for practically every formatting option under the sun) often ask us why their favorite formatting markup isn't provided.

It's not that adding more formatting options is technically hard to do (it's quite easy, which may explain why so many wiki implementors go crazy with options). But, we believe that every additional option we add makes it harder for your users to use your wikis. Because of that, we've chosen to be fairly conservative with the markup we provide.

Say what? Fundamentally, we believe that a wiki is a communication tool, rather than another easy way to make simple HTML pages. For wiki-style communication to be successful, it needs to be fast and easy for everyone in the group to contribute information, whether it's adding new ideas, critiquing existing ones, filling in missing pieces, or just fixing up a typo here and there.

With too many commands available, or too many formatting options, people end up spending less time on content and more time worrying about how things are formatted, or understanding the markup that someone else has used in order to make their own changes. Keeping things simple and direct makes it easy for everyone to contribute everywhere. Even if just a few users learn all kinds of extra complex markup, it still affects everyone else when they want to make changes.

"But I absolutely need to have text that is in superscript and strike-through for my usage!". If we included everyone's special case, we'd have the same situation as in Microsoft Word, where everyone only uses 5% of the available commands and options, but everyone has a different 5% (and where they're on their fifth or sixth attempt to organize and simplify how to access all those commands).

If you do need extra formatting, you've got two options. First, turn on the HTML formatting option for the forum, and insert HTML markup directly. Except for fairly localized uses, this may not be the best idea, for the same reason that adding tons of extra formatting markup can cause problems - it's one more thing users need to learn to make changes. The other approach, which can be much easier on users, is to take advantage of the "Custom Links" facility to create new easy-to-use formatting commands specific for your own needs.

Q: If I buy now, can I upgrade to more groups later?

This question also usually comes paired with "and if I do so, do I get credit for the original purchase, or do I have to pay full price for more groups?".

You can easily upgrade to a larger number of groups at a later time, and you do get credit for the earlier purchase. In fact, if the upgrade comes soon after the original, the upgrade will cost just the difference in price. (Over time, there is some additional cost, because we take into account that the original purchase price includes the license and one year of software updates and support).

If and when you do want to upgrade your license to use more groups, make sure you contact us rather than just ordering a new license on the website. We'll be able to give you an up-to-date price that takes into account your existing license, and then be able to issue a new license key for the total number of new groups you'll have running on your server.

Q: I'm an admin; how can I see what non-admins would see?

To see what non-admins would see, you'd have to logout as admin - which means logging out as both site admin and also as any group admins if you're logged in as those. Visit the site admin area (or group admin area) and click on the logout link at the top right if present.

Q: Is there a difference between the Site Administration password and the Group Administration password?

The site admin and group admin passwords are different.

There is exactly one site admin password, which gives access to the entire site. In particular, it will let the user change various options like the text on the main page, e.g. where it says "Welcome to ProjectForum" or the blurb beneath. This can all be done in the "Site Admin" area, accessed via the bottom right of that page. This is also where the site admin password can be changed. The site admin is also the only person who can delete groups.

There is one group admin password per group (so if on your site you have Group#1,#2,#3 - each would have a group admin password. To sign in as a group admin, you'd enter the group and then click where it says "Group Admin" near the bottom right of each page. This is also where the group admin password for that group can be changed.

Q: Can I host this on Yahoo's small business hosting?

Unfortunately not. Services like that are designed mostly for hosting either static web pages or fairly simple web applications or scripts using tools like CGI where programs run for only a short time. ProjectForum behaves differently, because it contains its own built-in web server, which needs to stay running for a long time. Most lower-end hosting services don't allow for this.

It's always worth checking with your web hosting provider to see if they'd allow this type of program to run, and if so, how best to do it. Pointing them to our FAQ will provide them with the information they need to help you out.

Q: Can I hide certain pages in a group?

For example, if a group is set up so that anyone can look at pages without being logged in, but only logged in users can change things, can I also make it so that certain pages in the forum are only visible to the logged in users? Or only administrators but not regular users in the group?

In ProjectForum, this sort of access is done on a forum-by-forum basis, and not on an individual page basis (the one exception being per-page locks to prevent editing). Remember that each group consists not only of the main forum, but can also have one or more projects (sub-forums). If you want to keep certain pages but not others hidden from a group of people, they need to go in a separate project.