In a discussion group, an index contains hyperlinks to articles on some topic of interest submitted by users of a FrontPage web. If the index is threaded, a response to an article creates a hyperlink to the new article, indented below a hyperlink to the original article. Users can either create new threads or respond to previously submitted articles. In either case, all articles are available through the index. The FrontPage form handler that lets users participate in a discussion group is a Discussion Form Handler.
The Discussion form handler collects information from a form, formats it as an HTML page, and adds the page to a table of contents and to a text index. In addition, the Discussion form handler has all the features of the default form handler: it can gather information from the Discussion form and store it in a variety of formats. When a user submits a form in a Web browser, a Discussion form handler first creates a discussion group page and table of contents, then optionally appends the form information to the specified file in a specified format.
The easiest way to create and moderate a discussion group is to create a FrontPage web using the Discussion Web Wizard. This wizard creates a FrontPage web with a discussion form handled by a Discussion Form Handler, along with a table of contents, Search Form, confirmation page, threaded replies, and frames. The Discussion Web Wizard is one of the choices in the New FrontPage Web dialog box in the FrontPage Explorer.
As the moderator of a discussion group, you may want to edit or delete pages submitted by discussion group participants. These pages are hidden in the FrontPage Explorer by default. To view and edit the articles, choose Web Settings in the Tools menu of the FrontPage Explorer. In the Advanced tab, click Show documents in hidden directories and click OK. To refresh the view of the FrontPage web, choose Refresh in the View menu. Pages created in the discussion group will be named 0001.htm, 0002.htm, and so on.
Do not delete articles. Instead, open them in the FrontPage Editor and type a standard message replacing the article body, such as “[Deleted Article].” This will protect forward and backward hyperlinks to other articles in the thread, while effectively removing offensive articles.