New Topic
The form for starting a topic: pick a forum, write a title and a post, add tags.
Before you start
Section titled “Before you start”| Plugin | ForumWP |
| Endpoint group | Forums |
| Plan | Every plan |
Add it to your app
Section titled “Add it to your app”Drag New Topic onto a navigation bar or into the side drawer.
You usually do not need to. Forum Feed already carries a New topic button, and so does each forum’s topic list. Place this as a tab only when starting a topic is the main thing you want members doing — a support desk, say, where reading other people’s threads is secondary.
Settings
Section titled “Settings”| Setting | What it does | Default |
|---|---|---|
| Title, Description | Shown at the top | Empty |
| Preselected forum | The forum the form opens on | None — the member chooses |
| Restrictions | Which roles see the tab | Everyone |
How a topic row is proportioned — the vote arrows, avatar, badge, card corners and reply indent — is set once for every forum screen under Global App Settings → Appearance → Forums.
The preselected forum takes a forum ID, which you can read from the forum’s URL on your site. Leave it empty and the member picks from a dropdown of every forum they may post in; locked forums are excluded from that list.
What your members see
Section titled “What your members see”A forum picker, a title, a post body and — where your site has topic tags on — a comma-separated tags field.
The tags field suggests tags your site already has as the member types, and tapping one fills it in. It is still free text, so a member can invent a new tag — the suggestions only stop them inventing a second spelling of one that already exists.
After posting, the app opens the topic that was just created rather than returning to a list. The form empties itself, so starting a second topic begins from a clean form rather than a copy of the first.
Where your site has ForumWP Pro’s photos module — and ForumWP’s Raw HTML setting switched on — an Add photo button sits under the body. An attachment is an image inside the post, so with raw HTML off the image would be stripped when the topic saves; the app hides the button rather than offering one that quietly does nothing.
Attached images appear as thumbnails under the Add photo button, each with a small × to remove it. They are added to the post when it is submitted, and a topic opened for editing shows its existing photos the same way.
The body carries formatting controls — bold, italic, a link, and bulleted or numbered lists — and a Preview panel underneath renders the topic as it will read once posted, photographs included. The controls write tags into the box, so what you type and what you get sit one above the other; that is the one shape the app and the builder can offer identically, since the phone has no rich-text engine of its own.
An image is held in a temporary folder until the topic is posted, so attaching a photo and then abandoning the form leaves nothing behind.
The topic body suggests members to @mention and #hashtags as the member types. See Mentions and hashtags.
Validation
Section titled “Validation”Each problem is reported against the field it belongs to, not as a message at the top of the form: a missing forum marks the picker, a missing title marks the title. Posting the same topic twice in quick succession is caught by the site and answered with a warning; posting again straight after that goes through, because the repeat was clearly meant.
When it does not work
Section titled “When it does not work”| Symptom | Cause | Fix |
|---|---|---|
| The forum picker is empty | The Forums endpoint group is off | Turn it on in Memberside → REST API |
| The card is greyed out | ForumWP is inactive | Activate it |
| A forum is missing from the picker | It is locked, or the role cannot post there | Check it in ForumWP |
| No tags field | Topic tags are off in ForumWP | Turn them on in ForumWP’s settings |
| No tag suggestions | The site has no tags yet, or none match what was typed | Nothing to fix — the field still accepts anything |
| No Add photo button | The Pro photos module is off, or ForumWP’s Raw HTML setting is | Turn both on in ForumWP → Settings |
| “Attachments must be a JPEG, PNG or GIF image” | The file is not one of those | Attach a JPEG, PNG or GIF |
| “You cannot post in this forum” | The role lacks the capability | Check the role’s ForumWP capabilities |