ForumSpark Support

Unable to access CSS stylesheet? on the theme section

Evergreen is now available in the marketplace.

Evergreen, a woodland-inspired winter theme with forest greens, warm accents, and lantern-lit characters.Evergreen brings a cosy atmosphere to your community, pairing its illustrated header with clear forum sections and comfortable reading space. The built-in customizer includes snowfall and compact layout preferences, and the theme adapts across desktop and mobile.Come in, settle down, and join t...

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Wintertide is now available in the marketplace.

Wintertide, a winter theme with cool blue and lavender tones, rounded details, and a cast of snowy friends.Its illustrated header gives your community a seasonal welcome, while the clean forum layout keeps discussions front and centre. Members can adjust snowfall and spacing through the built-in customizer, with a responsive layout for smaller screens.A comfortable home for familiar faces and new...

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Solstice is now available in the marketplace.

Solstice, a photography-led winter theme with sweeping scenery and a spacious simple designed forum layout.Choose between Alpine Dusk, Snow Day, and Festive Glow, with independent image choices for the header and footer. The curved header blends into the page, while seasonal colour palettes complement your chosen scene.With optional snowfall, compact spacing, and a responsive layout, Solstice give...

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Boo & Co is now available in the marketplace.

Very fun, playful and sleek Halloween-themed theme. Select Boo & Co in theme selector.

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As a forum owner, I’m sure you know and realize that you have to also be a marketer to get your forum out there enough to grow.

The question is: Do you like marketing enough to make it work for you?

If you don’t like it, you’re likely not going to dedicate enough effort to making it work. Things will fail, and you will feel like a failure and thus give up more easily.

So, are you into marketing enough to make it work?

Relay is now available in the marketplace.

Relay brings glossy category strips, a bold sidebar, and an old school vibe to ForumSpark.Make it your own with:Four color presets and a custom color picker.Light, dark, and system appearance modes.Gloss, satin, or flat category strips.Adjustable spacing and collapsible navigation.Clear read/unread markers that follow your chosen color.A responsive layout for desktop and mobile.Members can save th...

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Well maybe it isn’t a bug and I’m doing something wrong but anytime I have two blocks with custom html that are completely different, as soon as I edit one html block the other html block also updates to the same exact thing I just edited. So instead of two separate html blocks with different code, they both become the same code so I essentially have a duplicate block. Not sure why editing one custom html block will make the other one the same exact. In fact if I have more than two they all change so I have multiple blocks that are exactly the same.

Bug: Message Reactions Not Working in Direct Messaging

Description:
I’ve noticed an issue with the reaction feature in Direct Messaging. When I try to react to a message, nothing happens. The reaction does not appear on the message, and there doesn’t seem to be any indication that the reaction has been registered.

I initially noticed this myself, but my moderator has also independently reported experiencing the exact same issue, so it does not appear to be isolated to my account.

Steps to reproduce:

1. Open Direct Messaging.

2. Open an existing conversation or start a new conversation.

3. Find a message sent by another user.

4. Attempt to add a reaction to the message.

5. Select a reaction/emote.

6. Nothing happens and the reaction is not added to the message.

Expected behaviour:
After selecting a reaction, the chosen reaction should be added to the message and displayed underneath or alongside the message. Other participants in the conversation should also be able to see the reaction.

Actual behaviour:
Selecting a reaction appears to do nothing. No reaction is displayed and there is no visible confirmation that the reaction was successfully added.

Additional information:

• The issue occurs in Direct Messaging.

• I have personally experienced the issue.

• My moderator has also reported the same problem.

• This suggests the issue may affect multiple users rather than being specific to one account.

• There does not appear to be any error message or warning when the reaction fails.

Could you please investigate the Direct Messaging reaction functionality and check whether there is an issue with the reaction system, JavaScript, or the backend request responsible for adding reactions?

Thanks!

Carbon is now available in the marketplace.

Give your community a gaming-inspired look with Carbon Gaming: dark surfaces, accents, artwork, etc.Make it your own using the sliders icon beside your username. Choose colors, adjust unread markers, switch artwork, and customize the layout, all without changing anyone else’s view.Admins can upload their own artwork and set the default look for everyone. Artwork is included when exporting the them...

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Why did you migrate from one forum platform to another?

What things were missing from the first platform that the other had? Did expense play a part?

If I wanted to have a proper homepage that visitors see when they first visit the main Spark Promotion domain, what would be the best way to set this up?

At the moment, it doesn't look like ForumSpark allows you to specify a custom homepage through the forum settings. I’d ideally like visitors who go directly to the main domain to see a homepage/landing page first, with a link or button to enter the forum.

Is there a recommended way to achieve this with ForumSpark, or would I need to use something outside of the forum software (such as a separate landing page or redirect)?

What are some of your favorite events on your forums to get activity going?

That ghost town phase can break a very strong person mentally. You post a topic, refresh the page 20 times, nothing happened. Sometimes I purposely reply my own threads just to make the place look active. Consistency is the only thing that helped me because if you abandon the forum for one week, everywhere would look like abandoned estate. 🤣

What success stories do we know about forums that closed and then re-opened? Is it rare? What makes it a success story?

I've been checking my small forum analytics and honestly it's not encouraging. You create threads, reply yourself sometimes, even share links on WhatsApp groups. I even boosted one post with $50 last month thinking it would attract crowd. It was just three people that registered and one was probably a spam bot from India. i’m starting to believe the first 100 members don't usually come from ads but from disturbing your friends personally.

Everyone’s got a story. Maybe it was a niche you were passionate about, or maybe you just wanted to build a community from scratch. What got you into forums in the first place?

If a forum owner offered you a paid community manager position, what would you provide as the community manager?

Feel free to list the amounts of pay versus what sort of services you would provide.

For example, I used to get paid $1,000 a month to be a CM for a very popular copywriting blog. I would post an interesting topic daily, engage with members daily, post an article weekly, and do a live Zoom accountability meeting monthly. To me, that was well worth the $1K.

So, for how much would you provide, and what would you provide, as the Community Manager on a forum?

Board Name: Pixel Point
Link: https://pixel-point.net
Focus: Graphic design, web design, photography, everything in between.
Highlights: If this isn't allowed, feel free to delete. We aren't open yet.

Originally was actually going to be a ZetaBoards resource forum back in 2011-2012, with a staff team of myself, tokyodrift, jackson and crouck. The current theme is heavily inspired by the theme that was going to be used on our launch. Life got in the way of things and we never actually opened.

Potentially a soft launch coming soon. I'm still working out quite a few kinks with the current theme and the light/dark mode, learning the variables, etc. I've tried keeping the theme very sleek and professional, while being tasteful in areas.

I may have plans to potentially release themes to the public there, but this was all built within the last couple of days due to ZetaBoards nostalgia and being inspired to create something again. There also aren't a ton of Forum Spark forums out there, so it may feel a bit redundant to create a separate board for resources, although I would love for this to grow. It's been a pleasure working on the forum. I haven't had this much fun since 2010-2014.

We will have custom widgets/web pages for Pixel Point specifically, such as the gradient generator, palette generator/palette of the week, etc. Screenshots are attached.

What are some of the things you regret doing in your past?

Our mission is to improve monetary literacy by helping people understand how money works, how monetary policy affects everyday life, and why sound money principles matter for long-term prosperity, savings, and economic freedom. We teach the hidden mechanics of our global economy not explained in traditional classrooms including: what is money, how money is made, what causes inflation, and how economic policies cause the widening disparity between rich and poor classes.

We believe:

People should understand the systems that shape their purchasing power and financial future.
Sound money encourages responsible stewardship, long-term thinking, and economic stability.
Open discussion and intellectual honesty are essential to healthy economic discourse.

Test your knowledge with our monetary quiz!

Our homepage:

https://money.forumspark.net/

I’ve seen a couple of users confused by v1 and v2 theme and extension uses. I recommend either adding labels for v1/v2 themes and extensions or creating a subforum for v1 themes and extensions, while keeping all the latest-version resources in the main forum.

How often do you change themes on your forum?

Do you ask your members before you change a theme, or do you assume they’ll like the change and do it without asking?

Do you think many admins want change more than actual members when it comes to different forum themes?

How welcoming are your members to newbies? Do they say hello or welcome in the newcomer’s welcome thread? Do they reach out on their profiles to say Greetings or something else? Or do they mostly stick to talking to the people they know on the forum?

I was thinking on the online list it shows guests and ip addresses. Under the IP address, could you have it show if it’s a direct hit or the site that they came from via link? So if they found your forum on Spark Promotion in would show guest, IP, and SparkPromotion.net. Also could each user(member/guest) have a drop down list that shows all of the forum they viewed while they were visiting? So maybe it would just show index but in the drop down list, if they visited 5 different topics, it would show all of the topics the viewed?

I think this would help users see where traffic is coming from and what interests visitors.