A forum is a good way to let readers leave general comments or questions that may not be relevant to specific blog posts or pages.

Adding a forum to your blog is easy using the Mingle Forum plugin.

What it looks like:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

To activate this plug-in, go to Plugins in the left menu column, and scroll down to find “Mingle Forum.” Click Activate.

 

 

 

 

 

You will then see Mingle Forum in the left menu column.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Customize the Mingle Forum settings according to your preferences. If you would like to enable any users who may not have a MIIS username and password to leave comments or questions, make sure to uncheck the box next to “Registration required to post”.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Once your settings are saved, click on Forum Structure.

The “category” is the overarching topic and “forum” is the sub-topic.

Click add new to create a category.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Enter the name and a description (optional) and click Save category.

 

 

 

 

 

 

To add a forum as a sub-topic, click Add forum under the appropriate category. Enter the name and description and click Save forum.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

You have now created the forum and customized the settings, but you now need to make the Mingle Forum display on your blog.

To do this, create a new page.

Type [mingleforum] in the body of the text. Click Publish.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Now that you have created the forum page, go back to the Menu under Appearance and make sure the newly created page is included in the main menu. If it isn’t, click the appropriate box for the newly created page and click Add to Menu and then Save Menu.