This document contains a listing of discus.conf parameters and a full description of what each does.

WARNING! Improperly editing a discus.conf file can break your board and potentially cause data loss. This document is recommended only for advanced board administrators who thoroughly understand how discus.conf works. No support is provided if discus.conf editing breaks your board!

The following are set for every Discus board upon installation.

• admin_dir: Administration directory for a Discus board. This must be the full path to the administration directory, which contains the discus.conf file, user and moderator password files, program "source" files, and other files used to power the board that are not viewed directly through the web interface. For security reasons, the administration directory should be placed outside the server's web space. If that is not possible, it should be given an obscure name to prevent someone from finding it easily.

• html_dir: HTML directory for a Discus board. This must be the full path to the HTML directory, which contains subdirectories for clipart, icons, and publicly viewable messages. In version 3.1 and below, documentation is also stored in the HTML directory. This directory should be placed in the server's web space, but not in the cgi-bin directory or equivalent.

• html_url: HTML URL for a Discus board. This must be a URL (starting with http:// or https://) that is the web address to the HTML directory (html_dir).

• script_dir: Script directory for a Discus board. This must be the full path to the script directory, which contains CGI scripts that power the Discus board. Generally this must be placed somewhere in or under the server's cgi-bin directory or equivalent.

• script_url: Script URL for a Discus board. This must be a URL (starting with http:// or https://) that is the web address to the script directory (script_dir).

• ext: Extension for HTML files. By default, this is set to 'html' since that is the typical extension for HTML files on a server. This default can be changed (typically to 'shtml' or 'php' as needed) following the "How to change the extension on message pages from .html to something else" procedure -- note that you will break your board if you modify this setting without following the published procedure!

• cgi_extension: Extension for CGI scripts. By default, this is set when you install your board, and is typically 'cgi' or 'pl'. It would take a very unusual reconfiguration of the server to force you to change this setting. If you do change this setting, you must rename the files in your Script directory accordingly.

• pro: Whether you have Discus Professional (1 = yes, 0 = no). This is set automatically when the board is installed and should not be changed manually. DiscusWare has noticed a number of people changing this manually from '0' to '1' -- this does not upgrade a board to Discus Professional, because scripts and source files associated with the Professional version are not distributed with the free version. Manual changing of this parameter will break the board.

• pro_license: In Discus Professional 4.0 or above, this stores your Discus Professional license number. Your license number is not stored in discus.conf for Discus Professional 3.10 or below, nor is a license number stored for the freeware version. Do not change this unless you are specifically instructed to do so by DiscusWare.

• title: Title for the discussion board. The title shows up in many places, notably on the navigation bars and in the browser's title area. The title can be changed following the procedure for "How to change the board title".

• contact: Board administrator contact information. The contact information shows up on error screens. In version 3.10 and later, the contact can be overridden with the Options Manager. Changes can be made to discus.conf as well, following the procedure for "How to change the board contact information".

• superuser: Board administrator (superuser) username. Unless you really know what you are doing, leave this as "admin." If you want to change it to something else, follow the instructions at "How do I change the superuser's username from "admin" to something else?".

These are parameters that are set for some installations or that must be added manually by the board administrator. These settings are preserved across upgrades.

• version: Previous versions of Discus and Discus Pro recorded the version number in the discus.conf file. As of version 4.0, this information is stored elsewhere in a more detailed history tracking file. Generally this can be ignored; changing the version number in discus.conf does not upgrade or downgrade a board. As of Discus 5, this parameter will not be set. All Discus 4.x distributions set this value to "4.00".

• language: User interface language. If the language is not specified or not recognized, the English version will be installed by default upon any FTP upgrades. The correct format is language=TONGUE where TONGUE is your language (be it ENGLISH, FRENCH, DUTCH, etc.) Put the name of your language in all capital letters.

• noqm: No question marks in URLs. If you add noqm=1 to your discus.conf file and regenerate your board (4.0) or subtopic/message lists (3.10), the question mark followed by the long string of numbers will not longer be used in your URLs. This allows better search engine spidering at the cost of not having links be marked unvisited when new activity occurs and also increasing the chance that users will not see new content due to cache issues.

• board_topics_file: File name of the topics file. By default the name of the topics file is board-topics.html although this can be changed by adding this discus.conf parameter. Note that if you change this parameter, you must also manually rename the topics file.

• perms0777: Alternate permissions to use for world-writable directories. See "How to modify the permissions that Discus uses for its directories and folders" for details.

• perms0666: Alternate permissions to use for world-writable files. See "How to modify the permissions that Discus uses for its directories and folders" for details.

• perms0644: Alternate permissions to use for non-writable files. See "How to modify the permissions that Discus uses for its directories and folders" for details.

• message_dir: Full path to a directory to store messages. By default, this is 'messages' under the HTML directory, which should be suitable for all uses.

• message_url: URL that corresponds to the message directory. By default, this is 'messages' under the HTML URL, which should be suitable for all uses.

• secdir: Full path to a directory to store private topics. By default, this is 'secure' under the administration directory, which should be suitable for all uses.

• icon_dir: Name of the subdirectory within the HTML directory where icons are to be stored. By default this is 'icons'. This setting is supported in Discus 4.0+.

• mail_charset: Character set to use when generating e-mail messages. By default this is us-ascii which should be suitable for English and many other languages. This setting is supported in Discus 4.0+.

• authorize_reader: Alternate URL to an authorization reader. This is used to replace the board-auth script with another authentication script to read messages and view attachments in private reading areas. This setting is needed, for example, when installing the PHP reader from the Discus Pro download area. This setting is supported in Discus Pro 4.0+.

• no_read_options: Do not read global options. If no_read_options=1 is added to discus.conf, Discus will not read global options from the options.txt file. Unless you are customizing the code or using Discus subroutines for something other than they were originally written, you should not touch this setting. This setting is supported in Discus 4.0+.

• log_preview_length: The length of the "preview" of a message that is stored in the posting log for eventual display in a by-date message search. This defaults to 25 characters. Changes to this setting take effect on messages posted after the change is saved (this has no effect on messages posted prior to making the change).

• debug_email_notification: Set this to 1 (debug_email_notification=1) to cause Discus to create a log of each e-mail message it sends. This is most useful to figure out if a particular user is not receiving e-mail notification because their profile is not set up for it, or if the board is indeed sending the message, but it's not getting through. When debugging is on, the log file for outgoing mail is stored in the file debug-email-notification.out in the "data" subdirectory. Note that this file is appended and will grow rapidly on boards that send a lot of e-mail.