The Profiles tab controls controls most aspects of user profiles on the discussion board. Your members (users) are a crucial component of your successful discussion system, which is why DiscusWare's products provide so many configuration options to assist the administrator in configuring and maintaining user profiles.

Many of the features noted in this section are available in Discus Pro only. Administrators of freeware Discus who do not see these features can gain full access by purchasing an upgrade to Discus Pro (click here for more information on Discus Pro).

• Defaults and Preferences: Configure e-mail notification and preference defaults for your users. Also, learn how to make a preference "permanent" so that it will always be selected or deselected for all accounts.

• Display of Profiles: Miscellaneous preferences that control the display of profile pages in the user interface.

• Profile Fields: Configure up to 20 fields to store user profile data, and control other various options about how profiles will be displayed.

• Forgotten Password Utility: This Discus Pro feature is extremely handy to manage the frequent condition where a member forgets their password.

• Last Access Information: Discus boards not powered by a MySQL back-end can choose how frequently user records are updated.

• Pictures: Control whether or not users will be able to upload pictures with their profiles, how thumbnails are created, and whether pictures are displayed on posts.

• Privileges: Configure length of names and password setting preferences as well as signatures.

• Username Conflicts: Configure policy if a moderator attempts to add a username that already exists on the discussion board.

• User Profile Display: In Discus Pro, this is the "Member List" which presents a sorted, searchable list of all users registered on your system. Here, you specify which fields are displayed, which groups of users are shown, and many other options.

• User Self-Registration: A key feature of Discus Pro is allowing users to register for their own accounts. Here, you set global options related to the user self-registration system.

• User Statuses: Discus Pro allows a "status" level to be assigned to each account. This status can be displayed on posts and is an excellent way to encourage participation. You can also configure an automatic progression through status levels based on posts.

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