Discussion boards provide forums for site participants to converse about topics. Most Microsoft Windows® SharePoint™ Services site templates include the ability to create discussion boards, and many sites and workspace sites have a built-in discussion board called General Discussion.

This article describes how to create threaded views and how to customize threaded views by using Microsoft Office FrontPage 2003 and, in some cases, by editing discussion board XML files.

In this article, you'll learn how to:

• Create and edit threaded views
• Create an anonymous discussion board
• Change the expiration date of the !New tag
• Display more than 400 characters of discussion text

Create and edit threaded views

By default, a discussion board such as General Discussion has two views, Threaded and Flat. Flat view is a non-hierarchical view in which all of the list items are sorted in ascending order based on the Posted At column. Threaded view is unique to discussion boards and, as its name implies, displays messages in a "threaded" format, in which the message posted first is a root and all other messages replying to that message are indented to simulate a conversation order.

Create a threaded view for a discussion board

To add additional view functionality while preserving the default Threaded view, create a threaded view for your discussion board by using FrontPage 2003. Adding a new view does not affect other discussion board functionality.

 Note   To create a threaded view that other users can see, you must be a member of a site group with the Manage Lists right. By default, the Manage Lists right is included in the Web Designer and Administrator site groups.

1. On the FrontPage 2003 File menu, click Open Site.
2. In the Look In box, locate and click the Web site that you want to open, or type its URL in the Site Name field.
3. Click Open.
4. In the Folder List, open the default view of the discussion board by expanding the Lists folder, clicking the folder for the discussion board you want to change, and then double-clicking the file AllItems.aspx.
5. In the File menu, click Save As.
6. In the File Name field, enter a filename for the new threaded view, and then click Save.

   This creates a threaded view. Although the view has a new filename, it will appear as “Threaded” in the SharePoint site. Use the following steps to give the new view a unique display name.

7. With the new view still opened in Page view, at the bottom of the document window, click Code.
8. In the HTML code, locate the string

   DisplayName="Threaded"

   and change the name “Threaded” to the new display name, such as

   DisplayName="New Threaded"

   .
9. On the File menu, click Save.

Edit a threaded view

You can change how a threaded view groups and sorts discussion items, apply filters to determine which list items are displayed, and apply conditional formatting rules to the view.

 Note   To change a threaded view that other users can see, you must be a member of a site group with the Manage Lists right. By default, the Manage Lists right is included in the Web Designer and Administrator site groups.

1. On the FrontPage 2003 File menu, click Open Site.
2. In the Look In box, locate and click the Web site that you want to open, or type its URL in the Site Name field.
3. Click Open.
4. In the Folder List, open a threaded view of the discussion board by expanding the Lists folder, clicking the folder for the discussion board you want to change, and then double-clicking the file containing the threaded view.
5. In Design view, right-click the List View Web Part (the area of the page that contains discussions), and then click Convert to XSLT Data View on the shortcut menu.
6. In the Data View Details task pane, under Manage view settings, change the Filter, Sort & Group, or Conditional Formatting settings.

    Note   The Sort & Group option is available only if there is at least one message in the discussion board. To prevent disabling the list's threading, do not modify the Style settings.

7. To save your changes, on the File menu, click Save.

Create an anonymous discussion board

An anonymous discussion board is one in which participants’ names are not associated with their discussion entries. You cannot completely remove participant identification information from a site based on Windows SharePoint Services, because some identifying information is always stored in the database. However, you can remove participants’ identities from displayed fields in a discussion board by editing the discussion board’s threaded view, display form, and edit form.

 Note   To change a discussion board’s threaded view, display form, and edit form, you must be a member of a site group with the Manage Lists right. By default, the Manage Lists right is included in the Web Designer and Administrator site groups.

Open the site and change the threaded view

1. On the FrontPage 2003 File menu, click Open Site.
2. In the Look In box, locate and click the Web site that you want to open, or type its URL in the Site Name field.
3. Click Open.
4. In the Folder List, open the default view of the discussion board by expanding the Lists folder, clicking the folder for the discussion board you want to change, and then double-clicking the threaded view you want to change
5. In Design view, right-click the List View Web Part (the area of the page that contains discussions), and then click Convert to XSLT Data View on the shortcut menu.
6. Select the Posted By column by clicking on its upper border, right-click the column, and then click Delete Columns on the shortcut menu.
7. On the File menu, click Save.

Change the edit form

1. In the Folder List, in the Lists folder, in the folder containing your discussion board files, open the edit form, EditForm.aspx.
2. Right-click the List Form Web Part (the area of the page that contains the form), and then click Customize SharePoint List Form on the shortcut menu.
3. Click the Posted By field and delete it by pressing DELETE. Delete the word “by” preceding it.
4. Click the Modified By field and delete it by pressing DELETE. Delete the word “by” preceding it.
5. On the File menu, click Save.

Change the display form

1. In the Folder List, in the Lists folder, in the folder containing your discussion board files, open the display form, DispForm.aspx.
2. In Design view, right-click the List Form Web Part (the area of the page that contains the form) and then click Customize SharePoint List Form.
3. Select the entire row containing the From: label and Posted By field by clicking on the left border of that row, and then delete the row by pressing DELETE.
4. Click the Posted By field and delete it by pressing DELETE. Delete the word “by” preceding it.
5. Click the Modified By field and delete it by pressing DELETE. Delete the word “by” that precedes it.
6. In the File menu, click Save.

Change the expiration date of the "!NEW" tag

Because discussion boards can be heavily used, new items, and their accompanying "!New" tags, can proliferate. Site designers may find this annoying, and they may want to shorten the number of days that these tags are displayed. The following steps configure Windows SharePoint Services to stop showing "!New" tags in less than the default two days. This will change the expiration time for all "!New" tags in lists on the server. Setting the time to zero will disable the "!New" tag completely. This setting will affect all lists and libraries on the server, not just the discussion boards.

This procedure uses the SharePoint administration utility stsadm.exe, which is available, by default, in the Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\60\Bin folder on your server computer.

 Note   To use the stsadm.exe utility, you must be a member of the local Administrators group on the server or a member of the SharePoint administrators group.

• Run stsadm.exe by using the following syntax, where Number_Of_Days is the number of days that Windows SharePoint Services should display the "!New" tag:

  stsadm -o setproperty -pn days-to-show-new-icon -pv Number_Of_Days -url http://Server_Address

The following example sets the expiration time to one day:

stsadm -o setproperty -pn days-to-show-new-icon -pv 1 -url http://MyServer

Display more than 400 characters of discussion text

Threaded view limits the number of characters of text displayed in an expanded discussion item to 400. To configure Windows SharePoint Services to exceed this limit in all discussion boards on the server, you must edit the file onet.xml and then reprovision the site. (Reprovisioning a site means reapplying Windows SharePoint Services to a virtual server.)

 Note   To complete this task you must be a member of the local Administrator group on the server computer.

 Warning   Making changes to an originally installed onet.xml file on a server running Windows SharePoint Services is not supported and can break existing sites. Changes to onet.xml will be overwritten if you reinstall or upgrade Windows SharePoint Services.

Edit the onet.xml file

1. Using Notepad or another XML editor, open the file onet.xml, which is in the folder C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web server Extensions\60\Template\1033\STS\XML by default.
2. Edit each instance of the following string, replacing “400” with the number of characters to display:

   Limit Len=400

    Note   Windows SharePoint Services will exceed the limit you specify to avoid displaying an incomplete word.

3. Save the file onet.xml.

Reprovision the site

1. On the server, click Start, point to All Programs, point to Administrative Tools, and then click SharePoint Central Administration.
2. On the Central Administration page, under Virtual Server Configuration, click Configure virtual server settings.
3. Click the Web site you are reprovisioning.
4. On the Virtual Server Settings page, under Virtual Server Management, click Remove Windows SharePoint Services from Virtual Server.
5. On the Remove Windows SharePoint Services from Virtual Server page, select Remove without deleting content databases, and click OK.
6. From the Central Administration home page, click Extend or upgrade virtual server.
7. Click the Web site to provision.
8. Click Extend and map to existing virtual server.
9. In the Application Pool section, click Use an Existing App Pool click the application pool associated with the virtual server (STSAPPOOL1 in the default Windows SharePoint Services installation), and click OK.

Conclusion

By following the procedures in this document, you have learned many ways to customize threaded discussions using Microsoft Office FrontPage 2003, the SharePoint administration utility stsadm.exe, and some of the discussion board XML files. You can use some of the techniques that you learned in this document to modify other types of lists. For example, to make any list anonymous, use a method similar to the one described in Create an anonymous discussion board.