Moderation

Forum Pro is built so that moderators do not need admin access. Almost everything happens on the forum itself, which means you can hand moderation to community members without handing them the keys to your Grav install.

Moderator roles

Grant a role in Admin → Forum → Moderators. A grant is either:

• Global, covering the whole forum, or
• Scoped, limited to specific sections and categories.

Scoped moderators see moderation actions only where their grant applies. It is the right shape for a large board where different people look after different subforums.

The review queue on the forum

{forum}/queue is the moderator workspace. Four tabs, each with a live count:

Each card shows the author, their post count, the age of the post, its spam score, and the content itself. Actions are one click:

• Publish releases the post
• Delete removes it (recoverably, see below)
• Delete & ban author does both at once, which is the fast path for an obvious spammer
• View in topic jumps to the post in context

A step-through review mode walks the whole queue in place, so clearing fifty items does not mean fifty page loads.

Staff also see held and spam posts highlighted inline inside threads, with an inline Publish button, so a false positive can be released without a trip to the queue.

The bulk queue in the admin

Admin → Forum → Queue covers the same ground with pending, spam and flagged views, and adds bulk actions on up to 100 items at a time plus one-click bans. Use the admin queue when you are clearing a backlog, and the forum queue for day-to-day work.

Premoderation

Set per category in Structure → Edit. A category can hold posts from:

• New members only, where "new" means below moderation.new_member_post_threshold published posts, or
• Everyone, which is what you want for a category that must never contain an unreviewed post.

Member reports

Members flag posts they think break the rules. When a post accumulates moderation.auto_hide_flag_threshold open reports (3 by default), it auto-hides pending review, so the community can suppress something abusive before a moderator wakes up.

moderation:
  auto_hide_flag_threshold: 3   # 0 disables auto-hide

Report volume is rate-limited per member by spam.max_flags_per_hour, which stops flagging being used as a harassment tool.

Reports keep a content snapshot so the original text is preserved even if the author edits it afterwards. Snapshots are purged on the schedule in retention.purge_flag_snapshots_after_days.

In-topic moderation

Topic-level actions live in a wrench menu next to the topic title:

• Pin / Unpin
• Lock / Unlock
• Hide / Unhide
• Move to another category
• Delete / Restore

Post-level actions live in a compact icon row with a "more" menu: hide, mark spam, restore, delete, and copy link.

Bans

A ban can be:

• Global or scoped to sections and categories
• Temporary (with an expiry) or permanent
• Accompanied by a reason, and open to an appeal from the banned member

Content disposition

When you ban someone you choose what happens to what they wrote:

Large dispositions are handed to the background job queue, so banning a spammer with 4,000 posts returns immediately instead of timing out.

Banned members are recognized if they try to re-register with the same identifiers.

Lifting a ban

Admin → Forum → Bans lists every active ban with a one-click Lift that also brings back any content the ban had hidden. Staff can lift from the member's forum profile too. Toggle the admin view to include lifted and expired bans for a full history.

Undo

Deletion is recoverable within your retention window.

• The Deleted tab in the forum queue lists everything recently removed, individually deleted posts and whole deleted topics alike, including spam threads taken down with Delete & ban. Each entry shows who removed it, when and why, with a one-click Restore.
• Deleted posts and topics also carry a Restore action inline for staff.

After retention.purge_deleted_after_days (30 by default), content is hard-deleted for good. This is a recovery window, not an archive.

The audit log

Every staff action is recorded: publishes, deletions, restores, bans, lifts, role grants, rank and badge changes, and access to reported private messages. The log is what lets you answer "who removed this and why" three months later.

Legal holds

A legal hold exempts a member, topic or post from all automated cleanup. Retention windows do not touch held content, and neither does the purge worker. Use it for anything under investigation or subject to a preservation request.

The moderator digest

moderation:
  mod_digest: true
  mod_digest_time: '00:00'
  mod_digest_timezone: America/Denver

A daily email to every moderator with queue counts and activity since the last digest, sent at a specific local time in a timezone you choose. It is silent on quiet days, so it never becomes noise your moderators learn to ignore.

Maintenance and read-only mode

maintenance:
  enabled: true
  include_staff: false
  message: "Back at 14:00 UTC after a database migration."

Members can browse but not post, react or sign up, and an optional banner explains why. With include_staff: false your staff keep full access, so they can keep working during the window. Set it to true for a full lock, for example while you run a large import.