Forum admin panel reference
This is a reference map of the forum management area. For task-oriented walkthroughs, follow the how-to guides linked from each section.
Access levels
Section titled “Access levels”The management area distinguishes staff roles:
- Moderator+ — can see the Overview dashboard and Reports.
- Administrator — can see everything below.
- Ticket queue — visible to administrators and to moderators of a help-desk category (Pro and above).
All management screens require a fresh login — if your session is old, you’ll be asked to re-enter your password before making changes.
Sections
Section titled “Sections”| Section | What it does | Role | Guide |
|---|---|---|---|
| Overview | Dashboard: member/group counts, banned/online users, unread reports, topic/post totals, component versions, installed plugins | Moderator+ | — |
| Forums / Categories | Create, edit, delete categories and forums; set moderators, permissions, type, parent | Admin | Structure your community |
| Users | List/search members; add, edit, delete; ban/unban; send password reset; grant invite points | Admin | Members, groups & permissions |
| Groups | Create/edit/delete groups and their capabilities | Admin | Members, groups & permissions |
| Permissions / Rules / Edicts | Gatekeeper access control — define permissions, build rules, attach them to resources | Admin | Fine-grained access control |
| Reports | User-submitted content reports; view, mark read, delete | Moderator+ | Moderate your community |
| Invites | Create and manage invitations | Admin | Members, groups & permissions |
| Reactions | Define the emoji reaction set for posts | Admin | Structure your community |
| Post templates | Reusable post bodies, grouped into categories | Admin | Structure your community |
| Plugins | Enable/disable (and, self-hosted, install/uninstall) plugins | Admin | Manage plugins |
| Themes | Install/upload/delete themes; set default | Admin | Customize your theme |
| Theme Styles | Code-free colour/token overrides on top of a theme | Admin | Customize your theme |
| Tickets | Help-desk queue: triage, assign, reply, internal notes, escalate | Admin / category mod | Run a help desk |
| Settings | Global configuration groups (below) | Admin | — |
Settings groups
Section titled “Settings groups”- General — project title, subtitle, copyright; posts/topics/users per page.
- Authentication — registration on/off, invitation required, email activation, username length + blacklist, login rate-limiting and lockout, reCAPTCHA.
- Misc — private-message quota, “online” window, topic-title length, avatar dimensions/size/types, signatures on/off.
- Appearance — default theme, default language.
- Feature settings — show/hide the member list and board statistics for ordinary members.
Plugins that have settings add their own entry under Settings.
Why a section might be missing
Section titled “Why a section might be missing”Some sections only exist on higher plans. The help desk (Tickets) and the APIs are Pro-and-above; the shared inbox and AI assistant are Business. If a section isn’t in your management area, it isn’t included in your current plan — see Plans & pricing.
Administration from the command line
Section titled “Administration from the command line”Self-hosters and operators can administer a forum with the bluset CLI —
creating admins, running migrations, seeding features, and handling GDPR
requests (anonymise, export, scrub IP addresses). See the
CLI reference.