Fossil

<h3 id="skin">Skin Setup</h3>

If you create a new Fossil repository with version 2.7 or newer, its
default skin is already set up correctly for typical forum
configurations.

If you have an existing repository, you have two choices if you want its
skin to be upgraded to support forums:

1.  Go into Admin &rarr; Skins and switch from your current skin to one
    of the stock skins.  If you were on a stock skin, just switch away
    from your current one to the actual stock skin, since they will be
    different after the upgrade.

2.  If you have local customization that you do not want to throw away,
    you can use the diff feature of Fossil's skin editor to show how the
    skins differ.

The remainder of this section summarizes the differences you're expected
to see when taking option #2.

The first thing is that you'll need to add something like the following
to the Header part of the skin to create the navbar link:

<verbatim>
  if {[anycap 234567] || [anoncap 2] || [anoncap 3]} {
    menulink /forum Forum
  }
</verbatim>

These rules say that any logged-in user with any forum-related
capability (2-7 inclusive, as of this writing) or an anonymous user with
read or write capability on the forum (2, 3) will see the "Forum" navbar
link, which just takes you to <tt>/forum</tt>.

The exact code you need here varies depending on which skin you're
using. Follow the style you see for the other navbar links.

The new forum feature also brings many new CSS styles to the table. If

  div.forumSel {
    background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.05);
  }
</verbatim>

That overlays the background with 5% white to lighten it slightly.

Another new forum-related CSS style you might want to reflect into your
existing skin is:

<verbatim>
  div.forumPosts a:visited {
    color: #6A7F94;
  }
</verbatim>

This changes the clicked-hyperlink color for the forum post links on the
main `/forum` page only, which allows your browser's history mechanism
to show which threads a user has read and which not. The link color will
change back to the normal link color — indicating "unread" — when a
reply is added to an existing thread because that changes where the link
from the `/forum` page points, taking you to the newest post in the
thread.

The color given above is suitable for the stock skin.

Beware that when changing this example, there are some [stringent
restrictions][vpriv] in modern browsers to prevent snoopy web sites from
brute-forcing your browsing history. (See the link for the method, which
explains the restrictions.)

[vpriv]: https://hacks.mozilla.org/2010/03/privacy-related-changes-coming-to-css-vistited/


<h3 id="search">Enable Forum Search</h3>

One of the underlying assumptions of the forum feature is that you will
want to be able to search the forum archives, so the <tt>/forum</tt>
page always includes a search box. Since that depends on search being
enabled on the Fossil repository, Fossil warns that search is disabled