Forum User Titles usually appear underneath a registered members username on their profile in in their posts on a forum. User Titles are mainly used as “Posting Ranks” to signify how active the logged in user (member) of the forum has been posting replies and topics in the forums’ categories. User Titles can also be a way to convey a type of “Status Update” or “Current Mood” if the forum owner has enabled the forum members to edit their User Title. Sometimes underneath User Titles, are images to reflect the members current rank, which is shown as words above the images, and the images can be either “dots” or “stars” or “level bars,” it just depends on how the forum owner has set up the post count and topic count structure of the forum.
Some forum owners have enabled the forum members to not only edit their User Title, but to also add CSS effects (Cascading Style Sheets) to the text. A few effects can be anything from “Bolding” the User Title text, or even adding a “Shadow” to the text. Changing the text color in a User Title is an often popular feature amongst forums.
Sometimes, the User Title will reflect what “User Group” the member or guest is currently in. If the member is in the group called “Member” then the default User Title could usually be “Member” as well.
Depending on if the forum owner has enabled guest posting on the forums pages, sometimes the guests, if they are able to create topics or post replies to topics, may occasionally have the ability to edit their own User Title. Usually forum owners though, if they do enable guest posting, would be to greatly limit the permissions sets of guests, to help entice them to register on the forums, and then once registered on the forums, then they would have the full permissions of the member user group.
Forum staff will usually have the ability to edit their own User Title along with other Members’ User Titles. If a member types something inappropriate in their own User Title, then a staff member will usually “edit out” or also “remove” the User Title from the member, in addition to warning them and even removing the ability for that user to edit their own User Title.
Enabling the ability for members to edit their own User Title can be a great moral booster for the general member population of the forums registered users. Members of the forum will more often than not, want to log into their profile on the forum if they have the ability to interact with their profile more than they would on a forum that would restrict their access for their own profile. Usually for guests though, it may not be a good idea to have them add text effects to their own User Title, since the forum owner usually wants as many registered members as possible. Then again having ten guests and one member versus one member and ten guests might not be such a bad start for a forum, before deciding what permission sets to enable and disable for guest and members alike.
Discussion Topic: What are Forum User Titles?
