Locking forums to prevent users from adding topics or responses

You can lock forums to prevent users from adding new topics or posting responses to existing topics.

Before you begin

You must be a forum owner to lock or unlock a stand-alone forum. Administrators can lock or unlock any forum. If the forum is in a community, then community owners can also lock and unlock a forum and its topics.

Anyone who has permission to lock a forum can create topics and replies in the forum even when it is locked. Forum owners can update the forum without unlocking it. The forum and its topics remain locked for all other users.

About this task

You might want to lock a forum when you believe that the content in the forum is resolved or complete. For example, if someone started a forum to troubleshoot a specific issue and that issue is now resolved, lock the forum so that no further changes can be made. When you lock a forum, users can still view the forum content but they cannot add new topics nor update the existing content.

Procedure

To lock a forum, complete the following steps:

Open the forum that you want to lock.
Select Forum Actions > Lock Forum.

Results

The forum is marked as locked in the user interface to advise users that they cannot contribute to the forum.

What to do next

You can unlock a forum when you want to allow users to resume adding topics and responses. To unlock a forum, open the forum and select Forum Actions > Unlock Forum.