Knowledge Base

Can I run a site without forums? Yes. Admin → Modules lets you switch any application off, including Forums. Its pages, menu links and widgets disappear and its data is left untouched. Administrators How do I change which page is my home page? Admin → Modules. Press “Make front page” beside any application that is switched on, and visitors arriving at the address of your site land there instead of on the welcome page. Administrators

How do I change the logo in the header? Admin → Settings → Branding. Upload a logo and it replaces the site name in the header. With no logo set, your site name is shown as text instead. Administrators My logo disappears in dark mode. What do I do? Upload a second logo under “Logo for dark mode”. Convoro sends both and the browser picks, which is the only approach that works when somebody has their theme following their system. Administrators Why does my logo have a solid block behind it? The file itself is not transparent. Some tools offer a “transparent background” and still export a flattened image with no alpha channel at all. Administrators How do I set the icon that shows in the browser tab? Admin → Settings → Branding → Favicon. Upload one square image and Convoro produces every size a browser or a phone asks for. Administrators What size should a forum cover image be? Anything wide. Covers are shown whole rather than cropped, so nothing is cut off — a wide image around 1600 pixels across works well. Administrators

How do I put a widget on my forum index? Open the account menu and choose “Arrange widgets”. Drag one from the list on the left onto any highlighted area of the page, then save. Administrators Can I put a Downloads widget on my forum index? Yes. Any widget can go in any area — a “Newest files” widget works on the forum index, and a “Recent topics” widget works on the Downloads page. Administrators How do I get rid of a widget I no longer want? In “Arrange widgets”, press the X on the widget itself. It goes when you save, and Discard brings it back until then. Administrators

How do I make a list of structured content, like recipes or staff? Admin → Databases. Create a database, give it fields, and add records. It gets its own address at the site root, a list view, and a page for each record. Administrators Can I have a field that only staff can see? Yes. Tick the groups that may see it when you edit the field. Everybody else will not see it on the record, in the list, in the API, or in search results. Administrators If I rename a field, do I lose what people have entered? No. The label can be changed freely — records store their answers under a key that is fixed when the field is created and never changes. Administrators

What makes a good Knowledge Base article? One question, answered on its own. Fill in “the question this answers” in the words somebody would type, and write the short answer as a real answer rather than an introduction. Administrators Can I keep internal notes in the Knowledge Base? Yes. Restrict an article to your staff groups and it disappears completely for everybody else — from the index, from its own address, and from search. Administrators

How do I give somebody moderator powers? Admin → Members, open their profile, and add them to a group that has moderator permissions. Powers come from groups rather than from individuals. Administrators

How do permissions work? Everything is restricted to groups. A thing with no groups ticked is visible to everybody; tick some and only those groups can see it. Signed-out visitors count as being in the Guests group rather than in no group at all. Administrators How do I make a forum only staff can see? Edit the forum, and under "Who may read it" tick the groups allowed in. Everything follows — the index, search, activity, streams and widgets all stop showing it to everybody else. Administrators What happens when I delete a member group? Its members move to the default group so nobody is left without one, and every restriction pointing at it is removed. Without that second part, a page restricted to a group that no longer exists is restricted to nobody. Administrators Why can I not see club groups in Admin → Groups? Every club owns an automatic group, which is how its content is kept to its members. They are hidden from the Groups screen and from every "who may read this" list on purpose, and cannot be picked as ordinary groups. Administrators Can I get back a topic somebody deleted? Yes. Admin → Deleted content holds soft-deleted topics, posts and application content, and you can restore them. Uploaded files are kept too, so a restored image is not a broken one. Administrators What is the difference between hiding and deleting a post? Hiding takes it off the page but leaves it readable by moderators, so there is a record of what was said. Deleting removes it for everybody, moderators included, and is recoverable from Deleted content. Administrators

How do I make my forums show as a grid? Admin → Forums sets a site-wide default, and each category can override it. Readers can also choose for themselves, and their choice wins. Administrators How do I put a picture on a forum or a download category? Edit it and drop an image into the cover field. One file is kept at one size and positioned with a focal point, so the same upload serves the card and any wider use. Administrators How do I add a block to my forum index or sidebar? Use the arrange mode on the page itself. Every widget any switched-on application offers can go in any area, and a widget belonging to an application you later switch off hides rather than breaking. Administrators

What is the difference between System and an application? System is the core — members, groups, search, widgets, the messenger — and is always there. The eight applications sit on top of it and can each be switched off, so a Downloads-only or Gallery-only site works properly. Administrators How do I charge for a download? Set a price on the file in Admin → Downloads. Convoro takes payment through PayPal, grants access when the payment settles, and can charge a renewal on a schedule if you set one. Administrators How do I use my own page as the home page? Admin → Modules has a "Make front page" button beside each application that is switched on. Only its index moves; every other address keeps working. Administrators When should I use a Pages database instead of a forum? Use one when your content has fields — a directory of members' businesses, a list of servers, a recipe collection. A forum is for conversation; a database is for records people browse and filter. Administrators Are gallery images safe? Do they keep their location data? Every uploaded image is decoded and written out again, so nothing hidden inside the original survives — and that also strips the EXIF, including the GPS coordinates most phones record. Administrators How do clubs work and who runs them? Members create and run clubs themselves. Each gets its own group, and its forum, album, calendar and blog are restricted to that group. Your admin screen is for oversight, not for running them. Administrators How should I structure Knowledge Base articles? One answer per article, self-contained, titled as the question somebody would type. Fill in the question and summary fields — they are what search and the assistant use, and a summary sliced off the body is not an answer. Administrators

Convoro installed and the front page works, but every link 404s. Why? Your web server is not rewriting URLs, so only the front page ever reaches PHP. Convoro can work without rewriting — add <code>'URL_REWRITING' => 'off'</code> to <code>config/site.php</code> and every address will carry <code>index.php</code>. Turning rewriting on is the better fix, and this article says how. Administrators How do I install Convoro? Upload the zip, open the site in a browser and follow the installer. There is no Composer step, no build step and no shell required — you need PHP 8.5 and a MySQL database. Administrators How do I switch on the assistant that answers questions? Install the AI Assistant extension and put your Anthropic key in Admin → AI Assistant. It answers only from your Knowledge Base, so write the articles first — with none, it will correctly tell everybody that nothing is covered. Administrators I finished installing and it went back to the beginning. Why? A fault in the 1.0.0, 1.0.1 and 1.0.2 downloads, and in the first build of 1.0.3. Download 1.0.3 again and run the installer once more — your database is fine and nothing needs undoing first. Administrators Is there a .env file? Where is the database password? In config/site.php, a PHP file rather than a .env. A .php file is executed by the server; a .env is handed out as plain text by anything serving static files from the application root. Administrators The assistant keeps saying that is not covered. Is it broken? Almost always no. It answers only from published Knowledge Base articles, and saying so is what it is meant to do when none of them cover the question. Write the article and it will answer. Administrators Do I need to set up cron jobs? Convoro works without any, but three commands are worth scheduling: purchases:sweep if you sell anything, privacy:prune, and search:reindex if you use an external search backend. Administrators How do I make search better on a large community? Install the OpenSearch module, point it at your server in Admin → OpenSearch, and rebuild the index. MySQL stays the default and search falls back to it automatically if the server stops answering. Administrators My uploaded images work locally but 404 in production. Why? Your nginx configuration is serving anything ending in .png straight from disk, and Convoro serves uploads through PHP. Add a location block for the path — the list is in tools/deploy/nginx-paths-served-by-php.conf. Administrators What do I need to back up? The database, the content directory, config/site.php and any extensions you installed. The code itself you can re-download; those four you cannot. Administrators