Kunena is the most widely used forum component for Joomla. It provides a full-featured discussion board with categories, topics, replies, private messaging, user ranks, subscriptions, and attachment support — fully integrated with Joomla's user and ACL systems and optionally with Community Builder profiles.

Forum Structure

Kunena organises discussion into a two-level hierarchy:

• Categories — top-level groupings (e.g. General Discussion, Support, Announcements)
• Topics (Threads) — individual discussions within a category
• Replies (Posts) — responses within a topic

Categories can be public, registered-only, or restricted to specific Joomla user groups via the ACL integration.

Initial Setup

1. Install Kunena and create a Kunena Forum menu item
2. Go to Admin → Components → Kunena → Categories to create your forum categories
3. Configure global settings in Kunena → Configuration — posting permissions, attachments, RSS, avatars
4. Enable the Kunena plugins: plg_finder_kunena for Smart Search indexing, plg_kunena_community for CB integration

Moderation

Assign moderators per category in Kunena → Moderators. Moderators can delete, edit, move, lock, and unstick any topic or post in their assigned categories. Global moderators have these rights across all categories.

Key moderation tools:

• Soft delete — hides posts from regular users but retains them for admins
• IP banning — block a specific IP from posting
• User banning — block a specific Joomla user account from the forum
• Report system — users can flag posts; reports appear in the Kunena admin panel

Community Builder Integration

With the plg_kunena_community plugin enabled, Kunena uses CB profile data:

• CB avatar shown alongside forum posts instead of the Kunena avatar
• CB profile link on post author names
• CB activity entries created for new topics and replies (requires CB Activity plugin)

Kunena Modules