Sharepoint site templates include a Discussion Board option that users can use to share ideas and talk about projects, plans or any other topic they wish. There are some things you can configure with these discussion boards to make them more useful.

A server administrator can set the number of characters shown in a expanded discussion, control how the time limit on new message tag or change the order in which the discussion items are listed. Once you have the discussion board created, open it up and click the Modify Settings and Columns. The Change General Settings link will allow you to set content approval, attachments and item-level permissions.

To display more than the default of 400 Characters of Discussion Text you must edit a file called onet.xml and reprovision the server.

Warning: Editing the onet.xml file is not supported, do so with caution and make sure to backup the server before making any changes.

Open up notepad and locate \Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web server Extensions\60\Template\1033\STS\XML\onet.xml and open it. Locate each instance of "Limit Len=400" and replace the 400 with the number of characters you wish to display. Save the onet.xml file and reprovision the site. To reprovision the site, open up the SharePoint Central Administration page and under Virtual Server Configuration, click Configure virtual server settings. Select the site you are reprovisioning and on the Virtual Server Settings page under Virtual Server Management, click Remove Windows SharePoint Services from Virtual Server. Then on the Remove Windows SharePoint Services from Virtual Server page, choose to Remove without Deleting Content Databases and click OK.

Next, from the Central Administration home page, click Extend or Upgrade Virtual Server, then click the Web site to provision. Now click Extend and Map to Existing Virtual Server and in the Application Pool section, select Use an Existing App Pool. Choose the application pool associated with the virtual server and click OK. Not so hard is it :) Changing the length of time the new message tag is displayed is a little easier and uses the STSAdm.exe tool. You can set the expiration limit by running:

STSAdm.exe -o setproperty -pn days-to-show-new-icon -pv [# of days] -url http://Server

Finally you can change the display order for a discussion board by editing the Schema.xml file. By default the items are listed newest to oldest.

Open up Notepad and then open the \Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\60\Template\1033\STS\Lists\Discuss\Schema.xml and locate the following:

Change the value of Ascending to True and restart IIS. Now the items will be listed from oldest to newest.