By default, the New Item page of any Discussion Board Plus list has two columns. This can be somewhat limiting if you find that you need several different columns on your New Item page. In this article, we’ll show you how this can be resolved by walking you through the steps needed to add or hide a new content type to a Bamboo Discussion Board Plus list.

To begin, go to an existing list on your site.

When you click the new discussion hyperlink, you will see that there are only two default columns: Subject * and Body.

How to add a new content type

Go to the Settings icon and click on Site Settings in the drop-down.

In the Web Designer Galleries section, click on Site content types.

In the Bamboo Solutions section, select the BambooDiscussion hyperlink.

In the Columns section, click Add from existing site columns.

On the Add Columns page, you will need to do the following:

• Select columns from: Select a column from the list of available site columns to add them to this content type.
• Available columns: Select the column(s) that you need to add.
• Update all content types inheriting from this type?: Select YES.

Return to your Discussion Board Plus list and click the new discussion hyperlink. You will now see that the columns you added above are displayed.

Please note the instructions above will only update the column types in existing lists. In the event that you create a new Discussion Board Plus list AFTER you have added columns from Site Content-Type, the newly created columns won’t be updated and displayed in the new lists.

For example: Below is a new Discussion Board Plus list I created.

When I click on a new discussion, only the Title and Body columns are displayed.

In order to add the new content types to the list, you will need to update the content types. This can be done using Windows PowerShell, as detailed in the following post: How to Update Content Types in Discussion Board Plus Using Windows PowerShell.

How to hide or remove a new content type

If you do not wish to display any columns on a new discussion page, go to the Settings icon.  From there, select Site Settings > Site Content Type > Bamboo Discussion

In the Columns section, select the column that you would like to hide or remove.

On the Change Content-Type Column:

• Select the Hidden (Will not appear in forms) radio button if you would like to keep the column, but just hide it; or
• Click the Remove button if you do not want to use this column anymore.

If you chose to click Hidden, the status of the column will be listed as Hidden after you click the OK button.

If you chose to click Remove, the column will have completely disappeared from your list.

Next, return to the new discussion page, The column that you chose to hide or remove will not be displayed.