You can create a set of categories that are being created whenever a new user registers or creates a new weblog. Once a weblog has been created, changing your predefined structure does not affect existing categories in those weblogs. Setting up predefined categories can be done at "Layouts->Manage layouts".

Since a message board is merely a special kind of category and thus appears within your portal navigation, you might want to hide it from non-members. Therefore, you can decide whether a message board is visible for all Internet users, or merely for logged-in members of your portal. Please note that this visibility is merely a design consideration and does not have any impact on the visibility of each message posted to such board.

You can decide for each category whether it should serve as a message board or not. A category serving as message board can easily be accessed by all your members. When accessing their text editor to write a new entry, any message boards will appear in your members' category list. Thus, they merely need to choose the message board instead of one of their own categories, and any new posting will appear in that central message board. In order to distinguish between their own categories and your message board(s), the latter are displayed at the end of the list, separated by a dashed line. You find your categories listed at "Portal content->Categories".