Use Topic and Message Drafts in QC Live Forum

Signed-in members receive automatic drafts for permanent Discussion Topics and permanent Message replies. Drafts are user-specific, sanitized before storage, restored when the matching composer reopens, and expire after 30 days.

Live Chat, Watch Party, and Broadcast Topic creation deliberately do not use Topic-draft autosave semantics.

How Autosave Works

After a signed-in user changes a Discussion Topic or reply composer, the frontend schedules a draft save after about 1.8 seconds of inactivity. Empty composers are not saved.

A Topic draft is keyed to the signed-in user and Category. A Message draft is keyed to the signed-in user and Topic. Saving again updates the existing matching draft instead of creating a new stack of drafts.

What a Draft Stores

  • Topic draft: cleaned title, sanitized body HTML/text, Category, and topic_type=discussion.
  • Reply draft: sanitized body plus Reply Reference state when that feature is enabled and the referenced Message belongs to the same Topic.
  • Created/updated timestamps and an expiration timestamp 30 days after the latest save.
  • Attachments are not part of the stored draft payload.

Restore and Discard

When a matching draft exists, the composer loads its stored title/body and displays Draft restored.

Discard Draft immediately clears and closes the composer in the browser and sends a server request to remove the matching stored draft. The composer is not repopulated if that discard request later fails.

When Drafts Are Removed

  • Successful signed-in Discussion creation removes the Topic draft for that Category.
  • Successful signed-in Message posting removes the reply draft for that Topic.
  • The QCLF Cleanup task deletes drafts whose expires_at has passed.
  • Guests do not receive QCLF draft storage.

Permission Checks Still Apply

The draft endpoint rechecks whether the user can create a Discussion in that Category or reply to that Topic. A saved draft does not preserve permission after a lock, sanction, ACL change, or Category access change.

Community Discussion

Want to compare forum workflows, share practical QCLF tips, or discuss how other Joomla site owners use this feature? Visit the QC Live Forum Community. For private support, bug reports, account-specific entitlement problems, or feature requests, use the QuantaCade support system.