--- title: "Pinning, Featuring and Locking Topics" description: "How moderators pin, feature and lock topics in Vitextra Discussions: the Pinned, Featured and Locked buttons in the topic view, how a pinned topic stays at the top of every view, how the Featured view and the Featured default view work, what a locked topic allows and forbids, how unlocking restores the status, and how the same flags look in the Discussions Topics list." url: https://vitextra.com/en/support/kb/10410 language: en published: 2026-11-01 modified: 2026-11-01 products: - "Discussions" author: "Lidija Reising" tags: ["pin topic SharePoint forum", "sticky topic Discussions", "featured topics view", "lock topic no new replies", "close discussion thread", "unlock topic", "Vitextra Discussions moderator", "Pinned Featured Locked badges", "topic status Locked", "Discussions Topics list columns"] --- # Pinning, Featuring and Locking Topics How moderators pin, feature and lock topics in Vitextra Discussions: the Pinned, Featured and Locked buttons in the topic view, how a pinned topic stays at the top of every view, how the Featured view and the Featured default view work, what a locked topic allows and forbids, how unlocking restores the status, and how the same flags look in the Discussions Topics list. ## Overview Three switches let a moderator shape a board without touching its content. **Pinned** keeps a topic at the top of the list — house rules, a schedule, the link to the knowledge base. **Featured** marks a topic as worth reading and collects it in the **Featured** view. **Locked** closes a topic for new replies while keeping it readable — a question that has been answered conclusively, a thread that has drifted off topic. All three are available to users with the **Manage Lists** permission on the site (see [KB10408. Permissions in Discussions: Who Can Read, Post and Moderate](https://vitextra.com/en/support/kb/10408)) and are set from the topic view of [Discussions](https://vitextra.com/en/products/discussions). ## Where the switches are 1\. Open the topic from the list. 2\. Under the topic body, next to **Like**, **Edit** and **Delete**, a moderator sees three further buttons: **Pinned**, **Featured** and **Locked**. Each click toggles the flag on or off; the change is saved immediately, and the matching badge appears in or disappears from the topic heading. 3\. Click **Back to topics**. The list reloads with the new order and badges. ![The Pinned, Featured and Locked buttons in the topic view](https://static.vitextra.com/articles/10410/topic-moderator-buttons-en.png) *The Pinned, Featured and Locked buttons in the topic view* The buttons do not change their label to show the current state — only the icon of **Locked** switches between a lock and an unlock symbol; look at the badges in the heading — **Pinned**, **Featured**, **Locked** — to see which flags are set. The same badges are shown in the topic list for every user. ## Pinned topics A pinned topic is placed before all other topics in every view of the board — **Recent**, **Unanswered**, **Answered**, **Featured** and **My topics** — and within the results of the category filter and the search. Several pinned topics are ordered among themselves by last activity, newest first, like the rest of the list. Pinning does not change the topic itself: replies, likes and the **Answered** status work as usual. ![Pinned, Featured and Locked badges in the topic list](https://static.vitextra.com/articles/10410/topic-list-badges-en.png) *Pinned, Featured and Locked badges in the topic list* 📝 **Note** Pinning affects the topic list of the board only. The **Discussions Activity** web part orders topics by last activity and ignores the flag; see [KB10415. Showing Recent Discussions on Any Page with the Discussions Activity Web Part](https://vitextra.com/en/support/kb/10415). ## Featured topics A featured topic gets the **Featured** badge and is included in the **Featured** view of the topic list, which shows featured topics only. Featuring does not change the order of the other views. Use it to curate a reading list for newcomers: the best answered questions, the threads that explain a process, the announcements that matter. If a board is meant to open on that list, set **Default view** to **Featured** in the **Appearance** group of the property pane; users can still switch to the other views. The display settings are described in [KB10422. Views, Paging, Search and Counters: Display Settings of the Discussions Web Part](https://vitextra.com/en/support/kb/10422). ## Locked topics Locking sets the topic's **Status** to *Locked*. The topic shows the **Locked** badge and the message *This topic is locked. New replies are not accepted.* at the end of the thread. In a locked topic: - the reply box under the thread and the **Reply** button on every reply are hidden for everybody, moderators included; - **Like**, **Report**, **Follow** and the deep link keep working, and the topic remains in search and in the views; - authors can still **Edit** and **Delete** their own replies, and moderators any reply; the author can no longer edit the locked topic itself (moderators can), while **Delete** on the topic stays available to the author and to moderators; - **Mark as answer** and **Unmark answer** are hidden for everybody, so the accepted answer stays as it is until the topic is unlocked. To reopen the topic, click **Locked** again. The status returns to *Answered* if the topic has an accepted answer, and to *Open* otherwise. ❗ **Important** The accepted answer is independent of the lock. The **Answered** badge, the check-mark icon in the list and the place in the **Answered** view are derived from the accepted answer, not from the **Status** column, so a locked question keeps all of them, and a locked question without an accepted answer stays in the **Unanswered** view. In the **Discussions Topics** list a locked topic has the **Status** *Locked* whether it is answered or not; the answer itself is recorded in the **Accepted post** column. ## The same flags in the list The three switches are columns of the `Discussions Topics` list: **Pinned** (Yes/No), **Featured** (Yes/No) and **Status** (*Open*, *Answered*, *Locked*). A site owner can change them there as well — for example to pin or lock many topics at once with **Edit in grid view** — and the web part picks the change up on the next load. **Status** controls the lock only: the answered state comes from the **Accepted post** column, so an answered topic shows **Answered** and stays in the **Answered** view whichever of *Open*, *Answered* or *Locked* you set. For consistency, give an answered topic *Answered* back when you unlock it in the list, not *Open*. The full column reference is in [KB10426. Discussions Lists and Columns Reference](https://vitextra.com/en/support/kb/10426). 💡 **Tip** A pinned and locked topic is the usual way to publish board rules: it stays first in every view and collects no replies. For a question-and-answer board, feature the topics with the best accepted answers and make **Featured** the default view, so that the first screen is a curated FAQ and the live stream of new questions is one click away.