Marty Soupcoff

The Mail Now setting decides when the forum post goes out to the cron to then process the email notifications.

If a user does not check the Mail Now setting, then that user will have 30 minutes to edit the post before it is sent to cron to then email.

If a user does check the Mail Now setting, then the post will be sent to cron and the user does not have the option to edit the post anyway.

I believe how you have cron set up and how frequently you have it set up to run decides when the email notifications go out.

This is the Forum Module. This question probably should have gone in the Quiz Module forum. You'll get a faster response from people if they are posted in the right forum.

But what I think you are looking for can be found in the Moodle Doc - GIFT Format.

I haven't tried it but I believe if you go into the forum settings > Override Permissions tab (at top of webpage), find the Initial Subscription permission and change that to Prevent. Then in the forum settings > Force everyone to be subscribed? setting change it to Yes, forever and that should force all users with roles that you did not set to Prevent to receive the forum subscription emails. Again, haven't tried it myself but that's how I read what the Moodle Docs said. Good luck!

Moodle Docs - Initial Subscriptions

So I tried to keep track of everything you did but still got lost . What I think you are trying to do though is assign a user to the new role that you just created. Is that correct?

If so, you may have forgot to allow the role you are at to assign someone to that role. If you go Site Admin > Users  > Permissions > Define Roles > Allow role assignments tab (located at top of page) or go to http://XXXXXXXXX/admin/roles/allowassign.php (insert your web address for the X's. This is where you decide which roles can assign other users to which roles. For example, teachers can assign only assign other users to non-editing teachers, students and guests while admins can do all. Make sure the box in the Administrator ROW and the COLUMN of the role you just created is checked and save your changes.

Moodle Docs - Allow Role Assignments

Note: I only have 1.9.11 so I can't verify that it is the same in 2.0

If you want to add pictures and links to a block, I would suggest adding an HTML block. To do so, select the Turn Editing On button > select Add in the New Blocks block > select HTML. In this HTML block, you will be able to name the block and then insert links and images into the HTML editor like you do in other areas of Moodle.

As a suggestion, you may want to only insert small images into an HTML block as the block will appear on either the left or right side and will take space from the content in the topics/weeks of the course.

As an alternative, you can add links and images to a topic/week by Adding a resource > Insert label.