"How To" guides and answers to your forum questions!

[davidc]

This is meant to be a high level introduction to some of the features of the forum and a place to ask questions - by keeping it all in one thread, everyone knows where to go to get answers!

I've covered off on how to post images in the Photo Sharing and Image Critique threads but these are more generalised, high level topics about using the forum below.

Almost all of these involve the "User Control Panel" (aka the UCP) - every member has this which lets you setup details about your forum account, such as changing your registered email address, your password, tweaking forum settings and so on. The link for this is in the top left of the forum, just beside the "Croydon Camera Club Forum" logo.

Remember, if anyone has any questions, needs a hand or wants to practice anything feel free to get in touch/use me as a guinea pig! Click on each link below to jump to the relevant section.

Creating a signature
Using Private Messages (PM's)
Using the BB code tags
Adding an avatar
Checking for unread messages
Subscribing to threads and forums

If there is demand/interest in other functionality above and beyond those listed, I'll add to this with future guides.

[davidc]

A signature is an optional small piece of text you can setup to appear after every message you post - people normally use them to show links to their own personal website or maybe the odd favourite quote. For instance, Mike has his setup to link to his own website.

Open your UCP and you'll see a number of tabs, such as Overview, Profile, Board Preferences and so on. Select Profile.
On the left you now see a number of "Edit....." options - choose Edit Signature and you'll see a new empty field for you to add text.
Create your signature using the exact same method you would as if you were writing on the forums, then click preview to check it looks like you expect.
Once you're happy, hit Submit and the signature will be added to your forum posts.

The only request we make is that the signatures are kept small/discrete - remember, they appear after EVERY message you post!

[davidc]

Using PM's - Private Messages
Almost every message you post on the forum is normally visible to every other member - that's kind of the point of a forum, so all can share in the discussion

However there are times you might want to contact other members privately, or you may receive such messages yourself.

Checking for messages
The forum will let you know if you receive a private message (PM). However, if you miss the notification or don't want to react to it immediately, you can also see if you have any - beside the link to the User Control Panel, top left, you can see another indicator in brackets. It probably says (0 new messages) right now, but if you DO have any messages, this will change and show the number of unread messages here.

Sending messages
In a nutshell, to send a private message to someone, look for the PM button beside their name, on one of the posts, their member profile etc. Clicking the PM button will open a new screen that looks a lot like a normal forum message but you can clearly see at the top it's addressed to a specific other member. Simply enter your message like normal and hit submit.

You can also open your own PM inbox and click the send option - this means you need to know the exact name of the member you are messaging so unless you start memorising usernames, it's probably quicker & easier to find a forum post from the person you want to contact and hit the PM button there.

Managing messages
There is a limit on the number of messages you can receive and store so it's up to you to delete old ones you no longer need. You can do this from the private message inbox screen when you check messages - there are checkboxes beside each message so you select the ones you want to delete, then choose "Delete Checked" from the little drop down option box. Alternatively, you can mark all messages or choose to delete all. Be careful - once a message has gone, you can't get it back.

You also keep a record of Sent messages, also accessible from your private messaging screen.

[davidc]

First up - what is a tag? A tag is a way of telling the forum software that you want to do something special other than enter normal text. For instance you might want to highlight something in bold to emphasise your point or perhaps in italics. If you want to split a post into sections sometimes underlining is also a good option. There are many different things you can do and I'll not cover all in painful detail, but rather I'll show you how you use a tag in general, give a list of what options there are and let you try it for yourselves.

The available BB tags are shown just above the main text box where you type your message. You can see them in a long row -

B i u Quote Code List List= .... and so on.

Using bold as an example, if you click the B button you'll see this appear in your post -

Code: Select all

[b][/b]

Here's the key point - anything you put between the b square brackets will be shown in bold.

For example, entering -

Code: Select all

[b]Hello Everyone[/b] my name is David

Will show the Hello Everyone in bold, but "my name is..." in a normal font.

This method applies to ALL the different BB tags we have - you put the text you want between the relevant tags and the formatting is applied to it. You may notice that the tags are slightly different, basically

Code: Select all

[b]

tells the forum "start making things bold" and

Code: Select all

[/b]

says "stop bold here". If you don't "close" the tags using the [/ ] version, your entire message will come out bold

Here's a summary of what the options are -

B - shows the text in bold
i - shows the text in italics
u - underlines the text
Quote - I'll cover this in a specific Quote guide, but let's you quote other messages so it's clearer what you are replying to/talking about
List - arranges the text so it looks more like a list
List= & List* - I'm not actually sure, I never bother with them
Img - allows you to link to a picture elsewhere on the internet and it will show the picture itself, rather than the link. See the "How to Post an Image" guide
URL - this lets you type an internet address and it will show it as a clickable link to make it easy for navigate to the website you are directing them to
Flash - ignore this one for now.
Normal - this lets you tweak the font size (if you really need to!)
Font Colour - gives you a colour picker so you can colour your message. As a general rule of thumb, be careful with outlandish font colours, some people's eyes are easily offended

[davidc]

An avatar is the term used to describe a small, 90x90 pixel size image that is shown just below your name. Entirely optional, the best reason to use one of these is to make it a bit easier for people to recognise a post is yours. The 90x90 limit keeps the image size within reason.

You can choose an avatar by going to the UCP, selecting the "Profile" tab and choosing "Edit Avatar" from the left. You then choose the image you want to use from your computer, or if you have an image on the internet, the link to that image.

For example, I've chosen a picture I took of a gecko as my avatar.

[davidc]

By this, I mean unread FORUM messages rather than Private Messages.
There are a couple of options here. The first one is the most obvious, any forum that contains an unread message will have a blue icon next to it - if you have read all the messages the icon is grey. Opening a forum with unread messages, you'll see each topic highlighted with blue where it has messages you haven't seen yet. For new users, or if you've not checked the forum for a while, this often means everything looks blue.

As a quick aside, if you want simply set everything to "read", on the main forum page, top right hand corner, there is a "Mark forums read" button which assumes you don't want to catch up on all the conversation and it turns all icons from blue to grey.

There are other options too. On the main forum page (the Board Index), just above the list of Announcements, General etc. you can see

View unanswered posts
View unread posts
View new posts
View active topics

Most of these are self explanatory but for the sake of completeness -

View unanswered posts shows all messages on the ENTIRE forum that have not received a reply.
View unread posts shows only the messages you have not read. Very useful.
View new posts shows all posts that have been posted recently.
View active topics shows those topics that have the most users reading and posting in them. Good to see where the current discussion is!

[davidc]

If you are particularly interested in either an entire forum or just certain individual topics (aka "threads") you can choose to be emailed whenever someone contributes to the forum or topic. To do this for a forum, scroll right to the bottom of the screen and you'll see a little "Subscribe to forum" button - select this and you'll start receiving emails whenever the forum has updates.

Likewise for a specific topic, you can scroll to the bottom and select subscribe to receive updates only for that topic.

To unsubscribe, click the button again or go to the UCP and choose "Manage Subscriptions" from the left hand side to view/manage what forums and topics you are subscribed to.

[davidc]

Reserved for future guides

[davidc]

Reserved for future guides