Mike
Well-Known Member
When you log into the forums, you have some inline tools you can use to make your forum experience a little more robust.
I am aware a lot of you locate new posts via the What's New link in the NavBar. Personally, I find it a lot easier to use the visual clues, provided by the forum software. In the image above, look at the node icons indicated by the arrows. The top arrow indicates a forum with no new posts in it. The bottom arrow indicates a forum that does contain new posts.
Once I am in the forum view template, I can easily see which threads have new posts, because those thread titles appear in a bold font, as indicated by the top arrow. The bottom arrow indicates a thread with no new posts in it.
In the forum view, if I click on a username, their membercard will be displayed, as you can see in the above image.
Once you get into the thread view template, there are several tools available to you. Once again, clicking on the avatar or username in a post, I can see that member's membercard. If the post has content you feel is inappropriate, you can click the Report link, to flag the forum staff members up to the post. There area lot of occasions where you might like or enjoy another member's post, but you don't want to take the time to respond to the post, to indicate your approval. Now, you can just click on the Like link and the post author will receive an alert that you have Liked the post. If you want to quote another member's post into your reply, you can click on the Reply link. That will insert the quoted text in your message, but with a different apearance, such as -
You can then go through and delete the chunks of the quoted post that you do not need or want to appear in your own post. In a lot of instances, people will quote entire posts, when there might have been only one or two sentences that were required. Since the quoted post already appears in the database once, there's really no need to quote all of it and have it appear a second time, so snip off what you don't need to quote and it will help conserve space, as well as increasing the page load speed.
I hope this tutorial will help you understand some of the user interface tools you have available for your use.
I am aware a lot of you locate new posts via the What's New link in the NavBar. Personally, I find it a lot easier to use the visual clues, provided by the forum software. In the image above, look at the node icons indicated by the arrows. The top arrow indicates a forum with no new posts in it. The bottom arrow indicates a forum that does contain new posts.
Once I am in the forum view template, I can easily see which threads have new posts, because those thread titles appear in a bold font, as indicated by the top arrow. The bottom arrow indicates a thread with no new posts in it.
In the forum view, if I click on a username, their membercard will be displayed, as you can see in the above image.
Once you get into the thread view template, there are several tools available to you. Once again, clicking on the avatar or username in a post, I can see that member's membercard. If the post has content you feel is inappropriate, you can click the Report link, to flag the forum staff members up to the post. There area lot of occasions where you might like or enjoy another member's post, but you don't want to take the time to respond to the post, to indicate your approval. Now, you can just click on the Like link and the post author will receive an alert that you have Liked the post. If you want to quote another member's post into your reply, you can click on the Reply link. That will insert the quoted text in your message, but with a different apearance, such as -
You can then go through and delete the chunks of the quoted post that you do not need or want to appear in your own post. In a lot of instances, people will quote entire posts, when there might have been only one or two sentences that were required. Since the quoted post already appears in the database once, there's really no need to quote all of it and have it appear a second time, so snip off what you don't need to quote and it will help conserve space, as well as increasing the page load speed.
I hope this tutorial will help you understand some of the user interface tools you have available for your use.
