User manual & FAQ

Poll

Is this an improvement over the old system?

This poll has expired. Voting is no longer possible.
17 votes were received.

Yes	15		88%
No	1		6%
Don't know / About the same.	1		6%

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User Manual


Features at a glance

[*] lost password retrieval
[*] private messaging
[*] buddies
[*] user profiles
[*] everybody is a moderator
[*] stickies and announements
[*] fresh topics stay at top of the list
[*] mark as read
[*] ignore user
[*] change timezone
[*] see unread message at a glance
[*] enhanced text options for posting
[*] emoticons
[*] embed images in post
[*] edit your posts
[*] polls
[*] subscriptions
[*] powerful search engine

Register
At the top of every page will be a link "Sign up." Click on this. Read fully the Terms of Service (TOS) and rules. Provide your real name and real email address, your username and password. You should quickly receive a verification email. Click on the link, and you're registered. Do not try to steal someone's username from the old system.

Your username can consist of letters, numbers, hyphens, underscores and spaces.

You can change your username by contacting the Admin.

Anyone may read the boards. You do not need to login or even register to read posts. An advantage of signing in, though, is the ability to receive private messages (PM).


Login
You do not have to log in to read the boards. But you can't send or receive PM unless you've signed on. If you've forgotten your password, you may enter your email address and have it mailed to you.

At the top right of every page, or when you try to do certain actions like post, reply, PM, etc, you will be prompted to sign in. Enter your username and password.




Control Center
This can be accessed from a link at the top right of every page. Here you can set options and change your profile.


Profiles
All users have a profile. You can select some options such as what timezone to display the dates, whether to display your signature line, whether the system will email you when you have a new PM, etc. Your email address is, by default, hidden from other users. If you wish to show it, you have to uncheck a box on the privacy settings. Note: You probably should not show your email address, as you will open yourself to potential spam. If you want to share email addresses, I suggest you do it by PM.

You can change your password and email address. You must keep your email address current. The retrieve password function only works if the system can email you. When you change your email, the system will send a confirmation code to the new address. You'll have to enter that code on your control panel to change the email address.

There are optional fields for any information you would like to share: where you live, your facebook or blog address, occupation, why you chose your username. There is another field I've called nickname. You could put your full name, first name, nickname, or leave it blank.

You may view another user's profile by clicking on his username from any page. There will be links for adding him as a Buddy or sending a PM. You cannot see a user's real name, only whatever entry he has made for Nickname.

Gravatars may be used on the site. Go to gravatar.com and upload your image. All you have to do is use the same email address as on this site. Please keep the images clean.


Private Messaging (PM)
PM is like in-house email and can be accessed a number of ways. You can send a PM to the author of a post from the entire message list or the view post page. You can click on PM at the top right of every page. If you have a new PM, the link in the upper right will be highlighted on every page you go to.

If you click on PM from a post page, the PM will quote the post's subject and text. You can can/delete these if you wish.

You can choose to be notified by email when you receive a PM.

Do not harrass users with PMs. If they ask you to stop, then stop.


Buddies
When viewing someone's profile you can add him as a buddy. This speeds up sending future PMs by having your buddies in a pull-down list for the To field, rather than having to type in his username.






Reading
The list of forums can be accessed from every page by clicking on Forums near the top of the page. This shows all the forums. If they have messages you haven't read, the forum will be highlighted.

When reading a post, Forum will take you to the list of forums. Message List will take you to the top of the messages for the current forum. Announcements, like this post will be at the top of every page. There will be Stickies for each forum, then normal threads. When a thread is responded to, it moves to the top of the list.

You can click on new messages, which shows all new messages from all the forums. Or you can view all the threads to which you've subscribed.


Ignore user
You may ignore a user. This is done by reading one of his posts or going to his profile. If you ignore a user, his posts will be blank. You will still see where it belongs in the current thread-tree. You may click to view the particular post, while still automatically ignoring future ones.

PMs cannot be blocked. Do not harrass people with PMs. If they ask you to stop, then stop.

Note: The Ignore User function is not yet operational.



Reporting
All registered users have moderating powers. The board belongs to you, and you share in the responsibility for keeping it a nice place to talk. When reading a post, you can click on Report, which is at the bottom right of the shaded message box. This feature allows all users, not guests, the ability to notify the Moderators and Admin that a post is a problem.

Do not abuse this power. It is not for disagreeing with posts. It's for keeping the community civil, on point, and a pleasant experience. When you report a post, please provide some information as to why you reported the post. The Admin or Moderators will then be notified and take appropriate action.


Subscribe
If you subscrbe to a forum, you will receive an email whenever there is a new post. This is probably not such a good idea. You can subscribe to threads as well. Use this for threads you're very interested in, like ones you've posted in.

-you can click on subscribed thread to see all the threads your subscribed to. at a glance you can see if they have new messages in them

Search
A search box is at the top right of every page. You can search by key words or poster. You can set which forums and which dates, etc.



Posting
Put posts in the correct forum. The basketball board is not a separate community. Don't post in there about how bad the Royals played last night, or whatever. If people want to read about whatever, they will go to the correct forum for it. And it means when he is in the basketball forum, he doesn't have to waste his time reading threads that don't interest him. Moderators can and will move threads or posts.

Reply and quoting
When you're reading any post, a reply box will be at the bottom of the screen. The subect is already filled in, although you can change it. You can also quote the post. To do this, click on Quote at the bottom-right of the message's shaded box.

Enhanced text and preview
There are easy tools for altering your post, such as bold, italics, underline, and emoticons, some of which you can see in this post. When you click on one it puts in the HTML code. Put the text between the start and end code. You can also justify the text, put in links to other sites, embed images, etc.Whenever using any of these features, you should preview your post. Click on Preview. Your post will be at the top of the page, just as it will appear. You can see if you've formated stuff correctly. If not, just change the post in the lower box and hit Preview again. When it's right, post.


Embedding images
You can append images inside your post. All the screenshots are embedded. You cannot upload files to my server. You can get free file hosting lots of places, like flickr.com.

Warning: Do not post copyrighted material. Just post the link to it. And under no circumstances link or embed files which violate the rules, such as racism or pornography.

Polls
All users may creat polls. It's fairly intuitive. You control how it looks, how long it runs, who may vote.





Administrator & Moderators
Currently there are three Moderators who assist in running the board. They have the power to remove posts; move, merge, and split posts or threads; approve or deny posts; and to suspend users.

The boards are administered by Dave Sieverling, who owns and maintains rockchalk.com. You can reach me by PM from every page, just click on 'contact the Admin' in the upper right corner. If you have a problem with the way the board is run, contact me.



Edited 15 time(s). Last edit at 12/30/2011 12:28AM by Dave.