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Forum Tips

Oct 2018 – The forum is back with a new set of clothes.  This is a new forum with old posts,  so the software thinks we are all new users.  Since there are over 78,000 posts you may need a little help navigating the new environment.  Here are a few tips that might help.  Much of this only works if you are a registered user.  You can still read the forum as a guest without registering.

? PASSWORDS HAVE TO BE RESET.  When you first log in you will get some variation of this message, “X Error: Invalid username. Lost your password?” Click the “Lost your password” link at the bottom of the page.  Follow the instructions on the screens and you’ll get a reset link by email.  The emails usually take a few minutes to pop up.  It’s important to note that IF YOUR EMAIL ADDRESS HAS CHANGED SINCE YOU FIRST REGISTERED FOR THE OLD FORUM, THE EMAIL WILL GO TO THAT OLD ADDRESS.   If that’s your situation the only thing to do is to start again with a new user name or contact the admin for help.

? The graphics at the left side of the posts are grey when an item has been read and blue if it is unread.  To keep you from getting over 78,000 posts showing up as new, we have marked all posts before early October, 2018 as read [therefore grey].

? When a new post is made the graphic will turn to blue indicating that you might want to look at that thread.

? The new release of the forum software adds a feature that many of us used on the old forum.  “Show Unread Topics” is the rough equivalent to the old “New Threads” button.  We’ve been talking with the developer and we’ve gotten the button moved up to the top menu bar.  It now behaves just like the old “New Threads” button.  Warning, if you haven’t been on the forum before [or for a long time] you may get a HUGE number of posts.  That’s why I recommend the next tip…

? After you poke around a little, I suggest that you mark all posts as “read”.  To do that…

From the Forum start page
>Scroll to bottom
> Just above the gray bar you’ll see a choice “mark all read” [on the right]
> click “mark all read” and all posts to date will turn gray indicating that they have been read

? There is a choice in the blue top menu bar called “Activity”.  It shows all the recent posts ranked by how new they are.  You can see there that any post that you haven’t read is blue.  That will save you from scrolling through all the threads.

? You can still subscribe to a forum or a topic [same as a “thread”] to see when new postings happen.  If there’s a forum or topic that you want to follow do this…

>Navigate to the forum
>Scroll to the bottom of the page
>Click on the envelope icon along side “Subscribe to this forum [or topic]”

You’ll get emails when there’s a new item.  Subscription notices will be sent to the email address for the ID that you are using when you subscribe.  If your email is out of date you won’t see the emails.

You can unsubscribe exactly the same way.

?To check to see what you have subscribed to choose “Subscriptions” from the blue menu bar at the top of forums.  You can also unsubscribe to a forum or topic from there.

?There is a MAXIMUM 1 megabyte size for all uploaded images.  Please reduce the resolution to 72 ppi if you can.  Anything above that is wasted for online display here.

?If you use the menu option on the home page to go directly to the “Classifieds”, all the functions that are available on that page apply ONLY to the Classifieds.  For instance, if you chose to click the “Show Unread Topics” it doesn’t find unread topics in the main forum.  Go back to the main menu and enter the forum from there.

I’m sure that there will be things that pop up.  If you have a question, please use the “Contact Us” page.