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Volume 5:
Internet Forums 102: Helpful hints for using the
Historic-Hillyard.com Community Forum, Advanced
Forum Interaction.
Much of
using an online forum should be pretty self
explanatory if you are used to things like e-mail
and word processing and you’ve reviewed
my last column. However, there are 3
important features of forums that you may not be
familiar with. These particular ones are
unique to our forum, but can be applied to others.
They are the top menu bar, the forum interface and
the Statistics box at the bottom of the forum.
In the upper-right-hand corner of the forum you will
see this menu bar:
The menu bar is a powerful
tool and very helpful for getting the most out of
your forum experience. This tool bar is
ever-present no matter where you are in the forum.
The first link is Home. Home links to
the front page of
www.historic-hillyard.com.
This is useful because many posts reference things
posted on the front page. Second is, Profile.
The Profile link is how you can change the
information in your user information. This includes
such housekeeping tasks as changing your e-mail
address and password, or you can expand what you
want people to know about you. You can add (or
subtract for that matter) your real name,
occupation, signature (more on this in the next
volume), instant messenger contact info (if
you use MSN Messenger, AOL Instant Messenger, ICQ or
Yahoo Instant Messenger you can add your screen name
to your profile so others can contact you.),
links like your homepage or other favorites, news
about you and favorite quotes. These last few let
people get to know you better if you wish them to.
Next is Register, this takes you to the same
registering process you used to sign up for the
forum originally. Most people don’t use it after
their initial sign up, but you might use it if you
wanted to create an anonymous alter-ego to use to
respond to things differently than you would with
your real persona. Many people have these.
Remember all you have to have is a user name, an
e-mail address and a password.
Active Topics
warrants its own paragraph. The Active Topics
page is the first place I go when I come to the
forums. As the name implies this pages shows the
active topics, i.e. any topics that have new stuff
in them since the last time you visited (All the
purple folders.
 ). You can
also use the drop down menu to view all the active
topics in the last hour, day, week, etc. This is an
important tool to active forum users. Using the
Active Topics page you don’t ever have to search
through threads and folders, you can get a list of
the topics that you haven’t read yet. If you
haven’t yet, TRY THIS! It’s great and it will make
you forum experience a lot more enjoyable.
The Members link is next. It is a great
link. Think of it as your forum yellow pages. If
you want to look someone up, or check things like
how many posts you have compared to others, this is
the place to do it. I’m not going to spell anything
out for you here. I want to you go and explore the
members page. You can’t do anything wrong here even
if you tried. Visit and look around. The Search
page is next. The Search function is very
important when it comes to posting information on an
old thread. A lot of times there are several
threads that you might consider responding to with
your new information. Without a search, you might
just post it on the first one that applies, but with
search you can get a list of all the threads
concerning your topic and decide which is most
appropriate. Mind you, it is not a big deal if you
post in the, “wrong” thread. Indeed, if you think
it is the right thread it probably is. Also when in
doubt you can always start a new thread. The search
box is pretty easy, it is similar to every other
internet search page, but feel free to e-mail me if
you have any trouble. Finally is the FAQ
link. On the FAQ page you will find many
helpful hints and of course frequently asked
questions.
The
real meat of interacting with the forum is the forum
interface, shown here:
I’m sure you are familiar with several of these
listed in table format on our forum. Well, there is
a reason for that. It is a very efficient way to
list conversations. I’ll detail this information
box by box; let’s call the first box, Box 1. Box 1
shows the status of the threads in the folder, shown
above is a purple folder indicating new posts. Box
2 gives the title of the thread category and a more
detailed description. This is important because as
a good forum user you will want to post the proper
things in the proper places. Don’t get me wrong,
it’s not a mortal sin to post meeting discussions in
the Upcoming Events folder, but when you know better
you will know to post meeting discussion in the
proper thread in the Community Development and
Organizations folder. When you don’t know, guess,
it’s cool, but don’t be surprised if the moderator
moves your thread and e-mails you telling you where
you went wrong. Every forum has a learning curve.
Box 3 and 4 show the number of topics and posts
respectively. These aren’t essential user
information, but it helps people have ownership and
feel part of a community. Someone might for
instance point out when the topic count his hit 100
or another milestone. Remember, you are supposed to
be having fun. Discuss, banter, and talk about
stupid stuff, whatever floats your boat. If you are
not entertaining yourself with the forum, you
probably won’t be coming back much. Plus, most
likely if you are amusing yourself you are amusing
everyone else too.
Box 5 contains the most actionable information in
the forum interface. Basically this box is a mini-Active
Topics section. It shows the last post date,
time and author and it has that little blue arrow
that will take you to the last post in the thread.
Be careful however, at this level by just clicking
on this arrow you will go to the most recent post,
but you might be missing out on other things posted
since your last visit, but before the last post.
This same little blue arrow is great however when
you enter the category folder (Upcoming Events,
Community Development and Organizations, etc.)
each thread will have a little blue arrow that will
take you to the last post in that thread.
Convenient huh? Box 6 shows the name of the
moderator for each topic. We only have one
moderator right now, but in the future we could have
more, making this important if you need to ask a
question or otherwise interact with the moderator.
The final box, Box 7 is kind of an, “other”
category. It contains 2 or three icons. The little
purple folder with the yellow sparkle is a quick
link to posting a new topic. This is especially
useful if you have an event to post, you might not
need to see what else is posted, you can go straight
to writing your post. Next is the little yellow
folder with the “A” on it. This is the archive
folder. When topics get old and no one is posting
to them they will be archived to this folder. If
you are looking for something from way back when,
this is the place to find it. Archived threads
cannot be added to, but are not deleted because they
may contain valuable information. Finally, you will
see the subscribe icon ( ), only this
one subscribes to just the folder it is listed by.
At the bottom of
the page you will find the Statistics area that is
just packed with information.
This area is packed
with useful information. Line 1 shows the date
and time of your last visit. This can be
helpful if you are using the Active Topics
page and you need to look at only the posts since
your last visit and can't remember when that was.
Line 2 gives us member information including how
many of the members of our community are active
posters and how many just look. It also shows
the total number of posts and forums. The
first link, "Members" links to the Members
page described above. The second link links to
the very last post made and the link after that
links to the profile of the poster. Line 3
states the total number of topics. All of
these numbers and accountings come in handy when the
forum reaches milestones as noted before. The
forth line down shows the archive information and
finally Line 5 is another community builder, as we
can all see who the newest member is and do our best
to welcome them.
Now that you know
how to better utilize these parts of the forum, I
hope you will more enjoy your forum experience and
are a part of one of the thousands of healthy online
communities and not just a message board or
announcement page. Check back in a month for
the
next volume of the Hillyardites Guide to
Computers and Stuff, Internet Forums 103,
Advanced Forum Personalization.
Thanks
for reading and remember, feel free to e-mail me,
Luke Tolley, any questions you might have about
computers and stuff and I’ll do my best to answer
them. Click
here to e-mail me.
Resources:
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