Systems Help
Set up your profile
Your profile is where other contributors go to see your review statistics and view personal details and contact information. Most of the information in your profile is optional. Access your profile by clicking the 'Profile' tab located at the top of the forum page or "Your User Profile" in the 'User Menu." You must be logged in to access your profile or view the profiles of other members. Fill out any information you wish to share with other members.
Editing Your Profile
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Use the Edit menu (top left in your profile page) to add or change information in all of your profile tabs. These tabs are labeled the same in edit mode as in your profile page.
- The Portrait tab is where you add or change your profile photo. Please use a recent photo of you so other contributors can get to know you visually.
- The Contact Info tab is where you add or change your contact information and manage your user account. You can edit your name, email address, and the username and password that you use to login to the site, as well as address and phone number. If you have site editing priviledges you might want to choose a text editor. This feature is less useful to contributors.
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The Forum tab is used to change your forum view settings.
- >>>Message ordering - Select whether you want to view the newest or oldest post first in your list.
- >>>Preferred Viewtype - Change forum view settings to either flat or threaded.
- >>>Board Signature - Create a board signature that gets automatically posted at the foot of your entries.
- The About me tab allows you to add information about yourself in a text editor. The text editor provides a lot of functionality and will not be described here. Mouse over the buttons for a tool tip.
Replying to an existing post
To reply to a post, simply click one of the 'reply' buttons and enter your title and text using the controls provided. Your options for replying are listed below.
- >Quick Reply - This button brings up a small text area (without reloading the web page) where you can quickly type a short reply. Press "Submit" when you are finished typing your reply. Tis feature does not supply the boardcode tool bar, but you can type in boardcode if you need some simple markup.
- >Reply - This posting method is the standard for replying to the most recent post. With this method, the subject line of your post will auto-fill with the subject of the post to which you are replying. You can change the subject, of course, but retaining the subject provides continuity to the thread. The text editor allows you to format your text, add links, insert images, etc. (see Formatting Your Post below). Type your response and press one of the 'Preview' buttons in the Boardcode bar if you wish to view your post prior to submitting it. When you are satisfied with your post, press the 'Submit' button.
- >Quote - If you wish to quote someone's post whether in whole or in part, press the "Quote" button located beside the "Reply" button. The Quote button leads into the same editing environment used to edit or create any other post. Type your response to the quote. When you are finished, press the "Submit" button.
- >Reply Topic - This button functions the same as the "Reply" button with the exception that your subject line will auto-fill with the subject of the original post, rather than the most recent post in a thread. This may come in handy if you reply to a long post whose subjects has changed over time but you want to respond to the original post. When you are finished, press the 'Submit' button.
Creating a New Post
To create your own thread, apart from an existing discussion, select a paper from the index tab then click the "New Topic" button. You can select a different paper from the "Category" dropdown. You will use the same text editor available when replying to posts. Type your title and message and press a Preview button or "Submit." You can upload one document per post using the Attachments field.
Subscribing to a Topic
Commenting on a topic automatically subscribes you to new posts from the topic you commented on. You can deselect the checkbox to prevent automatic subscription or unsubscribe later using the "Unsubscribe" button.
Formatting Your Post
You can format and arrange your text for emphasis using Bulletin Board Code (BBcode). BBcode uses "tags" to "mark up" your text. Each "tag" has an opening and closing code element enclosed in brackets. An opening tag will look like this: [ ], and a closing tag looks like this: [/ ]. If you forget the slash in the closing bracket, the forum will interpret your closing bracket as an opening bracket.
The easiest way to "mark up" text is to type it first, select it, and press the appropriate button at the top of the editor. For example, if you wanted to make "some text" bold you would first type "some text", then select it with your mouse, and press the "B" icon in the toolbar located in the message box header. The result will be: [b]some text[/b]. When you preview or submit your message it will be displayed as "some text." Of course, you can type the tags manually or you can use the buttons at the top of the editor to insert the tags then fill in your text.
The BBcode Wiki covers the basic mark up tags, but below we cover some additional functionality.
Lists
There are two types of lists: ordered (numbered) and unordered (bulleted). Two different tags are needed to create a list, the list type tags and the element tags.
First, use the list type tag to create the kind of list you want.
[ul] [/ul] = unordered list [ol] [/ol] = ordered list
Second, use a list element tag for each item in the list
[li] [/li] = each list item.
The code for an ordered list would look like this:
[ol] [li] 1st item[/li] [li] 2nd item[/li] [li] 3rd item[/li] [/ol]
Videos
Video embedding makes use of video sharing websites and other web-deployed video not hosted on our server. This convenience allows video hosted elsewhere to be shown in our discussion threads without viewers having to follow a link to another website. To embed a video, select the filmstrip icon in the Boardcode bar and do one of two things:
- >Simply paste in the URL to the video, adjust the size settings, preview, and click the "Insert video" button beside the URL text field, OR
- >You can specify the size, select a provider, then add the video's unique identifier in the "ID" field and click the "Insert video" button beside the that field.
Explanation: Video sharing websites use a unique identifier for each video. For example, the identifier for the following video from YouTube whose URL is http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VD9fiXWViFM the alphanumeric following the equals sign: VD9fiXWViFM. Using the unique identifier, you can embed the video in your forum post by selecting the video hosting website from the 'provider' drop down list at the top of the editor window or typing the following:
[video type=] [/video]
If you were embedding the ao video from YouTube, for example, the bbcode would end up looking like this:
[video type=youtube]SWMjkxNpl6k[/video]
It's a good idea to preview your post to make sure that the video is visible before submitting.
Editing your own post
There will be times when you make a post and you want to edit a misspelled word, fix a broken link, or clarify a statement. Use the "Edit" button to edit your own posts. It is located at the bottom of your post. Simply press the "Edit" button, use the editor to make changes, and press the 'Submit' button at the bottom of the page.
Visibility and notification of your favorite posts
To become a contributing member of a discussion forum, it is important to keep abreast of new activity in your area of interest. There are two ways to do this: 1) by subscribing to a topic and 2) by setting a topic as a favorite.
Subscribe
At the top and the bottom of every thread you will find the "Subscribe" button. Pressing this button subscribes you to that topic so that any activity under that topic will generate an email notification that gets sent to your email address. The email will contain a link to the new pos and the text of the postt. If you are subscribed to a topic the "Subscribe" button will be replaced by one that reads "Unsubscribe." Pressing that button again will remove your subscription to the topic. You can also manage your subscriptions in your profile.
Favorite
If you do not want email notifications, but would like to mark topics of interest, use the "Favorite" button. This will place an indicator beside the topic name so you can easily identify it in the list. After you select a topic as a favorite an "Unfavorite" button replaces the "Favorite" button and pressing this button will remove the indicator from the topic. You can also manage your favorites in your profile using the Forum tab.
