@Tatjana Thank you for this - it is going to be a very useful post for people. I could have used it earlier today! It took me a while to figure out how to send my first PM this afternoon. I did it from within the topic, and I wasn’t too sure it was going to do what I wanted until I saw that the message really didn’t show up in the topic when I was done. I didn’t know there were alternate ways to do it - now I do! And I definitely didn’t know this:
So diolch yn fawr, great information!
(P.S. Imagine my surprise to see myself as the example… now I feel a tiny bit famous )
I’ve seen that some people might have troubles with finding persons who are not displayed in the category list or in the topic. Se, here it goes this one:
So you can use this method for searching for topics you wish to find or for persons. As I’ve said in picture, spelling is important. I’ve misspelled our dear Elizabeth with “s” first and didn’t find almost anything.
Clicking on the icon/link of the person or topic will take you directly there. From the profile you usually can establish if the person is the one you search or not especially as there in the profile you can also see the topics which that person posted in.
Don’t mind that @elizabeth_j_corbett_ which I’ve took as example is actually visible on the screen. Following instructions you’ll find those “hidden” people too as long as they are members of the forum (didn’t establish yet if they have to post something in the forum too to be visible or not but I believe the only condition is to be a member though). However, you can always play around with searching different variations.
This is hugely valuable, Tatjana, diolch yn fawr iawn. I wonder what the best way would be to make sure that your hard work here is visible to as many people as possible? Do we need one ‘how to use the forum’ thread, or would it be better to have several ‘how to do [x] on the forum’ threads? Or maybe both?
Diolch @aran. I was pondering my thoughts for quite some time to do one PDF document about “how to” do several things on the forum to put them into FAQ section but then … who ever read those. So I believe one topic would be perfectly enough. Actually we don’t even need one new. I simply can edit the title of this like “This forum - how to & similar” or something like this so that some first posts wouldn’t be too off topic in it. Actually being overwhelmed with the forum when I started this topic, there also are some “how to” quick mentions in the posts so they can easily stay as they are.
Handling photos is separate topic though and I’m just about to make a post about how to resize photos and post them on here and I’d just put link to that post in this topic aswell so that people would find that answer if comming in here too.
There’s a lot of extra chatter in this post that you have to read through to get to @tatjana’s useful stuff (such as this comment!). There’s also the thread @kev created a while back
What about creating separate posts per help topic? e.g. resizing images, how to send private messages, how to use markdown etc. That way it’s easy to go straight to the help topic you need.
We’d need some way to find the topics in the first place though - so how about a single sticky post to act as the table of contents?
Obviously we’d need someone super helpful to curate the help topics and the table of contents.
As usual, arrow on the right (pointing right) will lead you to this particular post.
Enjoy! If something not understood, let me know. I sometimes am a bit confused with how to express myself to be understandable in English (which is not my native language) …
As far as concerns @theblacksparrow’s supernice helping invitation … my answer is …
However I don’t want to overrun @wondersheep’s work. I recall he mostly describes how to find the topics and how to navigate though so we just might include links to the particular posts of interest into tabler of contents.
I just want to be helpful not to dismiss anybody’s work ar atempt to help.
For @Kinetic, @aran, @wondersheep, @Sionned or whoever of mods is willing to take a look. I’ve noticed (well I’ve noticed this quite earlier but I thougth I’m seing it wrong but now I’ve got myself into investigation) that with updated forum software pinned topics are not pinned anymore despite they have that pin sign along with them. They act just like ordinary topics and it might be useful to re-pin them again (obviously).
I’ve noticed that when searching for @wondersheep"s “Discourse for obsessives” topic which I know was pinned and on really top all the time but it isn’t anymore. I’ve also noticed pinned topics scattered allover the topics list as if they wouldn’t be pinned.
@tatjana I’m not sure why you don’t see the pinned topics. I do. If I am just in “Welsh” I see the top three pinned items for each category (General/Questions, Meetups/Events, Bootcamp) But if I click on “General/Questions”, then I see 4 pinned topics for that category above all the other post listings. “Discourse for the Obsessive” is the fourth (last) pinned item.
tatjana bach, have you clicked on the pins to see options.
Personally i have unpinned them but that is the beauty of this forum it’s flexible and adjustable.
They still come to the top if a post is entered.
Well, in “General/Questions” I see them too but I’ve seen them previously also when being in only “Welsh” category aswell.
Now going in “Welsh” category I see this:
Pinned four on the right because they’re most recent (appearantly) and only one at (almost) the top in the topics list where previously were all pinned topics no matter when one posted in them. And that’s what I meant with that. I never go directly to “Categories” and then clicking separately to “Welsh” or then “General/Questions” i always begin on this site and have everything in front of me not need of clickin too much.
Well it may very well be Chrome issue aswell as it recently behaves strangly sometimes.
Na. Pinned topics I thought are pinned for all as they should be something important for everyone to see and constantly have on their eyes. Will try though.
@theblacksparrow and @aran I’ve come to another idea though. Three topics are set - “Discourse for obsessives”, "Let’s say something about (handling and posting) photos (on this forum) and “This forum - how to … & similar” where is prety much a lot of content. Why I wouldn’t only create the “Table of contents” topic which could be somehow at the top and as contents post the links to particular posts (not topics) as table of content. This way we wouldn’t need to make separate topics and links would carry one to the exact post which explains the things. If one would like to see more of the particular thread to which they were carried they could still scroll down or up to have some walk through it.
I find this idea good but would like to know what you (and if possible someone else) think about it.
You must realize that there are two types of “pinned” topics. Topics can be “globally” pinned, in which case they always show up at the top, but also people can pin a topic that they are interested in, so it will always show on top, but only for them. If I remember correctly (I hope) the globally pinned topics have straight up-and-down pins, and the personally pinned topics (if you have any) have slanted pins.
EDIT: I went and looked, and I wasn’t quite right. Basically anyone can unpin any pinned topic if they don’t want to see it at the top but that will only unpin it for the person who did so. Everyone else will still see it pinned. Also, the slanted pin I mentioned is a topic that a person has unpinned so it shows in the regular flow with that slanted pin (I think). If they want to re-pin it, they can click the pin and do so. I also think that only admins and moderators can pin topics.
Agreed. That’s the case actually. I never pinned or unpinned any topics so there were always globally pinned topics shown for me which was perfectly fine but with the new updates (obviously globally) pinned topics (as I didn’t either pin or unpin for myself any of them) are
changing display order according to which was last posted in
floating up and down the topics list (just like shown on the picture obove (first it’s not pinned topic and then it’s one globally pinned) and
Particular topic I’ve searched was always on top as it was obviously globaly pinned but now it completely vanished from the top.
So since I never pinned/unpinned any topic I believe they all I’ve seen were globally pinned in previous version of software but with new updated one this all went a bit messy.
And, I perfectly understand two “kinds” of pinned topics as I ruled two or three forums by my own (despite in different software, but still) however (as I’ve said) I never bothered with puting something “on top” by myself.
Well, I actually didn’t mean to make big deal out of this but just wanted to mention. Tinny little bits of new software are (obviously) a bit different.
And yes, I know only admins are allowed/capable of global forum actions like pinning, bulk mailing, banning (if neccessary), giving permitions etc … Well, I actually thought you all are admins though. Pardon me on this one …
Also sorry to bother you. I won’t mind “cosmetic” things anymore. Mae’n drwg da fi.
Yah, they are unpinned. Even pinned aren’t always at the same position but are floating up and down the tpic list.
I also see that the fact that someone would be able to pin one topic (for him/her self) is actually not possible. Or topics are pinned for everyone and they can be unpined by each person separately only for their own purpose and not global one or they’re not pinned at all. Only admins for that matter can pin and unpin the topics what means if (for example) topic “Really useful stuff” should be pinned only admin can pin it and is pinned for everyone. If one doesn’t want this topic to be in his/her constant view, they can unpin it but it would be unpinned only for them personally and not for the whole audience of the forum.
I believe pinning revision would be neeed if you’d want all previously pinned topics would be really at the top again.
What we can do with the topics is only “bookmark” them but this actually doesn’t mean we’ll have them at the constant view. Tehy’ll float up and down topics list as every single topics but will be displayed as bookmarked in your forum profile though and will ahve special “bookmarked” sign besides it in the topic list.
Well, this is result of my investigation tonight but it’s meant more like kind of “report” of what happened with previously pinned topics with new software rather then this would belong to “useful links” to be linked in.
I’ve just seen some members are not keen how to quote someone elses poste (or they maybe don’t want to really quote them, I don’t know) so here’s the how to on this matter …
Let’s say I want to quote @raymondkefford’s part of the post. You can do this this way:
Mark part you want to quote
You’ll see “Quote reply” tab at the top of the beginning of the marked text and click on it
Doing this you’ll get textbox opened immediately with the quoted text in it which also indicates to whom do you reply.
The cursor is below the quote and you can carry on writing.
.
It is also marked that you’ve replied to the person who quoted in the post. However if you don’t mind too much who is marked to be replied and you’d like to reply to more then just one person in one message with quoting their parts of messages, you can freely scroll up and down the topic to mark another text from another post and do the same as described above.
If you actually don’t want to mark speciffically who’s text do you quoting or you would like to quote the text from elswhere (if even from your computer)
you mark the text wherever you want to copy it from
copy it as you usually do with CTRL+C for example)
and paste it into textbox as you normally would (with CTRL+V for example)
when you’ve done this you mark the whole text you’ve just copied
and use “blockquote” tab to make it (mark it) as a quote
(I’ll play with one of my stories here a bit )
As you see in preview the text you’ve quoted got nice little box wrapped around it what means the text is quoted.
To write further you just click at the end of market text so you position cursor where needed and unmark the text at the same time, press enter and you’re ready to write.
You can also quote someone’s whole forum post which you wish to reply to in one simple click
Go to the post you wish to reply to
Click “reply” button beneath that post
and when reply text box openes click on the tab “Quote whole post” which appears like a quotecloud at the beginning of the format bar and the whole post will appear as a quote
.
You’re immediately ready to write your reply below the quote.
So this is basically it about quoting.
Whoever knows to deal with BB or HTML (or similar coding) that one can use them aswell (well at least most of them).
I didn’t know there were alternate ways to do it - now I do! And I definitely didn’t know this:
