Some Tips on Using These Forums

[Clinton]

Some random tips about the top, right nav bar:

About the My Profile / Settings links at top right of your screen: That nav bar is always there.

Notifications:
Takes you to Private Messages Received.

My Profile:

If you've made enough quality posts here you'll have access to modify your profile, set your homepage, create a signature and more. On any item if you see this little black pencil/crayon type image it means you can edit that item: edit_40b.png

Private Messages: You can create private messages to other members in two ways. 1) Go to your profile as above, click the Send Private Message link in the left column, and type in the person's name. 2) When someone has made a post in a thread you can left-click their name and get options to see their profile, PM them etc.

Clicking on user names: In threads you can left click on the username of someone who's made a post and get options to not just PM them but to see all their previous posts in all threads, their homepage, their profile etc., and you can add them as a contact.

Settings Tab

Allows you to view threads you are subscribed to (how to subscribe explained later). Also gives you access to your PM InBox and Sent Items folders. You can create new folders for PMs and sort your PMs. You can also create new folders for subscriptions and sort your subscribed threads into folders to better organise them.

Scroll down that Setting page and in the left column you also have access to editing your profile, profile picture, avatar etc (if you've reached enough quality posts to have earned profile editing privileges).

You can change your preferred email address and your password here.

You can also build a Friend/Contact list

But there are other important things you can do there.

Click the "Forum Setting" links toward the bottom of that left column and you get options to
- Enable/Disable Private Messaging
- Automatically save a copy of your sent PMs in the sent folder (or turn that off if you don't want to save sent messages)
- Set your Time Zone which will then personalise all the times used on this site (in posts/threads etc) to your time zone
- Control thread and post display options
- Choose your Message Editor Options i.e. the editor interface you use to create posts (you can enable/disable smileys etc)
- Set a PM pop-up notification to alert you when someone has sent you a PM
- Do Other stuff. Take a peek in there, it's pretty useful

[Clinton]

The nav bar that has Home | Forum | Blogs etc.

The "How to Buy A Website" and "How To Sell A Website" & "Where to Buy/Sell" will take you off the forums to my other site where I've put together information on buying and selling websites.

The one you want is Forum - that takes you to the start page for the forums.

What's New is pretty cool. It'll list for you the threads that have recently had new posts.

The Home and Blog links take you to areas on this site that I haven't quite decide what to do with!

[Clinton]

The options in this bar change depending on where you are.

If you're on the Forum Home Page or in threads you'll have
New Posts | Private Messages | Forum Rules | FAQ | Community | Forum Actions | Quick Links

Elsewhere you may see it displaying
New Posts | New Group Messages | New Events | New Articles | New Blog Entries | Mark Forums Read

Note that some of them have drop down boxes.

If you click on Community you get the option to go to your Contact List or the Forum's Member List (not all members are listed in that member list - it's only those who've reached a certain level of posting)

If you click on Forum Actions you get options to Mark Forums Read, Forum Setting (same as the Forum Settings discussed in the first post above) and Edit Profile (also as in first post). This is just a shorter cut to those control.

If you click on Quick Links, you get a direct route to your subscribed threads, your contacts, and a list of Who's online.

Don't miss the Advanced Search to the extreme right of this bar. It's pretty useful. If for example you've marked all forums read you can still used Advanced Search to find all posts made in the last 24 hours/ last 48 hours / last week etc. You can also search for all posts made by a particular person. There are some things, though, that Google is better for. If you want a complete list of all thread on this forum that mention a certain word, the best way to do it is to go to Google, type site:experienced-people.net followed by a space and the word or words you want to find.

Admin mote: I'm going to post some tips on what you can do in threads. Please bear with me while I keep this thread closed till then. You can add your comments/suggestions when I'm done.