Basic Forum functions

[ame]

How to use the basic forum functions.

a lot of these instructions have already posted by many people but they are rather scattered around this Technical topic. i'll try to collect these tricks here so they will hopefully be more easily found. some functions already have their own topics and for those i'll add the links here. some tricks may also be found in several places.

if you don't find answers here about how to use certain forum functions you are free to make questions here:
viewtopic.php?f=3&t=26
that is the general Question -Answer topic on the Technical Questions topic. we shall then try to find answers as soon as we can. let's try to keep this topic for answers only for clarity's sake. thank you for your co-operation!

User settings:
viewtopic.php?f=3&t=766

Resetting the password:
viewtopic.php?p=308021#p308021

[ame]

for the very beginners i made two pictures to show
How to post a message on the board.

first you go to the topic where you want to post. on top of the page (picture 1) and in the bottom (picture 2) on the left side there's a button "post reply" (shown with red arrow). i have also marked some other things in the pictures for further use.
click on the post-button with the left mouse-button.


picture 1.


picture 2.

the "post reply" window opens. here below is a picture of it. write your text in the window.


picture 3.

you can modify font by first selecting text and then clicking on B for bold-face, i for italic, u for underlining. you can change font size from tiny to small to large and even HUGE
(on the right-top; by changing the number you get even more sizes), or colour (on the right side; outside the picture area above). the other way is to first click on for example B and the typing between the brackets. you can always have a look what your text will look like by pressing the Preview-button which is below the white text-box. when you are done click Submit. preview and Submit can be found in the bottom of the window. you can also change your mind about posting and click Cancel.


picture 4.

below in picture 5 is shown how the above post will appear in the forum.


picture 5.

you will see how things work when you try and play around with things.
even after posting you can still edit your post if you see that there is still something that you wish to change. Edit- and Quote-buttons are on the lower-right corner of the post. i see that you have already found the function of the Quote-button.

two more important buttons are Img and youtube . these may seem rather distant in the beginning but sooner or later members will want to post pictures and videos, too. . with these buttons pictures and videos can be added in a post. you'll find help for these things in the Technical questions-thread which is near the top of the board index page.

i hope this will help new members to begin posting. and don't worry about language. for most of us English is a foreign language and still we get along.

[ame]

Deleting or editing your post if you see it went wrong:

You can´t move one of your posts, but you can make a new post with the same content in the place where you want it to be - and delete your old post in the "wrong" position.

In your posts are some buttons on the lower right corner - you have the X-button to delete.


Delete the old post will only work as long as no one posted after you.

When one has already posted after you - just contact one of the admins or mods, we will delete the post you want to vanish :) or we can move it for you.

in the above Bea's picture below the X-button and in picture 2 in my previous post you see the edit. click that and your post will open and you can edit it.

[ame]

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[ame]

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[ame]

How to quote someone's post and comment/answer to it

below is a picture showing a post which you wish to quote and comment. click on the "quote"-button in the lower right corner of the post (see picture 2 in
viewtopic.php?p=398037#p398037 , it's marked with purple ellipse and arrow).
"Post a reply"-window opens (see the picture below).
there you will see the source code of the original message with quotes. it starts with the name of the author of the original post. in the end there is the end-mark of the quote. between these marks is the rest of the code which in this example Liz01 wrote.



if there are pictures, videos or such things in the original post, they should be deleted from between the quotes. in this example there is the image code of the picture.

however, the picture may be left in the quoted message if the original message with the picture is somewhere much earlier on another page or if the picture is otherwise necessary for understanding your comment.

also if the quoted message is long and contains some text which is not relevant with respect to your message you may delete parts of the original text and replace it with dots ....

all unnecessary repetition should be avoided so that the pages would remain readable.

when you have written your comments below the quoted message click "Preview" to check what your message will look like. example of the above message would appear is shown below. i have removed the ] and [ from around the image code so the picture itself will not be shown in Liz01's post.



if some more editing is needed return to the editing window (scroll down), or if you change your mind about posting click "Cancel". when you are happy with your message click "Submit".

[ame]

How to quote / get the link of one specific post


In every post you can find this symbol in the upper right corner (looking like a sheet of paper - in the red circle).



-----

When you click on this symbol, you will get the address of exactly this one post in your browser-address-line:



Copy and paste in your posting.

Example: this leads you to introduction post of Madis & Piret Documentation topic:

viewtopic.php?p=303570#p303570

We use this helpful function when we want to refer to a post containing a long text or pictures/videos, so that we don´t have to quote this all in our posts and avoid "blowing up" the topics.

[ame]

Navigating in the forum pages

How to look back through a topic to previous pages.
At the top and bottom right of each forum page you will see this

There, you see that you can choose the previous page or up to 3 pages back.
A little known function is the Go to page Click on that and a small window will pop up. You can enter a page number and then click OK. It will take you to that page.
Page 1 is often useful for webcam and nest information.

in my earlier post in picture 2 on the left side the Top-button is marked with a blue ellipse and arrow. clicking that button will take you to the top of the current page. (unfortunately there is no bottom-button. that would be useful sometimes. )

[ame]

Using the Search function

At the top right of any page, click on the word "Search"

Then you will see this


I want to find where in all the forum, the word Talon has been written.

Aha - too many results. Add another word to refine the search. Now we can add the word "missing"by using the text box on the upper right of the results page, where it says "Search these results"



Now we see that there are fewer, but more precise results.

this forum has a search function. i made a picture to show how it operates.
the search function can be found on the top of the board (number 1 in the picture) click it and you'll get the window shown in the picture.



write the search word on the line 2, in this case 'fledging'.
then select the forum page which you want to search. in our case it rather low in the list of Other Web-cams - White Tailed Eagles (WTE) (3)
then click Search. this will produce a list of found hits with newest reference on the top.

[ame]

How to search for a member or a post by a certain member

Suppose you want to find a post by a specific member. At the top of each page there is a block of links. Choose Members


then click on Find a member
This is where your spelling must be precise. See what happens when I mis-spelled Mutikluti

There is no such member!
Once you have found the member, then you can search that member's posts to find just the post you want.
One more hint - at the left of the Find a Member page you will see Username Begins with, then a drop down box, then Display.
It doesn't work so ignore it! It used to work but we lost it in one of the updates.

[ame]

Making a link to a certain post

Maybe you want to make a link to a particular post.
Click on the Post Icon It is a small thing looking like a piece of paper with one corner folded down.
It is found to the left of the word Posted
.
Using that will change the URL. Copy and paste the new URL into your post. It is not always an exact location but it will take you close to the post to which you want to link.

you will get the link to the precise post if you first right-click the small square on the left side of the "Posted"-text and then select "Copy Link Location". the link is copied to the clipboard and it can be then pasted with ctrl-V where you wish.


see also here:
viewtopic.php?f=3&t=43

[ame]

Private messages

besides posting messages in the public topics it is also possible to send and receive private messages, pm's. before you can receive personal messages or e-mail first of all check that you have allowed this in you board preferences. it is recommendable that you also choose YES in the "Notify a new pm" and "Pop-up window on a new message". that will you will see if there are messages for you right after you have logged in.


when you have logged in you will see next to the Logout-button a button for messages which says whether you have new messages or not. in the picture below i have unlined this row with orange right in the top of the picture. if it say "you have new message" click this button and you'll get a window shown in the picture below. i have drawn an orange rectangle around the Private messages menu.


the messages sent to you will be in the Inbox and the ones that you have written and sent will be in the Outbox and Sent messages. the Outbox contains the messages which haven't been so far collected by their recipients. the Sent messages contains the messages that the recipients have read.
i have also created some folders for storing certain correspondence. if i remember right it's possible to create altogether 5 such folders.

in this window you can also see the Compose message -line. click that to compose a message and the following window opens. it is very similar to the Post a mail-window for public posts in the forum.


on the left marked with a blue ellipse is the Send to-box. write there the username of the person you wish to write a pm to. then click Add. here i have added my own name first and it has appeared on the Compose message box on the To-line (orange ellipse). you can remove a recipient from the To-list by clicking the Remove-button. it is necessary to write something on the Subject-line, too. if you have written pm's earlier the program will make suggestions of the subject when you write the first letter of the word. then you can quick-select a subject that has been used before if you find a suitable in the list.

if i now tried to add Liz01 in the recipient list as well by clicking the Add-button it would turn out to be impossible. the pm-options are now set so that it is possible to send a pm to only one user at a time. this setting is made because earlier there were some mistakes with someone sending a pm to every forum member. if you wish to send the same message to more than one person you will have to copy your message (ctrl-C) and compose a message to each recipient one by one (add username and past message with ctrl-V).

in the bottom of the message-box you will find the normal Preview- and Submit-buttons. when you have finished composing your message it is a good idea to check first with Preview what your message will look like before submitting it. you can also save a draft (and retrieve one) for further editing in later time if you change your mind about sending the message right away. the message can also be totally cancelled.


your submitted message will first be stored in the Outbox and after it has been read it will be moved to Sent messages-box.

[ame]

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[ame]

HOW TO SAVE PERSONAL MESSAGES WHEN THE INBOX NEEDS CLEANING

sooner or later your Inbox will become full and it needs to be cleaned, i.e. some messages have to be deleted before you can receive new messages. the Inbox can hold 50 messages. after that limit is reached you will get a notification that you have a pm waiting for you but it cannot be loaded in your Inbox before you delete some of the old messages there.

quite often you still wish keep the messages. then you'll have to save them in your computer. how to save messages then? below the list of pm's on the left in the Inbox there are 3 options how to export messages from the Inbox. unfortunately none of them is very practical.


one choice of saving the text of a pm is then to open the message and copy the text and then pasting and saving the text as e.g. a Word-document. this is rather time consuming if you have a lot pm's to save and/or the pm's form longer chains of messages and replies.

if this is the case a more practical way is the following. open the latest (newest) message in the chain. below the newest message you'll see the Message history.
mark the text which you want to copy by sweeping over with the mouse holding the left button down so that the background of the marked text becomes blue. then press ctrl-C to copy the marked text.


i made a typo in my example message.

then open Word (or Notebook) and paste your selected text by pressing ctlr-V. then save your document giving it some name which will help you to keep track of the messages (i use the name of the sender and the date). the document you will get this way will not look very sophisticated but it will keep your messages. you can tidy the document later when (and if!) you have time.

How to delete messages from your Inbox

tick the messages which you want to delete (blue ellipse in the picture below).
then go down to the bottom of the message list (orange ellipse) and click the arrow on the left side of the Go-button. then the drop-down menu opens. there you can select what to do with the selected messages. in my case i have created some folders for certain discussions so i could move the marked messages to one of them. if you want to delete the marked messages select Delete marked (green arrow) and click Go (marked with red arrow in the picture). the program asks you to confirm the command once more.

[ame]

this is certainly not a very basic forum function but anyway i'll make it so that i can later check
How to make a clickable link

a clickable link is a word within normal text which after clicking it opens a link to some external address. in the example below it leads to a picture:

... I can refer to a picture (linked below) ... : aberration

i took DigDee's example and opened it to see how to create such a link.

when you copy the picture code and just insert it in the url-brackets you get the link which shows the whole address as such:
http://i561.photobucket.com/albums/ss54 ... 7LegsX.jpg
this may sometimes be very long as in the above example. clicking this link will open the picture.

the link can be given a shorter name like in BigDee's example which, when clicked on, will open the picture, too.

• to begin insert the http-address in the url-brackets and then edit it a little.
  then replace ] with = in the beginning.
  in the end add ]name before the ending [/url] (here name is aberration):

(below i have replaced the first square bracket with a normal bracket to make the whole thing visible.)
the result will look like this in the edit-window:
(url=http://i561.photobucket.com/albums/ss54 ... X.jpg[u][b]]aberration[/url][/b][/u])
to try how it will work click this: aberration


i got a much more clearer advise from BigDee:

When I want to explain to the others, how it works, I use following formula:

ShortName

Of course "OriginalWebAddress" stands here for the original URL and "ShortName" for your own clickable word/phrase which should represent that hidden original URL.

let's try this. this time i'll add the ShortName first. above i inserted the OriginalWebAddress first. of course the order does not change the result.

OriginalWebAddress = http://i561.photobucket.com/albums/ss54 ... 7LegsX.jpg
ShortName = Aberration

first click on the URL-button above the edit-window (it's on the right side of the Img-button). write ShortName between the brackets (i have changed the first bracket again):

• (url]Aberration[/url]

then add = sign right after the text [url and paste OriginalWebAddress there:

• (url=http:// etc....]Aberration[/url]

you will get a line which looks like this:
(url=http://i561.photobucket.com/albums/ss54 ... 7LegsX.jpg]Aberration[/url]

clicking this Aberration leads to the picture in the Bucket.

thank you BigDee!

[ame]

this is not quite a basic trick and it is not actually a LK forum function but i'll post this information here anyway.
Vērotāja from the Latvian dabasdati-forum just taught me a trick
how to get a whole forum page translated to another language!

Dear, Ame, copy DD adress in GT and press Enter to link

the picture is too large but let it be!

amazing! thank you Vērotāja!

besides to English i can also translate the pages to Finnish.
... or Swahili. that's next after Finnish = Suomi in the list of options .

the link which one must copy is the link to a post on the page.
in the LK forum you get the link to the post by clicking the small box
on the upper right corner of the post, just in front of the text "Posted ..."

in DD the corresponding link to a certain post can be obtained
by clicking the tiny box in the upper left corner of that post. if i can see right there is inside the box an even smaller arrow: ->

[ame]

ok and now i learned from Felis silvestris that there an add-on for Firefox for making Google Translations:

... there is an add on for Firefox (and I think other browsers) https://addons.mozilla.org/de/firefox/a ... r-firefox/ too. No need to go via the page, but just click the "T" in the tool bar.

it works like magic. thanks Felis!

[ame]

Private messages: what to do when the Inbox becomes full?

the number of private messages in the Inbox has a limit. it can hold a maximum of 50 messages. when the Inbox becomes full then oldest messages will be deleted as default action. this can be seen by clicking the "Rules, folders and settings" section on the left (1 in the picture below).


if you wish to avoid deleting oldest messages you can choose the option pointed with the read arrow. when this option is selected you will get a notification when a pm comes saying something like "you have received a pm but your inbox is full. delete some messages to read the new pm."
you can then copy and save an old message somewhere in your computer before deleting it from the Inbox.

there are no very practical methods of exporting pm's from the Inbox to the computer. one can do it as an Excel-file, but Excel is not suited for managing text. i tried it once but it didn't work well at all.

instead i copy the message (or a chain of messages) by pressing the left mouse-button and swiping over the text. then i paste the text in a Word document. then i save the document with the name of the person who wrote me the pm and add the date of the message in the end. for example "ame20170517" (if i wrote myself a pm ). this method is not very elegant but it's quick and it saves the texts. if someone of your figures out a better but simple and quick method please let us know how!

[Biker]

What about screenshots (for short messages) or browser add ons like screengrab tools?
Both are simple and quick methods, perhaps for some of us a good alternative? One advantage using screengrab (but there are various others) for example is: you can choice how much of the page should be saved. Only the visible part or the whole site and so on. Very easy configurable which picture format, location to save... and then always quickly at hand and all is speedily saved.

[ame]

that sounds good for saving short messages and emergencies.
but if the Inbox is full and i need to save many messages, like 10, 20, or even more? it would take a lot of screenshots to take and save...
i have the bad habit to leave all kinds of cleaning jobs till there is a big mess...