Having logged in and selected “Forum” from the main menu we are presented with the front page as shown below:
The first thing to note is that a new grey menu bar has appeared below the original red one. This second menu is used to navigate the forum. If at any time you get lost in the forum you can return to this front page by selecting “Forums” on the grey menu bar.
As you can see, we have three “sub-forums” coving different topics. It is here that we strike a possible area of confusion. It is abundantly clear to everyone that we have one forum with three sub-forums, but the authors of the software would describe this as one “Category” with three “Forums”. Unfortunately we can’t change this nomenclature, but in this guide I will stick to the logical forum with sub-forums description.
Finally, note that some titles are in bold which indicates that you haven’t read something. This rule applies to forums, topic or posts.
For each sub-forum there is a brief description of its purpose, some statistics and some facts about the most recent post. On the right hand side of the page is a list of the most recent posts drawn from all three sub-forums.
Let us explore one of the sub-forums and we’ll try “Rolling Stock” so click on that to proceed.
Once inside a sub-forum we see a list of topics with the most recently posted to ones listed first. Also shown is the person who created the topic and when they did so. “Views” and “Posts” are hopefully obvious. The paperclips indicate that a topic has some media attached to it (most likely a photograph) and I haven’t worked out yet what the “Members” column is for.
To read a specific topic we simply click on the title and the posts are presented to us with the oldest at the top as we see below.
There’s a lot to unpick here and I’ll only cover the basics in this page.
The first and most important point to note is that unlike the old forum, posts can now include images and indeed videos and a great number of other possibilities. If you click on an image then you will see a bigger version.
Next to each post is details of who posted it. The green blob next to Robert’s name indicates that he is currently logged in and browsing the forum. The bottom item where it says “Member” is used to indicate committee positions; so for example “Chairman” or “Secretary”.
The little “Thumbs Up” symbol at the bottom of each post is used to “React” to the post. Clicking on this allows you to approve or disapprove of the post and I’m hoping that members will generally refrain from using the latter. If you like a post and want to indicate this then please use this feature rather than add an entire extra post just to say “Thanks”. The author will be able to see that you approved.
Adding content
So, how do you add your own post? At the end of any Topic you will find a box like the one below.
Hopefully the basic use of this box is obvious. You type what you want to say and click “Add Reply” The numerous icons above the white box allow you to format the text with things like bold and bullet points. If you want to add a link then you need the little picture of a chain. Feel free to experiment with these.
Attaching files such as images is also straight forward. You can either drag and drop or you can click “Attach Files” and select the one you want from a standard file selector. You can attach a huge number of different file formats including PDFs and spreadsheets. Images and videos will appear as a small thumbnail image whilst most other file formats appear as an icon with the filename. Remember that the maximum file size is 1MB and also that you can’t attach more than four files to any one post. I can change these limits so I’m going to see how people get on over the first few months and then reconsider them.
An important point about attaching files is that they don’t just attach to your post, but they also get put into a personal file storage area. Click on “My Media” to see this.
If you want to attach a file which you have used before in some other post then please don’t upload it again. Go to “My Media” and select “Add to Post” for the relevant file. Doing this will save space on the server and generally be more efficient.
You can delete files from your media store, but if you do so they will be deleted from any posts they have been attached to. This functionality is really for the case where you have uploaded a file by mistake.
What about creating a new topic? Again, this is straightforward. At the top of a sub-forum page there is an “Add Topic” button. Clicking this produces an entry box almost exactly like the one for adding a new post, except that you need to set a title.
