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By registering a Username, you will be able to edit your profile and preferences. You will get the most out of your time here if you change your profile to suit your individual tastes. There are a lot of options in your profile to make your experience here more enjoyable, so please take a few moments to try the various settings. Also only people with registered Usernames can take advantage of the "New Posts" feature upon each visit.
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The real email address is used for email notifications and forum subscriptions and to email your password. The other is what other users see when they view your profile. We realize that some people don't want everyone to know their normal email address, but we need to know it in case you want to subscribe to a forum or if you want to have replies emailed to you. For this reason you can give us your real email address that only we will see and you can provide a different one for the general public. Some people like to put in something like scream@no.spam.domain.com. This way people can still figure out what your real email address is, but spamming agents can't just parse through the page and spam you.
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Yes. Cookies are used to track your Username/Password and which posts you have read for your current session. Without accepting cookies some functions won't work properly.
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If you have registered an account (username) within these forums, you must login in order to take advantage of the personalization features. To login, look in the upper left-hand corner of your screen for the Login link. This link will take you to a page where you can enter your Username and Password. Keep in mind that the password is always case-sensitive. This means that S and s are considered different by the software.
Once you have entered your Username and Password, you'll be brought to what is called the Start Page. If you have any Private messages, you'll see a flashing envelope at the top left of the menu bar. You can now enter the main forum area by clicking the Main Index link at the top of the page. This will list all of the forums for you.
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This checklist may help you successfully login:
1) Make sure you are entering your password correctly. They are case-sensitive.
2) Ensure that your browser supports cookies; if so, check the security level you are using. High levels of security restriction in certain browsers will automatically reject cookies. In order to use the key features of these forums, you'll need to accept cookies.
3) Completely logout by hitting the Logout link on the page, and then log back in again.
4) After logging in, you may have to hit the reload/refresh button on your Web browser to expedite the authentication.
5) If these steps don't work you can try purging your cookies from this site using the My Cookies tool.
6) If you continue to have problems, go to the login page. Enter your Username in the Username field and click the "I forgot my password" button. A one-time password will be generated and emailed to the email address used for the account setup. You MUST enter a Username in the Username field before you use this feature.
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It's a system-generated User Title - stranger, newbie, journeyman, member etc. You progress through the various levels according to the cumulative number of posts you have made.
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Everyone has a title within the forum. You will notice them below the Username in each post. Some titles are automatically assigned based on the number of posts a user has made, and some titles are assigned by the forum owner to denote official representatives of the company or other VIPs in the forums.
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If you have forgotten your password, don't worry! You can very easily have a one-time password emailed to you. All you need to do is go to the login page of the forums and enter your Username in the Username field. Then click the button marked I forgot my password, and a one-time password will be emailed to the email address of the username you registered.
This process is safe because the password is only emailed to the original owner of the account. There is no way to steal the password by using this feature.
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You may change your password any time. All you need to do is click the option found on any page. Then, under the Main Configuration heading, click on "Personal Information, email, password...". To change your password, simply edit the password and verify password fields on this page. Once you have entered the new password, click submit to save the information. (Keep in mind that passwords are case-sensitive.)
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In order to add an image to your message or your signature, you must have the image already available on a web server. This can be an image on your own personal web page, for example. To place an image within a message, simply use the following Markup Tag:
[image]http://www.url_to_image.com/image_name.gif[/image]
For example, if you have an image called cateye.gif and its available from your own website at http://www.mywebsite.com/pics, then you would use the following image markup:
[image]http://www.mywebsite.com/pics/cateye.gif[/image]
You can do the same for your signature. Click the option found on any page. Then, under the Main Configuration heading, click on "Personal Information, email, password...". Look for the Signature box, and enter your desired information, including any images/markup as above.
Note: To keep the forums loading quickly for everyone, it is recommended that you do not exceed 35k for your image size.
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We ask that you keep your images relatively small. As a rule, please do not exceed 125 x 600 pixels and/or 35k for a signature image. This will ensure that the forums load quickly for all users.
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If you have a browser that is Mozilla 4+ compatible then the answer is yes you can. When you preview your post you will have the opportunity to attach a file to your post.
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Registration as a User implies acceptance of the following terms and conditions:
- Participants shall not post any material likely to cause offence, that is protected by copyright, trademark or other proprietary right - without the express permission of the owner of such copyright - or that contains personal phone numbers or addresses.
- Participants may not use the Forums to post or transmit advertisements or commercial solicitations of any kind.
- The appropriate Forum Moderator has the right to edit, censor, delete or otherwise modify any posted message.
- This web site does not verify or guarantee the accuracy of the material posted to the Forums or bear any responsibility for any loss, damage, or other liabilities caused by any posted message.
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Click the link on the Menubar. At the bottom of the next screen you will see options for editing your profile.
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There are many aspects of how the Forums are displayed that may be customized. The procedure is similar to that for editing your profile, but in this case, after clicking the link on the Menubar, you need to select the 'Display preferences, .....' option in the Main Configuration area.
You can choose what language you want the Forums to use, the stylesheet that you want to govern the Forums' look and feel, how many posts there are per page, whether or not you want to view Users' pictures alongside their posts, and much more. Once saved, these become your default settings. You may edit these preferences again at anytime.
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The first post of a given topic establishes the subject by which all subsequent replies will be known. Once there's been a reply, the topic subject cannot be subsequently changed. It's therefore important to get the subject right from the outset. Make it as descriptive and as specific as possible. For example, 'LCD burn-in questions', is much better than something completely generic, such as 'Newbie needs help!'. Not only is it more likely to elicit a response, but it'll also make it much easier for all posts in the topic to be subsequently located.
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One of the key benefits of the discussion board format is that it enables commonly asked questions to be answered once, for the benefit of all. Before posting your question, it is always worth checking to see if it has already been asked - and answered! You can do this via the Search link on the Menubar. Various options are available, both for how the search term is specified and for controlling how much of the Forums database you want to search. This is where the specificity of topic subjects is important, making it much easier to locate precisely what it is you're after from a list of search results.
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It means that you have unread Private Messages.
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'N' denotes an unread message.
'R' denotes a message that's been replied to.
A space denotes a message that's been read but not replied to.
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If the tags are showing up in your text or you're getting a link, but it's to 'http:///', you're including some unwanted spaces in the syntax. Avoid any intervening spaces, and everything will work fine.
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By hitting carriage return twice at the points where you want to insert a blank line. If you opt to preview your posts, you get the opportunity to do a further iteration of editing before you finally accept the post.
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No. If you want to be sure that you're word perfect, you'll have to spellcheck your post in some text editor and then cut and paste it into the Forums edit box.
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Users can edit their own posts up to 43800 hours after they are made. Where the change is substantive, you should mark the post as edited so as to alert viewers to the changed content. For cosmetic changes it's better not to do so.
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Let the Forum Administrator know - he/she will be able to move it for you.
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There are 2 ways that this can be configured on a per board basis. If HTML is On then you will see HTML is On and you can use normal HTML in your posts. If BBCode is on you will see BBCode is On. The following tags are available for your use if BBCode is enabled:
[b]
text
[/b]
= Makes the given text bold.
[email]
joe@email.com
[/email]
= Makes the given email address clickable.
[i]
text
[/i]
= Makes the given text italic.
[u]
text
[/u]
= Underlines the given text.
[code]
text
[/code]
= Surrounds the given text with pre tags.
[quote]
text
[/quote]
= Surrounds the given text with blockquote and hr's. This BBCode tag is used for quoting a reply.
[url]
link
[/url] = Makes the given url into a link.
[url=link]
title
[/url] = Makes the given title into a hyperlink pointing to link.
[list]
[*]Item 1
[*]Item 1
[/list] = Makes a bullet list. [list=A] or [list=1] will make order/numbered lists.
[color:red]
text
[/color]
= Makes the given text red.
[color:#00FF00]
text
[/color]
= Makes the given text green.
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Putting a poll in your post is simple.
If polls are enabled then you start by just creating a new post in a forum. You will see a text box that allows you to specify how many polls you want to have in your post and the system will guide you through the rest.
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You can change the number of posts to be displayed per page by editing your profile. You can set this from anything between 1 and 99 posts per page. When you first sign up this gets set to 25 posts per page.
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The buttons are used for navigation and displaying posts. Depending on the screen you are on they may serve different purposes.
When displaying a list of all threads:
- The  and  buttons will take you to the previous or next page of posts.
- The  button will take you to the index of all available forums.
- The  button will let you make a new post on that board.
- The  and  buttons will allow you to toggle between expanded and
collapsed threads. Expanded threads will show the subject of all posts and replies in a threaded format. Collapsed threads will show the subject of the main post along with the number of replies to that post.
When viewing individual threads:
- The and buttons will take you to the previous or next thread.
- The button will take you back to the listing of all posts on that page.
- The  button allows you to view the entire thread on one page if there are any replies to the original message.
- The  button allows you to view the current post with all other posts on that thread displayed below in a threaded format.
- The  button allows you to reply to a post.
- The  button allows you to edit a post.
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You can click on any of these to change the order in which the posts are sorted and displayed. If you click on Subject once, it will display posts by Subject in reverse alphabetical order. If you click on it again it will display posts by Subject in alphabetical order. Poster and Posted on works similarly.
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