Using These Forums : Tip Of The Day!

[Keith Lawrence]

I'll kick this one off, a few people have been asking me questions! We'll make it a 'Sticky', feel free to add your own hints & tips. Just post them here, don't discuss them (use a new thread for that), this then becomes a nice little reference thread for all forum members.

I'll start the ball rolling...

[Keith Lawrence]

When you're viewing a thread you get that little box at the top showing the structure of the posts and who has replied to what, it's called a Tree View. Some people like it (I do), some people don't, we put it in because many people liked the structured nature of posts on our old forums.

If you don't like it - change it, just for your own use. If you go to your User CP on http://www.bsacforum.co.uk/forums/profile.php?do=editoptions and scroll down a bit there's a section on 'Thread Display Options', in there is a drop-down list for 'Thread Display Mode'. The default is 'Hybrid', that's what's causing the tree view when you read a thread. Experiment with some of the other options, choose the one that you personally like, that then becomes your own personal default.

[Keith Lawrence]

Available to you as soon as you register - there's a link to your User CP in the top navigation bar, in the User CP there's your own personal options all about how to set up the forums the way that you like them. In there you will find -

Settings and Options : Change your email address, password, your BSAC membership details, your pictures... all done in there.
Personal Messages : The forums very own internal email type system, send personal messages to other forum users.
Subscribed Threads : Very useful if there's a thread that you're following. Set up from 'Thread Tools' when you're reading a thread, this is a kind of "Thread Favorites" list that will even send you an email when the thread is active if you want it to.
Misc : Odds & Ends like email reminders for Calendar events you're interested in.
Group Memberships : Keep an eye on this one, these are linked to specialist forums that some of you may have an interest in, more will probably be added as we go along. Many you wil have to apply to join as they cover specific areas of BSAC activity, but just ask a Group Manager if you want more details about these.

[Keith Lawrence]

You know what it's like... there's a thread you're really interested in... you've posted a question or topic and you want to see if anybody has replied yet... so you keep checking back to look... Now, of course we want you to check back, visit us, add to the forums - but there's a neat little trick available to everybody that helps you keep an eye on specific threads of interest to you :

Thread Subscriptions : Let the system watch it for you!

When viewing any thread there's a 'Thread Tools' dropdown menu at the top of the overall post display. Look in there and you will find a 'Subscribe To This Thread' option. What it does is very simple - the system will keep an eye on your personal thread subscriptions and send you an email when somebody posts to those threads.

If you go to your User CP that also gives you a 'Priority New Posts' lists right at the top, in there will be new posts to your specific threads of interest. It's from your User CP that you manage your subscriptions as well, if you no longer want email notification of a particular thread being posted to then just remove it from your personal subscription list.

[Keith Lawrence]

If you're not logged in or registered then you just get the default "Today's Posts", but if you are logged in that becomes "New Posts" and it is personal to your login ID.

The first time you visit then everything will be new, but when you've read what you want there's a 'Mark Forums Read' option under 'Quick Actions', click that and your 'New Posts' list goes blank. For there on in, every time you visit the forums the 'New Posts' link will only show stuff that is new since you last did a 'Mark Forums Read'. On the list of new posts the little down arrow next to the thread name is useful, that takes you to the first post that you haven't read to save you ploughing through the entire thread again. There's another little right arrow next to the 'Last Post' info, that takes you to the very last post in the thread and you can work backwards if you want to.

Another thing this forum software does is automatically mark as read anything that you visit and read, so you can jump to the new stuff from the 'New Posts' list, when you've read it just click 'New Posts' again and it has been automatically be removed from the list. And finally... 'New Posts' is not done on your local PC, it's done centrally on our database - so if you read the forums at work during your lunch hour, then when you login from home in the evening it's "followed you" and you only see the new stuff since you looked at lunchtime on your office PC.

When the traffic builds up on the forums you will find 'New Posts' very useful, it's the only way to keep track of things on a big forum system!

[Keith Lawrence]

Did you know that you may not be seeing all of the forums that we have on this system? BSAC members already have some additional additional forums exclusively for them but as a BSAC member there may be other forums that you can have access to.

For example : Did you know that we have a 'Branch Matters' forum for our branch officers and commitee members and anybody else who may be involved in the running of a BSAC branch? We've done our best with the automatic systems and some of you know that already, but we've missed a lot of you, and what about people who want to get involved with the running of a branch but don't know who to ask?

The answer is to look in your User CP under 'Group Memberships'. In there you will see the additional, optional forums that you may want to join in with. At the time of writing they all had joining conditions, all you have to do is say a quick hello to the group manager when you apply to join and then if your request is accepted (the vast majority are!) then you can see and join in with these special forums.

Keep an eye on that list as well, over time you will probably see even more specialist forums being added. Some of them will be 'on application' as the ones on there when I wrote this were, but we may well introduce others where everybody is welcome.

What we're doing here is trying to create a forum system for everybody, by using Group Memberships you can customise the forums to your own personal interests and choose which forums you participate in.

[Keith Lawrence]

First up – you do not have to be a BSAC member to use these forums. All divers and potential divers, from anywhere, are very welcome. In fact at the moment there’s slightly more of you than there are of BSAC members. As a fellow diver you are welcomed as our guest, please join in and enjoy the forum facilities provided as a public service to all divers by the BSAC – The Best Diving Club In The World.

But for our members, the people who are the BSAC, we’ve tried to give you that little bit extra. As a BSAC member you have access to some additional forum facilities, some enhanced features and your very own forums where you can chat about club matters with fellow members. Today’s “Tip Of The Day” is about that part of the forums system, how you use it and how it works.

Look in your User CP under the Profile options, right at the bottom of all of the optional fields. There you will see four optional fields that relate specifically to your BSAC membership, everything that you need you will find on your membership card. The first three, your membership number, your branch number and your renewal month are what control the BSAC members facilities, fill those in and our systems will do the rest. (Hint : Where people do have problems they normally get the renewal month wrong, if your membership card says “Expires 01/04/2006” then your renewal month will be April). The forth field ignore for now, I’ll tell you about that in a minute.

At this point I would like to add a little note about security and privacy of information. Firstly there is NO BSAC membership information, apart from those three fields that you supply, anywhere on this web server. We treat our members privacy very seriously and your full membership details are only held at HQ on our secure computer network there. Secondly, those profile fields are PRIVATE, if you look at anybody’s public profile you will not see them. The only people who can see them are the trusted group of Sys Admins (who are BSAC members, just like you) as they may need to help you with problems, and a very small group of senior BSAC people such as Council, HQ and NDC, that’s just so that they can contact you privately to help you if you need it. So by filling in those three fields you are not broadcasting information over the internet.

OK, so you fill in those three fields, what happens next? Well immediately – nothing. It can’t, there is no membership information held on this web server so the forums system knows nothing special about you, you are just another forum member. But in a short while (currently every 10 minutes), the HQ computers contact the web server and look for anybody who has supplied membership information. That information is then taken back to HQ and checked against your membership information there, the HQ computers will then contact the web server again and update your forum permissions if needed. That’s where that forth profile field I mentioned earlier comes in, that is the response from the HQ systems and you will see something in that field when you have been processed.

So in a nutshell all you have to do to access the special features for BSAC members is –

Fill in those three fields (all three must match your HQ records).
Give it 10 minutes.
Have another look, if you can see a ‘Members Forum’ section at the top of the main list of forums then you’re in.The software system that does all of this is still in the prototype stage, it’s not quite ready yet and is still being tweaked but it’s working pretty well. It was designed and written by your BSAC Chief Geek himself (me!) so, as always, it’s all my fault if it doesn’t quite get it right 100% of the time :) At present it’s working on a copy of the actual membership database so it may be a few days out-of-date, sorry about that, we’re working on it. Also our detailed membership data (e.g. branch officers) is not brilliant, so sorry if we don’t always add you to the right forums. Contact one of the Sys Admins if you’re having problems, we’ll sort it out for you. All of this will change early in 2006 when our new state-of-the-art membership system ‘Neptune’ comes online at HQ, when that is available we’ll hook the forums system up to that for live, up-to-the-minute membership information. But that’s a “later”, it’s also another story that I wont go into right now :rolleyes:

Keith L