Beth Martin
Administrator
Active Members
WWW
|
Welcome to the Eastside Mothers & More Message Board!
If you are new to this particular message board, or message boards in general, you may wonder what this is all about. So let me point out some features that message boards have, and show you how easy it is to get around! 
Advantages over the email loop:
~Topic threads stay together, and all replies to a topic are displayed together, so you can read them all at once.
~Easy to see at one glance whether there are new posts.
~You can include pictures within your messages.
~You can set an option to be notified via email if there is a reply to your thread.
~No advertisements.
~Photo avatars make it easy to remember who's who.
~Easy to find the topics that you're looking for.
The board is split into three categories.
1. General Information forums about upcoming meetings, playgroups, and other group activities.
2. Discussion forums where you can chat about anything - food, kids, evil mother-in-laws. And where you can place classifieds and get product/service recommendtions.
3. Official business forums where you can find rosters, meeting minutes, budget stuff, etc.
REGISTERING
In the upper right corner, you will see a link to register yourself for the board. Just fill out the required fields with your email, your login name of choice, select a password, and hit "submit". An email will be sent to you and you will need to follow the instructions in it to make the registration happen. An email will also be sent to me so that I can activate your membership. This is to keep the board private to active Mothers & More members only.
Once you are activated by me, you can login and then will see all of the forums available. You don't have to log in every time, just select the option to keep yourself logged in.
POSTING
You can either create a new topic thread, or you can post a response to an existing topic thread.
For instance, if you want to find a good appetizer recipe, just go to the "Let's Eat" forum and click on the "new topic" button, and you will bring up a window where you can type in your post asking for recipes.
If you want to join in the already existing "sci-fi geeks" thread, you just click on the "post reply" button. Or, you can take a shortcut by clicking on the "quote" link in someone else's post. This will automatically format their message as a quote in your new post.
POLLS
You can add a poll to any new topic thread that you make. In the posting screen you will find the option to add a poll underneath where you'd write your message. You can have lots of voting options, if you like. Just add them one at a time in the "add option" field.
PRIVATE MESSAGING
The board has it's own messaging system, kind of like email. It's a way of having conversations between just two members, or if you want to distribute your home address and phone number in a more private way.
You can go to your private message inbox with the link in the upper right. Most of the time the link says, "You have no new messages", but if you have a message, it will change to tell you that.
To send a message, either start from your inbox and click on "new post" or just click on the "pm" link by the user's name that you want to send the message to. You can see the "pm" link just about anywhere a user's name is. All you have to do is click on that link and a screen will come up to type your message.
PROFILE
If you click on the profile link in the upper right, it will bring you to your profile editing screen. You can change anything here, even your username if you like. Make sure you use a real email address, or else you won't be able to get board notices. You can always select the option to keep it hidden from view.
This is also where you can select the option to be notified if someone replies to a thread you've made, or if you get a private message.
AVATARS
It always helps to have a face to put a name to, so feel free to put your picture up. Use a photo editing program to get your avatar picture down to 80x80 pixels and a 20K file size. Then just use the "upload avatar" box to get your picture onto the message board. You do this within the profile screen.
SIGNATURES
Feel free to put up a personal signature with whatever info you'd like to share. You can even put a picture in there or a pregnancy ticker if you like. This is done in the profile also.
SMILIES
I've made a bunch of smilies available to put into your posts. You can either click on the smilie to put it in, or use the text code for that smilie. I can type : uhoh : (without the spaces) and the  smilie will show up in my post. (Hover over the smilie to see its code in the bottom browser bar).
I can add more anytime, if you have a favorite!
I'd suggest starting off by reading the FAQ and the instructions for BBCode.
Make yourself at home, upload an avatar of yourself, give yourself a cute signature and post away!
|
