1. There is a an arrow ^ in the upper right next to "nccc forum" . This toggles (turns to down arrow) display of User Info and News so that you can hide these and devote your attention to Forum posts. If you are a registered user, the User Info is useful - shows unread posts, replies to your posts, personal message (a new feature) notification.
2. Click on the NCCC logo and picture on the top of the page to always return to NC3 home.
3. Looking at the index of all topics on any page listing all the topics in a given board, there is an icon to the right of each topic which takes you immediately to the last post on the topic.
4. The Help is really great, provided by Simple Machines, discussing all aspects of your nccc forum. The section on Posting is probably particularly interesting as it discusses how to make your posts fancy (if you really care).
5. Font settings. Users of firefox and mac safari browsers have an advantage here. Firefox users can interactively change size of fonts with "ctrl-minus" (smaller) and "ctrl-plus" (bigger). mac users can simply zoom their screen in or out. Internet Explorer users, which are probably the majority, have no such luck without a little pain. We have tried to size the fonts with Microsoft Internet Explorer in mind and have sized them similarly to the old message board. Post a reply here if they are unsatisfactory.
6. Images may be attached to posts. Other files may not. Images will be screened for offensive content, so please keep it fun and clean.
7. Once you are registered you can customize your own settings somewhat for using this forum. For example
- if you click on Profile -- >Modify Profile --> Account Related Settings, you can change the name displayed with your posts (e.g. "dgblancoman" could be your login, but "Dave White" could be displayed with posts if you choose). It is RECOMMENDED that you use an "all-lower-case" login name with no spaces or punctuation marks, and set your display Name to be something other members will recognize as in the example. Note that you can change your display Name at will, but your username can only be changed by the NCCC Forum administratior. If you would like your username changed, email a request to admin@northcountycycleclub.com with "change forum username" in the Subject: line. This will only affect your login. Your posts will remain unaltered to all other users of the Forum.
- if you click on Profile -- >Modify Profile --> Look and Layout Preferences, then you can change things like message sort order (check or uncheck "show most recent posts at the top").
8. Your Personal Messages can now be viewed directly on any page by clicking My Messages at the top of the page. This allows communication from within the Forum and notification to your regular email as well, depending on the Profile settings you choose.
9. Regisered users have a number of notification options to follow.
When you see a reply to a topic on the Message Board, the button on the very right of that line will take you directly to the reply. If you wish you can scroll upwards for the whole thread. Then, to go back to where you were, the Jump To: Message Board (bottom right of page) blasts you back
You can modify the Subject: line when replying to a post. By changing (note the Subject line here) you can highlight the focus of your reply. That is why the Subject line is repeated on every reply and is partly why you can view less replies per screen (need to scroll when there are lots of replies) than previously, but this is a nice feature.
You can quickly navigate the forum using the "inline links" at the top, which show something like:
NCCC Forum | Discussion | Club Rides & Events | (Topic title if viewing a topic)
These links appear at both the top and bottom of all NCCC Forum pages.
To make it more clear that the NCCC Forum contains multiple "boards" I have had the main navigation link point to the NCCC Forum home page. I therefore changed the name of the navigation button to Forum to indicate the behavior. To access each of the boards (Message Board, For Sale by Members, or Website) directly, simply hover your mouse over Forum and a little menu is displayed so that you can easily navigate to the board of interest directly (see screenshot below). Note that most of you go directly to the Message Board all the time. The new more capable interface shows more clearly the extra features of the NCCC Forum. In talking with members on rides, I realized that the majority didn't even know there were multiple "boards" to choose from. As individual boards may get cluttered with too many topics straying from the board's central theme, more boards may be added in the future if the Message Board becomes more cluttered. For example, ride boards specific to Cruisers, Spokey Dokes (MTB), and Roadies might be good for specific information, including last minute route changes, etc., for each group. By setting notification on your board of interest, you can get email notification (http://northcountycycleclub.com/smf/index.php?topic=128.0) of all new posts in your email app if you so choose. The advantage of multiple boards is that it encourages more focused discussion and people from one group don't have to read other group's ride notices, etc. The disadvantages are that the information now gets spread around the Forum and it may be hard to find and see what's going on.
Comments are welcomed...