**** Getting Notices when Someone Posts a Message ****

Let me point out a way to make sure you’re notified with an email message when a reply is posted to a topic that you’re following. At the top of the page for each topic, on the right side of the page, in the orange stripe, there’s one of the following two phrases:

Subscribe to this thread
Un-subscube to this thread

If you click on “Subscribe to this thread,” the forum software will send you an email message when a new reply has been posted to this topic (thread). This alerts you to go to the forum and read the reply.

Keep in mind, however, that you’ll only get one email notice about unread replies on a given topic. The forum software keeps track of whether you’ve logged in and visited the topic since new replies have appeared. It won’t send you repeated messages about additional replies. But once you’ve logged in and visited the topic, the software will again notify you when a new reply appears. Note that you must log in for the software to know that you’ve visited the topic.

So subscribing to a topic means that you want email notification of new replies. Un-subscribing means that you don’t want any email notifications about new replies. Subscribe or un-subscribe by clicking on the phrase.

Note that you have to subscribe or un-subscribe to each topic separately. The idea is that you might be interested in following one topic, but not another one.

Hope this makes sense,
Dorothea

***** Using Buttons on the “Post New Reply” Window *****

Hi, Antony.

Thanks for giving us one way to insert a link in a message. You’ve shown us how to type in tags (codes) that tell the forum software to interpret what’s between them ("www.abhayagiri.org") as a web address (URL) and to jump to that address when someone clicks on some text ("Abhayagiri Website") that you supplied. Maybe for purposes of discussion, we can call the tags ( [url] ) that you inserted “Anchor” tags because they function like the Anchor tag (<a>) in the HTML formating language used on the web.

Your message reminds me that folks might not have played around with the buttons at the top of the “Post a New Reply” window, which they use to type in their messages. One of those buttons can be used to insert a link in a message without typing in the tags. Let’s call that button the “Anchor button”. It has “<a>” on it.

*** To use the Anchor button in the “Post a New Reply” window:

(1) Place your cursor where you want the link in your message.

(2) Click on the Anchor button (<a>). A small dialog box appears. It asks you to “Enter the hyperlink URL” in a field in the dialog box.

(3) Type the web address of the page that you want to link to. Note: To prevent typos in the address, you might want to copy the address from your browser when you have the page displayed. Then you can paste it in the field.

(4) Click OK. The dialog box changes to ask you to “Enter the title of the link.” This is the link title—the text you want someone to see and click on, in your message.

(5) Type in your link title.

(6) Click OK.The little dialog box disappears, and you’ll see the appropriate tags in your message.

(7) If you’d like your link title to be underlined, select it and click on the Underline button, which has “<u>” on it. The appropriate tags will be inserted for you automatically.

You can click on “Preview Post” to display your message as it will appear after you’ve submitted it. The “Preview” window appears above the “Post a New Reply” window. Caution: Do not click on the link in your message in the “Preview” window. If you do, you might not be able to return, and you might have to start your message all over again.

*** You can play around with the other buttons as well. Here’s what they do:

* The Bold button (<b>) inserts tags to make your selected text bold.

* The Italic button (<i>) inserts tags to make your selected text italic.

* The Underline button (<u>) inserts tags to underline your selected text.

* The Quote button (quote) inserts tags that separate your selected text from the rest of your message. The text is displayed in a gray box.

* The Code button (code) is for use only by forum programmers, so ignore it.

* The Email button (<@>) presents dialog boxes that let you enter an email address and a link title to be displayed. This one works like the Anchor button.

* The Anchor button (<a>) is described in detail above.

* The Close Tags button is probably for use only by forum programmers. I haven’t figured it out.

One more thing to note is that there are two round buttons to the left of the buttons that I’ve described. One is labelled “Guided” and the other is labelled “Normal.” I think the only thing that the Guided setting gives you is a little dialog box when you click the Bold, Italic, Underline, and Quote buttons.

Everyone, just speak up if you have questions or tips to share,
Dorothea

Hi Dorothea,

I figured out how to make a clickable link by typing for example (type all on the same line and substitute u for underline):
[url=
http://www.abhayagiri.org]
[underline]Abhayagiri Website[/underline]
[/url]

This is how the example link above to Abhayagiri Website looks like.

Metta / Antony.

I think this is a great idea.
Thanks for posting it.

be well,
Sudanto Bhikkhu

(please feel free to delete this whenever you wish)

Hello, All.

I’m introducing this topic so that we have a place for people to share questions and suggestions about the mechanics of posting to this forum. This topic is not about the content of messages. Please check the announcement titled “How to use this Forum” for guidelines about the content of our messages and about our intention to organize our messages into relevant topics.

The focus of this topic is the procedures for posting messages, attaching files, inserting links to web pages, subscribing to topics, creating new topics, searching for existing messages, and other such technical details. This is nerdsville.

For many, this topic will be of no interest at all. Most of us will just type our messages and post them without any questions arising. That’s just fine. But some might be interested in doing something more complicated. In spite of the fact that the forum is pretty self-evident, some questions might arise. This is the place to ask them. This is also the place for us to share bits of information about the mechanics of the forum that we’ve discovered along the way.

So . . . feel free to ask a question, offer a tip, or ignore this topic entirely.

With a smile,
Dorothea
Note: To keep the topic brief, I might delete some questions (just leaving the answers), or I might find a way to group related tips. The idea will be to make this a place where we can easily find the information we’re looking for.