aswm web forum tutorial

ASWM Web Forum Tutorial

In-Lieu Fee Workgroup Edition

Disclaimer:

This presentation is in an early draft format. It is provided for technical assistance purposes only and should not be disseminated or considered complete or final.

Overview

A web forum is a place where many users may participate in many conversations concurrently. Through the use of a web forum, information may be shared between conversation participants, but also with the forum community. A record of the conversation is kept for future community members, as well.

Overview

In this presentation you will learn how to register for a new account with the ASWM Forum. You will also learn how to login to that account, request permissions to participate in the In-Lieu Fee section of the Forum, and participate in conversation topics. Any questions should be emailed to [email protected].

Overview

This presentation assumes that you are familiar with email and web browsing software. The presentation was developed using Google Chrome (a web browser) but you may use the Forum with any web browser you please. Some minor visual differences may occur, these are normal and fine.

Glossary

Forum(s), The – The ASWM Forums in their entirety. Also ‘The Boards’

category – A grouping of boards or forums.

forum – A grouping of topics, or ‘threads’. Also ‘board’

thread – A group of messages, called ‘posts’ which relate to a single subject.

post – a single message submitted by a single user. Also the act of submitting such a message.

While a lot of these terms are used interchangeably on the internet, for the purposes of this tutorial and ASWM communications these definitions are binding.

Registration

Before you can use the ASWM Forum you will need to register an account. This account will have a username which will be unique to you and will be password protected. ASWM will never ask you for your password, though we may require your username from time to time.

This is the ASWM Forum, as seen the first time you log in.

This is the category, “ASWM Forum.” All boards within a category share a common theme, usually a group.

This is a board called “Will” within the “ASWM Personnel” category. Boards are topics of conversation which contain specific conversations or “threads.”

When you haven’t logged in yet you’ll see these.

You can also login using the spaces below.

Because we haven’t created an account we will click here to set one up.

You’ll be asked to agree to the terms of use.

Then on to the registration page. Most of the questions are familiar to experienced web users. We’ll fill in some sample data for this tutorial.

Tutorial Username

[email protected]

[email protected]

••••••••

••••••••

Obviously your own information will differ.

The Time zone menu is rather exhaustive.

Fortunately, the overwhelming majority of you will find your time zone in this bracket.

At the bottom of the registration page is a bot filter. Don’t worry if you get the code wrong like I did here (that’s a g, not a 9). You can try again several times, if needed.

When you get the code correct you are registered and ready to begin participating in the forum conversations…

Right next to where you clicked ‘register’ you’ll find a link to login. It takes you to this page. We’ll login using the “Tutorial Username” account we just registered.

Tutorial Username

••••••••

When you’re newly registered you’ll only see the boards you saw at first…

You can tell you’re logged in because the ‘login’ option becomes ‘logout’ and displays your username.

…But you can’t see the In-Lieu Fee boards. This is because you must sign up for the In-Lieu Fee Work Group.

You can see the In-Lieu Fee Work Group on the list of groups, here.

To register for the In-Lieu Fee Work Group you must access the User Control Panel. This is done by clicking the User Control Panel link in the top left.

This is the User Control Panel. From here you can access various settings which will change how you view discussions and boards, change your password, etc. For now we will use this to sign up for the In-Lieu Fee usergroup.

Usergroups is second from the bottom. Click on this to open the usergroups submenu.

This is the Usergroups Submenu.

Here is the In-Lieu Fee Work Group under ‘Non-Memberships.’ Select this radio button.

By default, selecting a group under non-membership will apply to join it.

Click on ‘Submit’ to send the instruction to the Forum that you want to join this group.

You will be asked to confirm that you want to join the selected group.

After which point you will be told to wait while a group leader approves your membership.

You will be automatically redirected back to the Usergroup Submenu.

Note: In-Lieu Fee Work Group now appears under “Pending Memberships.”

About Groups

Groups are a tool that allows ASWM to limit access to certain parts of the site. While the wait may be a little frustrating, ASWM staff review each request to join a group. This allows work group members to frankly discuss their topic without random internet users popping in to be disruptive.

Making Posts

Now that you’re registered and signed up for the group, let’s look at how you can participate in the actual conversation. I’ll switch to my own account for this, since my account has the required membership.

This is the main page as viewed by someone who has been approved for the In-Lieu Fee Work Group.

Here is the In-Lieu Fee Work Group category. It’s unhelpfully off the bottom of the screen so I’ll scroll down to it…

This is the In-Lieu Fee Work Group category in its entirety. It is currently empty except for the three topics or “threads” I’ve started in Advance Credits for the purpose of this tutorial. You and your peers will populate this category with many discussions by the time you are done.

Recall that this is a ‘board.’ By clicking on the name (“Advance Credit” in this case) you may enter the board.

This is the date and author of the most recent post to that board. (I made the last post on the 10th as soon as I got into the office.)

We’ll click on the “Advance Credit” board now…

This is the Advance Credits board. It is broken into ‘topics’ or ‘threads.’ There are currently three threads (all written by me as soon as I came into the office on the 10th). These are dummy threads that will be removed by the time you are registering, but there may be other threads written by your peers.

We will work with the ‘Example Topic’ topic. To view a topic click on its name.

This is a topic or ‘thread’ with only one post. It asks a question which I am going to answer by posting a reply.

Clicking on either of these will take you to the reply screen. The bottom one will be the one you use more often – as threads get longer, the top link gets farther and farther from the last post in the thread. The bottom one will always be nearby if you’ve just read the last post.

This is the reply screen. The large box is where you enter text. The next slide will scroll down to show you the remaining options.

These buttons are for the usual text formatting options, Bold, Italic, Underline, as well as some special options unique to web pages. Quote, Code, and List provide special formatting. Img and URL are for providing images and links.

At the bottom of the screen are several options which change the behavior of your reply. For the most part you may ignore these.

These buttons let you save a draft, to be finished later; view a preview of your reply; or post the reply you have entered, respectively.

These options, except the last two, are mostly for advanced users. The last two add your signature (selected by default) and subscribe you to the thread, respectively. Subscription means that you are notified by email when someone posts a reply to the thread.

The topic to which we are replying asked if we had figured out how to reply. I will enter our reply now.

Yes. I’ve figured out how to use ‘post a reply’ to reply to topics. Is there another way?

Then click on ‘submit’ which is down here.

This screen confirms that my reply has been posted.

I like to click here when posting replies to give a final review.

The reply shows up immediately. As the question in the reply implies, there is another way…

Clicking here will let you reply without a separate screen. You won’t have all the formatting options that you did with the full reply, but in many cases you won’t need them.

Quick reply opens a smaller version of the reply screen right there in the thread for you to enter text into.

There sure is! Quick-reply is what it says on the tin: a quicker way to post a reply without leaving the thread.

When you’re done, you can hit ‘submit’ to post the reply, or ‘Full editor’ to take your text into the full-version of the reply screen.

This is the thread with both of our replies. The only difference between this and a real thread will be that real threads won’t have me talking to myself.

Posting a new topic is done the same way as posting a reply to an existing topic, except that it’s done at the board, rather than the thread level.

Clicking on one of these will bring you to the same screen as clicking on “Post a Reply.” However, instead of adding a reply, you will create a new thread.

The number of replies and views of a topic is useful to determine how active the topic is. The more recently a topic was updated, the higher up the list it will be.

Review

To use the ASWM forums you will need to:

- Register for the Forum using the ‘register’ link.

- Apply for membership in the In-Lieu Fee Work Group.

- Check the Forum for new topics, replies, and post your own topics for conversation.

Closing

phpBB (The software we are using to provide the Forum) has many more features than those discussed here. As you use the Forum more and more you will become more familiar and comfortable with them. Please feel free to ask board administrators if you have questions about how to use phpBB or if you wish to perform a task not covered in this tutorial.

Thank you!

If you have questions about the Forums or require technical support you may contact Will Walker at [email protected]