Brian
Moderator
Registered: 12/27/07
Posts: 10
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Reply with quote | #1 |
This Message Board is connected to my Church of the Churchless blog. It's an experiment. I want to offer people another way of sharing thoughts, questions, and answers (assuming there are such) about spirituality, religion, and reality.
I've never set up a Message Board before. It's new to me, just as using one may be to you. Here's some basics.
Register. It's necessary to sign-up before you can reply to messages or post one of your own. This has benefits. Among other things, registering helps control "spam" messages, such as ads. It allows Message Board members to communicate with each other, with or without sharing email addresses.
Your identity. You can register as your real name (which I did, as "Brian") or assume whatever identity you like. You just need to submit a genuine email address to have your registration confirmed. It won't be revealed to anyone else without your permission. You can submit an "avatar" that will appear on your messages. This is an image of your choice that reflects in some way who you are (or who you'd like to be).
Posting a message. In the "Big Questions" category I've started the Message Board off with some, well, big questions. If what your want to say fits into one of these forums, great. Click on the link and post away. If there already is a post on some subject, you can reply to it and join the conversation. Or you can post a new message in one of the forums, and start a fresh conversation. The "Free for All" forums are for messages that don't fit into any of the Big Questions. If you have a suggestion for me, that can go into the Suggestion Box forum at the bottom of the page.
Editing a message. You can do a lot with a message. Play around with the formatting tools above the message box. The link tool (looks like a chain) is for inserting links to Internet pages in your message. Just highlight some text, click on the tool, and insert the URL of the page. After you've posted a message, you can edit or delete it yourself.
Communicating with other members. If you chose to share your email address when you registered, other people can click on the identity associated with your posts and send you an email. Alternatively, they can send you a private message. This is a nice feature of the Message Board, as sometimes people want to communicate directly with another member -- yet may not want to reveal private information such as their email address.
New posts. When there are new posts in a forum, its folder icon, on the left, will be colored. You also can click on "new posts" to see recent messages (I think). After you've read new messages, click on "Mark all posts as read" at the bottom of the main page, so newer posts will show up for you.
Well, these are most of the basics. As I said above, I'm just learning the ins and outs of this Message Board myself. So don't be surprised if I've said something that isn't right, or omitted something that is important to know. I'll add to and edit this Welcome message as needed.
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