Adding Comments and Forum Topics

This topic is for those who may be unfamiliar with how forums and comments on various web sites work.

We'll start with some basic terminology.

Topic or Thread: A Topic or Thread typically consists of starting, or opening, post. For example, this item you're reading now is the opening post for this forum topic. This post sets the tone for any follow-up comments.

Comments: Comments are replies to the originally posted topic, or to other comments within the topic. It is considered bad internet etiquette to post comments which do not follow with the opening post/topic. Such posts are considered "off-topic" and may be deleted by an administrator. Comments can also be added to other forms of content, not just forum topics. It is important that you only add comments which are relevant to the content of the page you are viewing.

Notifications or Subscriptions: Notifications are email reminders that someone has replied to a topic you are following, or has started a new topic (if you choose to be notified of new topics). Notifications are strictly voluntary, and can be removed at your convenience. To manage your notifications/subscriptions, simply click the My Account link in the right hand menu, and click the Notifications tab. Several options will then be available to edit or drop you current notifications. You will also notice that at the bottom of most pages will be notification links, where you can subscribe to the specific content, or to any content of the same type (e.g. Page, Forum Topic, Event, etc.)

So, now you'd like to know how to start a new forum topic, right? It's pretty easy.

First, click the Forum link which is visible at the top of any page. Depending on your level of access, you may only see one top-level container available, such as "Public Forums". Below the top-level containers you'll see the forums available, such as "Prospective Homeowners" and "Site Help" (that's the forum in which this topic resides.)

So, click the Site Help forum. You'll see a few topics that I've already started, and hopefully some which have been started by others. You'll also notice the link at the top of the forum "Post new Forum topic". If you click that, you'll be presented with a form to start your own topic.

There are some important things to look at here:

Subject: Pretty self-explanatory. Enter an informative subject line for your topic, just like you would when starting an email.

Vocabularies: Vocabularies lets you decide where to place your topic, meaning which forum it will appear under. Select the most appropriate forum from the drop-down list.

Body: The Body section is where you'll enter the main part of your topic. All the juicy stuff that you want people to read. Above the body section is a formatting bar, which lets you do some basic text formatting, such as Bold Text, italics, etc. You can also add links to other sites using the formatting bar. To add formatting, simply highlight the text you'd like to format, then click the appropriate icon in the formatting bar.

There are other sections you may see in this form, but you don't need to worry about them for now.

When you're finished with your message, scroll down and click Preview if you'd like to see what your message will look like, or click save if you're finished.

That's it! You're done! Now others can read your topic and add their own comments.

Have fun!