How to use the Forums - FAQ and Tips & Tricks

This thread will hopefully become the main reference for any queries about the forum you might have! Feel free to ask questions and give your own advice down below

For reference throughout this guide, this is the naming system for each of the different divisions:
Forums > Forum (> Sub-Forum) > Thread > Reply

Frequently Asked Questions and Essential Knowledge

• It is possible to edit almost any post you have made! Normally, in the bottom left of a post or status you have written, there are a couple blue buttons. These include an "Edit" button in which you can completely edit your text! The only posts you cannot edit are replies to someone's profile post, or a message in a private conversation after a certain time period (roughly 15-20 minutes).

• Take note of what sort of post goes in which forum. A description of each forum can be found by hovering over their link on the main page. If you wait a second, a description of the forum will appear. They can also be found inside the forum page near the top in obnoxiously small grey writing.

• Look at the pinned threads at the top of each forum - they have a red pin symbol on the right hand side, like this one . If they are not compilations of popular topics, they will be there to get your attention - you should probably take a read if you think your question or contribution fits in there!

• Search the forums! There's a search bar in the top right which you can type in a few key words to see if your subject has been discussed, or a bug you've found has been reported. It will search in the current forum you are browsing in. There's a few tips on how to search the forums down below, which might speed up your surfing a bit.

Helpful Extras

• You can click the main logo at the top of the page to return to the list of forums! Very helpful for quick navigation.

• You can quote any message quickly and easily by highlighting it in your browser, and clicking the small "Reply" pop-up. This will insert the selected text in a quote wherever your cursor is in the reply box at the bottom of the page! It looks something like this, and if the quote is too long it will fade away so the box doesn't get too big:

• The forums have a few custom emojis! Or emoticons, emotes or smilies - whatever you want to call them. When writing a post, click the smiley face in the toolbar. This brings up a small window at the bottom of the post, which has multiple tabs denoting different categories (the custom ones are present under the Secrets of Grindea tab). Hovering over any of the emojis will bring up their code so you can type them out quicker next time!

• Simply clicking on someone's name anywhere on the forums will bring up their profile summary, which gives you a quick glance at the information the person chooses to show about themself. Clicking on their name again will take you to their profile page where you can bask in all their glory, and write a public message to them there if you wish.

• You can hover over the "Forums" tab at the top of the page for a drop down menu, which gives you a few useful links to summary pages and a button to mark all threads as read - essential if you want to keep a watchful eye over the whole forums like I do! That way any new posts will be highlighted with a blue speech bubble on the left of the forum they've been posted in when you next visit.

• You can also hover over the "Members" tab. This drop down menu has a couple useful pages for forum fanatics, such as the forum rankings, recent activity and the best resource - the current visitors. Here you can find who's looking at what, including yourself looking at the list of online members!

• When you click on an image to expand it, the centre of the expanded image will move to the point on which you clicked the smaller image. Click in the middle of images for maximum enlargement effectiveness (give it a try with the one above)!

• If you don't want people stalking you from the current visitors page, there is a button in your privacy settings under "Show your online status" called "Show your current activity". Unchecking the tickbox will prevent you from showing up in that list, as well as hiding the message showing when you were last seen, found in your profile summary.

• On the left of your profile page, under your avatar, there should be a statistic denoting your "Trophy Points". If you click on the number, you can view all the trophies you've accumulated! There's another button on that pop up which can show you all the available trophies.

• By typing the "@" symbol, then someone's forum name, it'll show you a pop up where you can include someone in your post. With default notification settings, that person will be alerted you have included them in your post. Their name will appear blue in the post, and clicking on it will bring up their profile summary.

Inserting Videos into Posts

• The easiest way to insert a whole YouTube video into a post is to simply copy the link to the video and paste it straight into the post!

• If, for any reason this doesn't work, there is a button in the toolbar called "Media" (with the two film reels). Clicking this will open a pop-up window in which you can paste the link to the video and choose where the video has come from.

• In case you want to start a YouTube video at a particular time, there is an option on the YouTube webpage to "Share" a video. Clicking this button gives you the option to start the video at a particular time.

• However, the in-built YouTube player for the forum doesn't like timestamps attached at the end of the video for some reason, and flat out refuses to start the video at that time. The easiest way to overcome this is to type out some text for the link, highlight it, then click the "Link" button in the toolbar (which shows a segment of a chain). Paste your link in there and the text will turn blue when if you deselect it.

• The end result looks and operates something like this - SoG Arcade: Battletank Strategy - Video. Clicking on it will take you to the video on the YouTube website at the specified time point!

How to Search the Forums

• When using the search bar, you will search the forum you are currently in. This means that searching on the main page will bring up all posts containing your specified word/words, and searching in the "Bug Reports" forum will only bring up unsolved bugs.

• This method does not include any child forums (such as "Solved Bugs") of the forum you are searching in. Also, searching in some screens may bring up a blank page of results - don't walk away with a false negative!

• If you would like to search for a string of words in a certain order, insert them both in between double quotes (the ones which look like this: " "). Don't use single quotes (these ones: ' ') as you will end up with all posts which have an apostrophe in!

• In case you want to search child forums or multiple forums such as the "Bug Reports" and "Solved Bugs" forum/child forum, or the "Translation / Localisation" and "Create & Share" forums, there is an advanced search option - click inside the search bar and click the "More..." button from the drop down menu. It is here where you can choose which forum(s) to search as well as enabling the searching of child forums, as well as a few other options.

• Although the "Search Threads and Posts" option may be what you're looking for when searching the forums, the bar to select which forums to search is minuscule on that page for some reason. Searching "Everything" shouldn't be too much of an issue, and is much more practical.

• There's another option called "Search Tags". These have only recently been added to the forums and therefore many of the older, but still useful posts will not appear in a tag search, as they have no tags applied to them.

• Once you've found a thread, some can be very daunting and long, and may not be as well laid out as this one. If so, most internet browsers have an in-built searching function, normally accessed using Crtl + F (or your operating system's equivalent), or from a menu somewhere in your browser. Doing so will allow you to search for all entries of the words you type on the page.

Managing Your Account

• If you have an account I highly suggest you take 10 minutes or so to go through all of your profile options, if you have not done so already. Double click the tab with your name in the top right to get started, or hover over it and wait for the drop down menu to appear, then click on "Personal Details". Don't worry about all of the other buttons - they are included in the side bar menu once you've entered your settings page.

• Go through each of the tabs under "Settings", change your preferences and add any details you think are necessary. Make sure to click the "Save Changes" button at the bottom of the page after making any changes.

• Don't do what I always do when doing this, which is click the "Log Out" button accidentally. I've had to reset my forgotten password at least twice while doing so

• Once you think you're done, hover over the drop down menu in the top right again, and click on your name or the "Your Profile Page" button. This will take you to your profile page where other people can see all the information you have edited/displayed, as defined in your settings.

Inbox and Alerts

• The "Inbox" and "Alerts" tabs in the top left are your personal mailbox and notification centre. You can change the settings for both of these in your settings page, such as what sends you notifications and if you receive emails for them or not.

• The Inbox consists of a Member to Member messaging service where you can have a private chat with up to 5 other people in a forum like fashion. Double clicking the tab will open up your inbox - hovering over it and selecting "Show All" has the same effect. Here you can start a new conversation, in which you should still abide by the common sense that is the backbone of the forums. There is a report button there, after all.

• The Alerts gives you notifications as tailored to your preferences defined in your settings. This ranges from a new trophy to someone posting an image in a thread you're watching to a new message on your profile page.

• Both of these will have a little number in a red speech bubble appear when you have a new message/alert, and it will show you what that is if you hover over the tab. It'll bring up a drop down menu with all your new/recent messages/alerts.

 

You can edit a private message until it is read.
I checked it again right now. There seems to be some 15-20 minute timer and you can edit the message in this time. Not sure if reading the message changes anything.

"Separate names with a comma. You may invite up to 5 member(s)." (unless you mean the other person and 4 additional ones)

It's private as long as you don't use the Report button. Admins don't read our messages otherwise, right? (but they have access probably)

When you use the search bar, you search in the forum section you are currently in.

 

Some spelling errors.

Also, everything KoBeWi said is correct. The message can be edited even if someone has read it. The private messages are private unless Teddy decides that he wants to really creep on you (and it would probably require more work than what it's worth).

Edit: Also... Good work!!!! >.<

 

Thanks guys, I'll get to editing that in a minute, seen as I just opened the forum to see this:

 

Wait, does anyone know what the report button actually does? I've never had the need to test it, as all the advertising people get removed so swiftly (shows the mods do a good job ). Incase anyone doesn't... should we test?

 

You send a report message that is displayed for all the moderators on the forum. (Much like when there is a spam bot detected by the anti-spam filter the forum has) It is then up to the moderators to decide what action is to be taken. The reason why you never see any spam on the forum is because when the anti-spam detection finds something it thinks is spam (and so far it has been 100% accurate) it hides it from public view and puts the thread in a list that only a moderator can see. Then we go in and manually look through the list and delete all the spam.

 

That's what I love about computers - they can just remove all the shit we have to cope with in real life. Filters and blacklisting are my two favourite things

 

I have ironed out a few copy-paste kinks, switched up some terminology issues and moved a few things around. I believe it's now as complete as it's gonna get until some new and useful content is discovered!

 

One interesting thing: you can use * while searching to substitute letters or words.
For example, typing can* in search will show you any posts with words starting with can, like can, candy, cannon and so on.

Also, when you search for a word put in " ", it will search for the exact word, with no additional letters. When you put few words in " ", it will search for these words together in given order, with possibly other words between.

Actually, I never used these features, but I thought it's worth to mention it.

 

Just trying to help out...

Should have a section here that is regarded for the Co-op part so if anyone wants to publish that they are making a video there they can and they know what the rules are for it.

 

I've been having a play around with the quotation marks and asterisks and I don't really see what's going on - they don't have much of an effect. I'll play around with them a bit more and see if I can get them to work.

Really, this isn't a rules section, but more of a "here's a few things you might want to do". The only rules are common sense (so far as I know, and I've been around almost a year). From what I've seen in your posts, don't worry - you're not going to be punished for mentioning a mechanic in another game or posting an update of what you're uploading every week. I mean, Fred gets away with posting about his stream every week!

 

Haha, whoops. I said rules again didn't I? I meant simply telling people what they can do in that area and if there is any type of restriction in it as well. Not going on rules... I am so use to making rules and doing things with a lot of fruits and so I just slipped up there as this is one of the nicest forums i have been around in a long time as it barely has any rules. I'm sure it has the most basic of rules though.

 

As long as it doesn't get spammy (and if it does a spam filter will filter it out) I'm sure no-one will complain. If there needed to be any guidelines, like there are pinned to the top of some of the forums, I'm sure there would be some

 

Okay, its just so dang strange to not see a list of rules listed any where and so I'm still actively trying to create / find rules here that do not exist. There must be order! xD Again, I know the most basic of rules are active though like rudeness, etc.

 

Do you happen to know if the notification preferences are bugged or something? I disabled the checkbox with "receive email notifications of replies" but I still get my email inbox spammed when someone replies to a watched thread.

 

Might sound simple, but did you click the "Save Changes" button at the bottom of the page? (I should probably add a note about that ) It seems to work fine for me

 

Yes, did so several times. When I reload and then go to the preferences the checkbox is deactivated, so the changes are active, they just aren't working. At least that particular change.

 

When did you change it? If I recall correctly it took a day or so to come into effect for me

 

Uh, I think it was yesterday, not sure if exactly 24 hours passed since, though.

 

Huh. I did a quick search on the XenForo forums (people who own/develop the software) and quickly got lost and confused . They might have something there if you've got more patience than I have. Otherwise, I'd say just wait another couple hours and see if the issue fixes itself I guess.