Tips and Tricks for Users

Meta
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Here are a few quick tips and tricks to get you started but before you start posting, kindly click here to check our guidelines.

Reading through the guidelines will let you be aware of the rules we’ve put in place to prevent spam, scams etc. After reading the community guidelines, you can start posting.

How Do I Post?

Apart from posting new topics, you will be able to upload photos, use emojis in your posts, create polls, mark questions as solved, tag and send private messages to other members of the community. You will also be granted badges in appreciation for your efforts in making the community a fun place.

  • If you want to post, go to the homepage and click on the

  • You should see a post editor similar to the screenshot below:

  • Enter the title, select a category from the dropdown, type and upload image (if necessary), choose tags (if available) and click “Create Topic”. That’s all.

My No. 1 Tip for new users

There are so many new things to learn and remember when finding your way around a new platform for the first time. You will read alot of helpful information and you’ll probably want to refer back to them at some stage. So that you can find them easily, click on the bookmark button at the bottom of a topic and that will add that topic to your bookmarks page.

You can review your list of bookmarks by clicking your profile image (on the top right) > your username and choosing bookmarks.

You can also access your bookmarks by clicking the bookmarks icon as seen in the screenshot below:

Navigation

While reading a topic, use the timeline on the right side to jump to the top, bottom, or your last read position. On smaller screens, select the bottom progress bar to expand it.

(If you have a physical keyboard, you can also press ? for a list of keyboard shortcuts.)

There are no next page buttons or page numbers – to read more, just keep scrolling down! As new posts come in, they will appear automatically.

For search, the menu, or your user page, use the icon buttons docked at the upper right.

Actions

There are action buttons at the bottom of each post:

  • To let someone know that you enjoyed and appreciated their post, use the like button. Share the love!
  • Grab a copy-pasteable link to any reply or topic via the link button. You can also use it to Share a post to facebook, twitter, Google+ etc
  • Use the … button to reveal more actions. Flag to privately let the author, or the site staff, know about a problem. Bookmark to find this post later on your profile page.

How Do I Reply?

  • To reply to the overall topic, use the Reply button at the very bottom of the page.

  • To reply to a specific post, use the Reply button on that post. It will open the editor panel at the bottom of your browser.

  • If you want to start a new discussion based on an existing one, you can reply as a new topic. In this case, go to any post in the old topic and click on the link icon.

Then click on the which will enable you to create a new topic that references the old one.

  • Your reply can be formatted using simple HTML, BBCode, or Markdown:

This is <b>bold</b> This is [b]bold[/b] This is **bold**

For more formatting tips, check this guide.

  • To insert a quote, select the text you wish to quote, then press the Quote button that pops up. Repeat for multiple quotes.

To notify someone about your reply, mention their name. Type @ to begin selecting a username.

To use standard Emoji, just type : to match by name, or traditional smileys :wink:

  • To generate a summary for a link, paste it on a line by itself.
  • To start a topic with a link, paste the link into the title field.

When are conversations new?

All topics less than two days old are considered new, and will show a new indicator.

Any topic you’ve actively participated in — by creating it, replying to it, or reading it for an extended period — will be automatically tracked on your behalf, and will show an unread post count indicator.

You can change your notification level for any topic via the notification control at the bottom, and right hand side, of each topic.

Notification level can also be set per category. To change any of these defaults, see your user preferences.

Why can’t I do certain things?

New users are somewhat limited for safety reasons. As you participate here, you’ll gain the trust of the community, become a full citizen, and those limitations will automatically be removed.

At a high enough trust level, you’ll gain even more abilities to help us manage our community together.

We believe in civilized community behavior at all times.

Enjoy your stay!

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Inserting an image

Once you reach Trust Level 1 you will be able to insert images using:

  • drag & drop (it even works for multiple images at once )
  • the upload button in the composer toolbar (keyboard shortcut: CTRL+G)
  • a link to the image (on a line by itself)
  • copy & paste (Chrome only)

Embedded videos / oneboxing:

When the site sees a link that can be turned into a picture or video, it will do so. This behavior is called “oneboxing”.

To make this happen, put a link on a separate line with nothing before, and nothing after. This includes spaces. The onebox will show up in the preview if you did it right.

To make a link NOT turn into a onebox, just add a space in front of it.

Please note, I might fix your post to activate the onebox, especially for YouTube links. If you see an edit from me, that’s probably why.

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Creating a poll

To create typical poll surround a list with [poll] and [/poll]

[poll]
* option one
* option two
* option three
[/poll]

This creates this result:

Alternatively,

While in the editor, click the icon and select “Build Poll”

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