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How to Use This Forum - Tips and Social Contract
THE SOCIAL CONTRACT
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MAKING THE MOST OF FORUM SOFTWARE
- Mention others. Put an @ symbol before the username to mention someone. They’ll get notified when you do.
- Review and update your notification preferences. You’ll receive a notification if someone mentions you or posts to a discussion that you’ve bookmarked. You can set notifications from the Edit Profile page. If there's a particular book you'd like to join in the discussion of, you can arrange to have an e-mail sent to you for that particular sub-forum.
- Send messages. You can private message members by going to your inbox. You can also leave a message on another user's page, but be warned - those messages are not private.
- Don’t want to see everyone’s signature? You can hide signatures by going to Edit Profile > Signature Settings.
- Check out the forum from your mobile phone. Just go to the forum URL in your browser - no need to download an app. You can also browse to the forum on your phone, then add that link as a shortcut to your home screen. That way you don't have to enter the address each time or create a favorite link in the browser.
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Comments
TIP: HOW TO SET UP NOTIFICATIONS FOR THREAD CATEGORIES:
Some members like to set up notifications for discussions, so they can be notified when new monthly book discussion start, or when new Slow Read discussions are posted. Here's how you can do the same:
If you're on a PC - look to the upper left side of your screen and you'll see your avatar with some icons beside it: A globe, an envelope, a star, and a gear. Click on the gear to open a dropdown menu and select 'edit profile'
Now, directly under your avatar are 5 choices - the middle one is 'Notification Preferences'. This opens a new page that lets you toggle all kinds of notifications on and off - either for specific purposes (like 'threads i've contributed to' or specific categories). Pick "my discussions" for threads you started, or "discussions I've participated in" for threads you commented in (or started, I assume). You can also get notifications for individual threads that you book-mark, like the Newsletter thread. If you pick this, you then need to go and bookmark the threads you want. To do that, open the thread and click on the star in the upper right corner.
From this menu, you can also select specific discussion categories to be notified about. THIS IS THE ONLY SCREEN THAT ALLOWS YOU TO DO DO THIS. So, if you've signed up for the latest 'Slow Read' and want to be notified each time a new discussion is started for that - scroll down through the list and check the right category. These are not organized chronologically, so don't expect the newest categories and discussions to be at the top.
The software does not allow you to set notifications for new threads by default, so you'll need to come back periodically and add new discussions or categories to your list.
If you're on a phone, some of this may be hard to find. I couldn't find the Edit Profile page that led to the Notification Preferences, for example. However, at the very bottom of the page, in the white section above the Vanilla logo, you can see three links: 'Full Site' and 'Dashboard' and 'Signout'. Clicking 'Full Site' will give you access to the menus I described above. When you're done, at the bottom of the page again, tap the 'back to mobile site' to take you back to the dashboard view.
Once on the 'Full Site' view, to go to the edit profile / notifications page and set up whatever notifications you want as per the PC instructions above.
Another way of getting to 'Edit Profile' on a phone is to tell your browser that you want the desktop site, which in most systems is an option on the browser menu.
Footnote: If you're scrolling the categories, for example the 'Slow Read' categories, you'll see they they usually say '0 discussions'. This is usually a lie - most of these are filled with discussions. We'll try to figure out how the make these numbers reveal the truth!