Getting Started or How Do I ...

[John Scheffel]

Try hovering your mouse cursor over the buttons, links, and icons you see. This will often produce a text tip that provides a clue as to what that object means or does if you click it.

If you want to learn more about using this forum, a good place to start is the FAQ button located at the top of every page. It contains tips for most everything you need to know.

In addition, this thread contains some tips specific to how we setup this forum. You should read through them if you are new. This thread is for reference only, so is closed (you can't post to it). It is also sticky so it always floats to the top of this forum.

Feel free to post new threads in this forum with questions about using it. If it seems like something everyone needs to know I will add it here.

JUMPSTART (conquer your fear) :eek:
One advantage this forum has over newsgroups is that it is easy to edit and delete your own posts. So don't be afraid to try it. If you mess up, you can fix it. If you can't fix it yourself, just contact me or a moderator for help. If you want to dive in, try the following (you can open two web browser windows on the forum to view this page and work in another:

Go to the forum home page (click the CoCreate User Forum in upper left corner).
Click on Make Test Posts Here under the General category to open the testing forum. If you don't see it, click the arrow button at the right edge of the General category.
Click the New Thread button.
Click in the box under Title: and type in your Title text.
You can optionally select one of the message icons which captures the nature of your post.
Click in the box to under Message: and just start typing. You don't need to use any fancy formatting, just type the text and let it word wrap, press Enter when you want to start a new paragraph or leave a blank line.
If you want to spice it up with formatting, try the formatting or vB code buttons or insert some smilies. Remember, it's just test, you can fix or delete later.
When you think you're done, click Preview Post below your message. You will get a new window showing how your post will display. You can edit further if desired using the message box below the preview.
When satisfied click Submit New Thread.
You will now be viewing your thread in the forum. If you want to change it, just click the Edit button in the lower right corner of your post.
If you want to test replying to your post (or another in the Testing forum), click either Quote at the lower right of the post, or the Post Rely button at the bottom of the thread. They will both open the post editor, but quote will add the text of the post you were viewing as a quote so it will be clear what you are responding to. You can trim the quoted text as desired.

[John Scheffel]

Here are some tips on how to follow these forums and view only the posts that you haven't already seen.

Unfortunately vBulletin does not keep track of what you have actually viewed, but it does use cookies to remember when you last visited the forum.

Click the New Posts link at the top of any page. It will open a table of options for viewing new posts. Since Last Visit will provide page listing all the threads that have been updated since your last visit to the forum. You can also view all the new posts within a time period.

Once you have the list of updated threads, you can click the down arrow at the beginning of each thread title to go directly to the first new post in that thread. The color of the small post icon to the left of the date for each post also indicates which posts are new since your last visit. After reading the new posts in that thread you can use the Back button in your browser to go back to the list of updated threads and go to the next one.

An alternative to using the Back button is to hold the Shift key and click click the down arrow at the beginning of each thread title. This will open the thread in a new window so you can read it then close the window and return to the updated thread list window.

If you Reply to a message, you will find that you have to click Back several times to get back to the new post list. A better way is to click the small down arrow to the right of your Back button, then select the link named Engineering Forum - Search Results. This will take you directly back to the list of new posts.

Once you have viewed all the new posts that interest you, you can close all web browser windows on the forum or go back to the home page and click Mark Forums Read at the bottom. This will reset your last visit time.

[John Scheffel]

vBulletin has no idea what time zone you are in, you must set it in your options.

Click the User CP button at the top. Then click Edit Options. Set the Time & Date Options per your location, then click Save Changes.

Be aware that during daylight savings time your time may be off by one hour. It depends on whether you and/or the server is in a time zone that observes DST. If this occurs, the only solution is to shift your local time offset accordingly during DST.

[John Scheffel]

You will need a picture saved as a small JPG or GIF file (up to 100x100 pixels and 20000 bytes) to a drive letter on your PC. Although this can be any GIF or JPG file, we encourage people to use a real picture of themselves rather than a comic book, cartoon, or fictional character. However, the only rule is that the image not be obscene or offensive to anyone. If anyone complains about your image, you will be asked to change it or we may remove it.

Click the User CP button at the top. Then click Edit Avatar. Check Use Custom Avatar, then the Browse button. Find your GIF or JPG file then click Open. Finally click Save Changes.

[John Scheffel]

Like all things worth having, this must be earned. You will be a Junior Member until you have made 30 posts. Once you have done that, your default title will become Member and you will be able to set a custom title in your Profile. No detailed instructions, if you want to be more than a Junior Member you should be able to figure it out. :D

[John Scheffel]

We have found that searching in vBulletin matches whole words only. For example, if you search for the string pack, it will not find a post containing the word package. There doesn't seem to be any way to change this, but you can use the wild card to match one or more characters. So for this example, if you enter pack* it will find posts containing the words package, packer, packet, etc.

Search does not allow strings of 1 or 2 characters, each search term must be at least 3 characters long. This is done to prevent the search index from becoming too large. We did change this from the default limit of 4 to allow searching for common 3 letter acronyms.

[John Scheffel]

vBulletin does not have any features to allow user customization of colors. However, custom color profiles can be setup by an adminstrator and selected by members. I haven't defined any custom colors yet, but if you find another forum with colors that you prefer, send me and Email with a pointer and I can try to duplicate them.

[John Scheffel]

I have updated the information in this thread to reflect the changes in vBulletin 3, but be sure to checkout the What's New in vBulletin 3.0 thread as well. Lots of great new features.

[John Scheffel]

The smilies in vbulletin are created by character sequences which begin with a colon. For example the grin is :D. You don't see the underlying characters when using the WYSIWYG editor, but you will see them if you disable WYSIWYG from the Switch Editor box in the upper right corner of the edit form (icon looks like a box containing the letter A).

Usually this works fine because a colon is rarely used as the first character in text, but an exception is LISP code which often displays unintended smilies. You can fix this by checking the Disable smilies in text box under Additional Options while creating or editing a post. This is how I prevented :D from appearing as a grinning smilie in this post. You will not see this option in the Quick Edit mode, you must go to Advanced edit mode.