For the most part, your posts will contain plain text, but on occasions, you may want to emphasize certain words or phrases by making them (for example) bold or italic.

Depending on the rules of the board, you may use HTML code to produce these effects. However, more often than not, the administrator will have disabled HTML code, and opted instead to use BB Code: a special set of tags which you can use to produce the most popular text-effects. BB code has the advantage that it is very simple to use, and is immune to malicious javascripts and page layout disruption.

You may also find that the administrator has enabled smilies, which allow you to use small icons to convey emotion, and the [img] code, which allows you to add pictures to your message.

Smilies are small graphical icons which you can insert into your messages to convey an emotion or feeling, such as a joke or embarrassment. For example, if you entered a sarcastic comment, rather than type 'that was a joke', you could simply insert the 'wink' smilie.

If you have used email or internet chat systems, you will probably be familiar with the concept of smilies already. Certain combinations of text characters are converted into smilies. For example,:) is converted into a smiling face. To understand smilie codes, tilt your head to the left and look at the text: you will see that :) represents two eyes and a smiling mouth.

For a list of the smilies currently used by this board click here.

On occasions, you may want to prevent the text in your message being converted into smilies. You will see a checkbox which you can select when you make a new post, which will allow you to 'Disable Smilies'.

These controls allow you to quickly and easily enter BB Code into your posts and messages. To use them, simply click the appropriate buttons or select items from the lists to enter BB Code.

There are two modes available: normal and enhanced mode.

When using normal mode, pressing a button will pop-up a dialog for you to fill with text. It will then enter the text with the appropriate BB Code tags at the end of your message.

When using enhanced mode, pressing a button will insert the appropriate STARTING tag for the code, leaving you to enter text into the message area. When you have finished the text and want to close the tag, simply press the Close Current Tag button (alt+c). You may also nest tags in enhanced mode, and then use the Close All Tags button (alt+x) to close all open markup. Please note that the 'close tag' buttons only close tags that have been entered using the code buttons.

To use the clickable smilies, simply click the smiley that you want to insert into your message, or click the Get More link (if available) to access the full list of smilies.

You may notice that some threads on this board also include a section where you can vote on an issue or question. These threads are called 'polls' and this is how to create them:

Creating a new poll

To create a poll when you post a new thread, simply click the 'Yes! post a poll' checkbox at the bottom of the page, and set the number of possible responses you want to include.

When you click the submit button, you will be taken to the poll creation page, where you can specify the question and the list of responses you want to include.

You may also want to specify a time limit for the poll, so that (for example) it only stays open for voting for a week.

Voting in and viewing a poll

To vote in a poll, simply select which option you want to vote for, and click the [Vote!] button. You may view the current results for a poll before you vote by clicking the 'View Results' link. Voting in a poll is entirely optional. You may vote for any of the available options, or cast no vote at all.

Generally, once you have voted in a poll, you will not be able to change your vote later, so place your vote carefully! You can only vote one time.

As far as your Icons are activated you can add an Icon to your Post. Therewith you can show your feelings or your thoughts.

If you have registered, you will be able to edit and delete your posts. Note that the administrator can disable this ability as he desires. Your ability to edit your posts may also be time-limited, depending on how the administrator has set up the board. To edit or delete your posts, click the .

button by the post you want to edit. If your post was the first in the thread, then deleting the post may result in the removal of the entire thread.

After you have made your modifications, a note may appear, which notifies other users that you have edited your post. Administrators and moderators may also edit your messagesm but this note may not appear when they do so.

Moderators oversee specific forums. They generally have the ability to edit and delete posts, move threads, and perform other manipulations. Becoming a moderator for a specific forum is usually rewarded to users who are particularly helpful and knowledgable in the subject of the forum they are moderating.

Certain words may have been censored by the administrator. If your posts contain any censored words, they will be blanked-out like this: ****.

The same words are censored for all users, and censoring is done by a computer simply searching and replacing words. It is in no way 'intelligent'.

If you post a new thread, or reply to an existing thread, you can choose to be notified by email when someone else replies to that thread. You can also choose to receive email notifications of new posts in a thread without posting in that thread, by clicking the 'Receive updates to this thread' link displayed in the thread page.

The most common forms of shorthand are listed here. Naturally they not only to be used in the Forums. They are used throughout Internet:

• AFAIK = as far as I know
• AFAIR = as far as I remember
• AFK = away from keyboard
• aka = also known as
• ASAP = as soon as possible
• *bg* = big grin
• btw = by the way
• cu = see you
• *eg*/*fg* = evil grin
• *g* = grin
• N8 = Night
• HTH = hope this helps
• IK = I know
• k = okay
• LLAP = Live long and prosper
• IMHO = in my humble opinion
• IMO = in my opinion
• *lol* = laughing out loud
• np = no problem
• MTFBWY = May the force be with you
• RL = Real Live
• ROFL = rolling on the floor laughing
• SCNR = sorry, could not resist
• WE = weekend