Posting Tips using Proboard

[John Robinson]

Ever have one of those moments when you say to yourself; "Oh I didn't know I could do that."

Maybe we could use this thread to share some tips and tricks used to navigate the forum, or format our postings. Maybe you know a trick using BBCode. What works best for touch screen users, like smart phones, Kindles, iPads. Laptop tricks. Any tip that makes our Forum easier to use in Proboard.

Last night I stumbled on to a really big time saver. I'm using it on my laptop, but think it will be even more usefull for touch screens.

1. Following. We have many members. Some I want to view their latest posting activity nearly everyday. After logging on Click your Profile. If you are already following other members their avatar and user name will appear on the right of the screen.

Just above your avatar on the profile screen you will see "Following". Click or tap on this and you will get a great display of all the posts of members you are following starting with their most recent posts listed first. Now you can scroll up and down selecting each post you are interested in. What a time saver!

How do I add a member I want to follow. So far I left click (or sytlus tap) on any member name displayed in blue anywhere in the forum, say from a recent post or the display of users online in the last 24 hours. This will display their Profile summary with a "Follow Button" on the right hand side. Tap or click on the Follow Button.   Now the next time you go into your profile, that user name and avatar will show it has been added.  Just select Following at the top of your profile to see all the posts again the newly added member will appear along with the others.  

2. Inserting User Name in Quick reply. Many times I've had to scroll back through a thread to make sure I spell the name right of a user I want to reply to. If you have a mouse holding down the ALT key and left clicking on the user name displayed in blue, will automatically insert the user name in blue in your reply. You can do this multiple times in the same reply if you want to include other users. Note; This only works in the "Quick" reply window not the full composition posting.

Well this is the kick off.  Looking forward to learning from you. 

[slayernz]

With the update, using "@" followed by a forum name actually tags that person in their notification tab of their profile. It's a very useful way of drawing that person's attention to a particular topic.
When it happens, you see an indicator on your "Profile" heading at the top of the board. When you click on that, and go to "Notifications", you can see what has been tagged.

Actually, the notifications section also highlights the fact you can "Like" a person's post too. When you see a post you like, click on the "Thumbs up" icon on the top-right hand side of the post.

Oh ... one final thing. If you want to tag Cory, his forum name is a little tricky, because his forum login is actually "admin" rather than "cory trese". So you have to do @ then "admin", which results in the tag --> Cory Trese

[John Robinson]

Slayernz Hi, My right brain and left brain are bickering again, and won't talk to each other. Did'nt quite understand the "@" thing can you fire one at me so I can get a better idea?

Avatar Size The new board lets us use 150x150 now. Like you I didn't want to give up my old Avatar. How did you increase the size of your old Avatar to take advantage of it?

[slayernz]

John Robinson, your forum login is johnrobinson, so I would simply put an @ symbol in front of your name. Doing so will tag you and allow two things. 1, you will be able to see any messages I write with your tag because it will be added to your notifications. 2, other people will be able to click on your name and it will take them to your profile.

If you don't know a person's login name, then instead of using "Quick Reply", select "Reply". On the menu bar above the text box, you'll see a bunch of things.

The one to pay attention to is the icon with an @ symbol + a figure. It's to the right of the "insert video" icon, and to the left of the "insert code" icon (which looks like a C).

For changing your avatar size - I actually don't know how to do that. I know in the old forum layout, you could do that by explicitly typing in the height and width values. For the new forum, perhaps you can find an identical image to what you have that is a larger format ...

[John Robinson]

Thanks for showing me how to turn on the fog lights, got it.

I'm going to keep plugging along with the thread even if the tips are obvious to many forum users. This can help combat "Forum Culture Shock" for new Proboard people like myself.

Participated This button appears on the upper right of the home screen. It will display all the threads you have created or participated in. For me the best use, is it allows me to do a quick check to see if anybody has responded to a question I might of had, or look at the latest posting in a thread I have used.

Maybe if we get enough participation we could sticky this thread sometime in the future for people getting their feet wet, and when you say to yourself "How did I do that again?"

Bookmark Just noticed another handy feature. Hover your mouse or stylus over any thread, and put a check mark in the box that appears to the left. Now go up to "actions" and on the drop down menu select bookmark. The result, anytime you log on you can simply click on "bookmarks" at the top of the screen to display a list of the treads you are most interested in.

[John Robinson]

slayernz Thanks for the new Avatar! I'm thinking of a Saturday Night live episode where the hosts meet Aerosmith fall to there knees "We're not Worthy, We're not Worthy".

Step right up ladies and gentlemen with have another winner, +1 Exault (too bad only get to do one per day)

[xdesperado]

John Robinson you get an exalt every 15 minutes.

[slayernz]

That's a nice new change to the board ... being able to exalt (or smite) every 15 minutes. Even the old board let you do this action once per hour.

[John Robinson]

Adding Game Screen Shots to Posts:

How do you add screen shots like the one in this thread? startradersrpg.proboards.com/thread/4314/spacing

Every 15min?  You guys are great, going to have to control myself.

Thread Prize. +1 karma for first good answer

[xdesperado]

I copied & pasted the link then added img][/img] code around it.

Think on Picasa links you also need to change https to http for it to display properly.

Use the same process to post any photo here on ProBoards.

Note you need to upload your screen shots to a host.
There are several free ones available.
Picasa is convenient for many android devices since it is google based and a default option from your Gallery where the screen shot is saved.

[John Robinson]

xdesperado Ladies and Gents we have another winner +1 karma.

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More information regarding Picasa can be found on the Google support page

Smartphones, and other tablets often rely on different operating systems, and button combinations. Here is a good discussion comparing the different techniques. These devices should also work when using image sharing websites, such as photo bucket described below.

Posting Kindle Fire HD Screen Shots Tutorial

This relates to the Kindle HD you can do it with the first generation Kindle Fire with allot more effort, Google to find out how. The first thing I learned is you cannot simply copy paste images into Forums, you need to upload your images to a "Image Hosting" Website. This tutorial will use Photobucket as the Website.

I don't want to hook up my Kindle to my Laptop everytime I want to send a image to a hosting site, So this tutorial shows you how to use your Wireless Network to do it.

1. The Kindle will capture anything that is appearing on your screen. To do this, on the top of the Kindle Press and Hold the Power and Volume Down Buttons at the same time. You will hear the camera shutter sound and the screen will flash.

2. At the top of the home screen tool bar scroll right to left until you see "Photos", Tap it to bring up thumbnails of all the photos and screen shots currently on the device. If you only see one thumbnail and you have multiple photos tap on it and they will all show up on the screen.

3. If you have never done this before the Kindle will prompt you to setup a Email account, and if desired link to Facebook, or your smartphone. I chose Email. The most common sites have Icons to click on, and a last entry to setup your own. I use Suddenlink and had to key in more defintions to make it work.

4. I want to send the screen capture from my Kindle Fire to my Laptop email. While the screenshot is displayed on the Kindle look down at the bottom of your screen tool bar. To the right of the <== Icon you will see another icon that looks like a circle connected to two smaller circles with diagonal lines. This is your "Sharing" tool. Tap now and select Email. The standard email will appear with the from, to and subject. I filled it in with my own email id so I could open it on my Laptop. Now press send.

5. Return to your Laptop and open your email, you will see the one you sent yourself from the Kindle. The Screen Capture will appear in the body of the message, we don't care about that. Look for the email window called "Attachment". Right click on that file, then save as into your Pictures folder. This will be in .png format.

Image Hosting Websites

6. Next I went out to www.photobukcet.com and setup a free account. This is a good link if you need more detail,
www.howtogeek.com/forum/topic/tutorial-step-by-step-guide-how-to-use-photobucket

7. While logged onto your photobucket account. Select the Upload tab at the top of the screen. Because I had selected "Computer" photobucket went to my laptop directory. I selected the "My Pictures" folder clicked on the image I wanted, and photobucket automatically uploaded it to my library. This youtube video is a little dated but very helpful.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=9xRXezQkV4w

8. Make sure your Forum Post is open for input before contuing.

9. Now hover your mouse over the gear icon in the right top of your photobucket image. From the drop down menu select "Links" Click on it. You will now get another drop down menu. Even though they appear to be grayed out, they are live. Now click on the IMG link and photobucket will say "copied".

10. Return to your Open Forum Post and on your Laptop hit CTRL+V BBCode with the website address will be inserted into your post, and the image to be displayed when anyone reads it. If you aren't sure do a preview on your post to display it.

Image Hosting Shortcut

photobucket direct mail Note: photobucked has a very handy feature to streamline this procedure. You can directly email your images from Kindle Fire HD, or any other email device directly into your photobucket account. See this link to find out how;
support.photobucket.com/entries/21124138-Upload-from-Email-or-MMS-Message

Note;  The orginal Kindle screen shot was very large and high res, so I went back to photobucket, and used the "Resize" function so the screen shot would'nt take up so much space in this post.   Note this is an experiment I deleted the image from photobucket and it deleted in the post even though coding is retained.  This is to show you the advantage of using thumbnails which would not be deleted after downloading your image from a hosting website




 

[John Robinson]

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Thumbnails Thanks to the help I got from Slayernz There is an even easier, and quicker way to add full scale images into your posts.

On the Kindle or any other source of an image. When you are ready, click on the Attachments button on the upper right of the reply screen. Follow the prompts, and the default image will be a thumbnail.

Thumbnails also have a great zoom feature. Click on the thumbnail and you will get a magnifying glass icon. You can zoom in up to two times. This is great for reading high rez images. The kindle native resolution is 1920 by 1200. Try clicking the below thumnail to see what Proboards can do.   Unlike image shareing sites when you delete an image from your site library you will get the "Image Not Available" message as you see in the previous post. On Proboards the image will remain in your post as long as you don't delete the inserted BBcode parameter.
In this post [attachment id="474" thumbnail="1"] was added when I used the attachment button.

This is a thumb of the Cargo Screen from Star Traders. You can navigate within the image using the side scroll bar.

[John Robinson]

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HOW TO;

Link Website Let's say you have found a great article on the web, and want to include it in your post. You can just copy paste the link, but that can make your post look cluttered, and break the chain of thought.

Let's say I want to discuss something in my post that contains a huge amount of information for optional viewing. This will show you how to use a hotlink in a sentance or any other way you wish.

Modern scientists no longer refer to the Singularity Event as the Big Bang Theory.

The above example was done using this bbcode command. [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_singularity]Singularity Event[/url]

The url= refers directly to the web link I copy pasted into the command. Now any text nested before the /url ends the command will created what you see.

[John Robinson]

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Link Threads You may wish to refer to another thread in one of your posts. This is also an excellent way to edit one of your old posts to point at a thread you discovered containing relevant information. You can cut and past directly into your post, but for clarity I prefer to use it in a sentance, or small directory. The forum is very active, and great threads can get buried quickly making them difficult to find.

The command format is:  [thread=http// name of link]Your Text[/thread]  
 However this command is optional to some forums, and does not appear to be supported by Proboards.  Not to worry, we just subsitute it with the Link website command previously described. 

Screen Shots can vary widely depending on operating system, and device type. This thread created by lurker in Febuary includes methods for popular cellphones, and tablets.

The above example was done using this bbcode command; [url=http://startradersrpg.proboards.com/thread/3641/post-screenshot]Screen Shots[/url]
The url= refers directly to the thread address I copy pasted.  The text "Screen Shots" was then nested before the end of the url command, to create what you see in example above.

[John Robinson]

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Linking Posts While digging through threads you might come accross a particularly good post to reference,and don't want to forget what thread it was int. In addition I would like the references easy to read. For example.

Example 1. Was found in a 24 page thread created in August 2011. What I wanted was on page 15, containing a link to Fallen's Heros of Steel story.

On page 15 of this old thread. I found a Heros of Steel story written by Fallen.

Example 2. On page 2, I found a link helping players cope with the impossible difficulty level when playing Star Traders.

If you are looking for tips playing impossible. Cory recommends this
extensive guide containg in depth links, and advice from some of our best forum members.

With a little imagination you can create a post containig a collection of posts, and quotes on a specific topic. Then book mark the post or thread, which will always be available when you logon to the forum. After all your hard work, with a single click on the book marked thread or post you created, the information is instantly available.

The Tech Stuff

What Proboard Support says, and what linking posts do appear at odds (see below). However clicking on the gear icon to the right of the post will create a popup box.

There might be times where you would like to link directly to a specific post, either to share the post with someone else, or to use the post as a reference rather than sharing an entire thread. To accomplish this, once you see a post that you would like to link directly to, locate the drop-down menu in the top-right hand corner of the post. Click on this menu and then click the Link to Post option. Once selected, a pop up menu will display providing two different web addresses.

The paragraph can be found on the official Proboards support page. However the features do not work as documented. This maybe because of the Version 5 upgrade.

After extensive testing, I have determined you cannot use any anchor commands to reference a post, and hold it onto the screen. For example; You are refering to a post on page 2 of a three page thread. The post will briefly flash your selected post, and then immediately return to page one because you cannot set an anchor pint to the post. It only works if the post you are looking for happens to be on page 1 of the thread. If your are familiar with the [a href=http source]http target][/a] command. You will see no matter what variation you use, the post will still snap back to page 1 of the thread without anchoring the target post.

The Closest I can get is to anchor to the page in the thread the post appears in. For example when you find a post on the page you wanted, go to the address bar at the top of your screen, and copy paste it into your post. At least you will know the post you are looking for is on that page.

For example:

I found a thread created in August of 2011 on page 15 of 24. I found a post from Fallen linking to a short fiction story he had written. The closest I could get to this post was to copy
the http address from the top of the screen and paste it into my post. This will navigate to page 15 without flipping back to page 1. I then could scroll down page 15 to find his post.

Here is the link I pasted; startradersrpg.proboards.com/thread/3403/trese-brothers-kickstarter?page=24#page=15. Scrolling down I finally reach my destination from Fallen.

" Just posted another short fiction in the world of Steel:
www.kickstarter.com/projects/tresebrothers/heroes-of-steel-fantasy-rpg/posts/416956 "

I could have simply pasted this link into my post, but then would not not be able to remember which thread I found it in, let alone one with 24 pages. Now I can use my trusty BBcode for easier reading.

Example 1 as seen beginning of this post;

On page 15 of this old [a href="http://startradersrpg.proboards.com/thread/3403/trese-brothers-kickstarter?page=24#page=15"]thread[/a]. I found a Heros of Steel [a href="http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/tresebrothers/heroes-of-steel-fantasy-rpg/posts/416956"]story[/a] written by Fallen













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