An Overview

When you choose to browse a forum the first screen you see is an overview of activity in that conference, a welcome message, and a set of options.

Navigation Options

Main Forum Menu will return you to the list of Forums.

Next Forum will take you to the next one in the list.

Topic List

When you first choose a forum, you are presented with a list of the topics in that forum. By default that list contains only topics that have had a new response since the last time you read the topic. Each row of the list is composed of the topic name and the number of responses. If you are viewing "read-only" forums without logging in, the software will display all activity within the last week.

Possible ranges

With the "All" command, you may choose to view all the topics and responses in the conference, and not just the ones that have seen recent activity.

You may also select to see only topics with "new" activity. That is, topics that have new respones since the last time you visited.

Or you may select to see only those topics that have seen activity within the last 7 days.

Or choose to see the topics you previously chose to "hide."

"Suggest New Topic" allows you to suggest a new topic in the current conference. Only a forum host may create topics.

Choosing the "Help" option will get you to the help screens where you can get, you guessed it, help!

The "Search" button takes you to a screen where you can search the contents of all the responses in the current forum. You can search only the subject lines of each topic, or you can choose to search through all the words in all the responses in all topics.

After you've read through all the responses in a topic you may want to add your own response.

Back to: Main Index

Read next section: Reading Topics