New Castle Sailing Club — Getting started with the NCSC Discussion Board

You should now see a confirmation screen that looks like the following.

You are almost done! The board administrators (fellow club members) have just been notified by email that you have registered. Once they approve (hopefully in minutes, or a few hours at the most), you will receive a confirmation email, which contains an Internet link. Click on the link in the email, and you can log into the board using your selected username and password. The login process is described in next section.

Each of the forums in the list above was created (mostly) with club business in mind. They may evolve over time.

Within each forum, there may be any number of different threads, or "topics", which have been created by different club members. With the exception of the "Announcements and Welcome" thread, into which only board members and site admins can post, any member of the discussion board can create new threads in any forum, or respond to posts by other members. More details about that are in the next section.

Let's have a look at the forum entitled "Sailing Meetups" (it is recommended that you view the "Announcements and Welcome" forum on your own, later).

Before proceeding, please note a few things in the screen above. First, the yellow icon next to the first thread. That indicates that you have not yet read that thread (topic) since someone last posted to it. Second, notice that the older threads appear lower down on the screen. This means that older, less active threads will migrate downward and out of sight over time, while the most current threads will always be at the top. However, the older threads will still be there for reference, or if someone wants to revive one with a new post.
To view the posts in the first thread, click the thread title, "Sailing Wednesday afternoon Sept 3 ?" The following screen appears:

In this screen, we see a post by user "admin", regarding a possible sailing meetup. In the post itself, you can see the meetup information they posted "A little bird told me..." as well as a number of buttons. We'll discuss those buttons in the next section; you will use them only if you want to post a response or thread of your own.
Within a forum, the posts appear in the order they were created. Thus, the first post you see will be the first one in the thread. The most recent post will appear at the end of the thread, furthest down in the screen. For very long threads with many posts, the thread may be split into multiple screens. When this happens, at the top and bottom of the thread will be a set of links that look like "Previous 1 2 3 ... 9 10 11 Next", which let you choose which page in the thread you'd like to view.
Near top left of the screen above, notice the links entitled "Board index » Sailing Meetups". Board Index will always take you back to the top-level forum screen, so you will never get lost. Sailing Meetups will take you back into the top-level "Sailing Meetups" forum seen in Step 1 above.
Below is an example of a thread with more than one post. This is a thread in the "Off thread" forum (which is there in case club members would like to discuss random threads online), called "Your favorite recipes here".

If you'd like to search for specific words in existing threads, or thread titles, you can use the "Search" link near the top of the page. If any matches are found, you will be shown a list of threads that match. You can click on the thread(s) of interest in that list, if you wish to read them.

You can either create new threads of your own, or post responses to existing posts. When you respond, you have the option of quoting some or all of the original poster's text in your own answer. You can also go back and edit a post you have created, or delete it entirely if you wish. You can't edit or delete other users' posts. (However, the board admins can do this, in the unlikely event that content is posted that's considered inappropriate for some reason.)

Before you create a new thread, you may want to check so see if someone's already created a similar one.

In this section, we'll respond to a couple of existing threads. First, we'll simply create a post of our own. Then, in a different thread, we'll quote another user in our response.

When you're ready to submit the post, click the "Submit" button at the bottom of the screen. You can also preview the post to check its appearance, without actually posting it, you can click "Preview" first.
Now that we've created our post, let's submit it. Click "Submit". After a few seconds, the following appears:

Next, let's post a response that quotes a previous posting. We'll visit the "Sailing Meetups" forum again, and the familiar "Sailing Wednesday afternoon Sept 3 ?" thread. Click the "Quote" button at bottom right.

The following screen will appear:

The "BBcode" codes [quote] and [/quote] are automatically placed around the previous user's text, and put into the edit window for you automatically. You can remove parts of it as you see fit, as has been done above.
When ready, click "Submit". The following screen will appear.

Creating a new thread is just like the above, except rather than clicking on "Post a reply", click on "New Topic". The only difference is that you'll need to enter a Subject line, which will become the title of the new thread.
If you'd like to go back and edit one of your posts, click on the "Edit" button at the bottom right of your post. If you'd like to delete the post, click on the little red X at the bottom right of your post. Be careful -- once deleted, the post cannot be restored.
Congratulations! You now know how to read, post and navigate the discussion board.

You can customize, to some extent, how the board presents information to you, as well as adding information about yourself (such as personal website link, Internet chat names etc.), using the "User Control Panel" link, which is visible at the top right of most screens in the discussion board.

You can also use the "User Control Panel" to create an "avatar" image for yourself, if you wish. This lets you upload a graphic to the board. This graphic will appear next to any posts you make. You can delete or change this graphic as you see fit.

For additional information about how to use the discussion board, a number of common questions are answered in the builtin FAQ (list of Frequently Asked Questions), via the "FAQ" link at the upper right of most discussion board screens.

If you have questions not answered in the FAQ, feel free to contact the discussion board administrator(s). This can be done by clicking on the "Members" link at the top of the screen, then "admin", then "PM". You will be prompted to enter a private message to the admin user. When you click "Submit", the admin user(s) will receive notice of your message. This assures that your message will always go to those club members who are currently supporting the board.

You can find out more about the phpbb forum software on this website: http://www.phpbb.com/