How to Post to the Forum

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Forum Overview
The Seattle Flamenco Forum is organized hierarchically into Categories, Boards, Topics and Posts. The text you're reading right now is a post in the topic (titled "How to Post to the Forum") on the SeattleFlamenco.org board in the General Discussion category. If you reply to this message, your reply is a post.

And why is this information useful to you? Well, with it you can get a global sense of what you can do with the Forum. As a user, you can start new topics and post replies to other people's (or your own) topics or posts. You can also suggest to the administrator ideas for new categories or boards--things you don't see yet, but you think would be useful to the Seattle Flamenco community.

You can tell where you are in the Forum by the look of the window and from the folder hierarchy list at the top of the window:

Category View: Categories are marked with red arrows--the boards in each category are listed below the category title:

Board View: When you click on a particular message board, you get a list of the topics on that board. The folder hierarchy list tells you which category you're in and which board you're looking at:

Topic View: When you then click on a topic, you see the posts on that topic. Here, the folder hierarchy list tells you which category you're in, which board you're looking at, and which topic you're viewing:  

How to Post
As a regular Forum member, you can create new posts on existing topics and create new topics on existing boards.

To Create a Post: To post a response to a topic (in Topic View), first, be sure that you are logged in to the Forum, then click on the "Reply" button:

This will take you to the Forum's text editor window:

This screen may look complicated at first, but the only three things you absolutely need to know about in order to post are the text window ("Enter your post text here"--where, obviously, you enter your post text) and the "Post" and "Preview" buttons (which, again obviously, you use to preview then post your message).

Everything else is extra. Feel free to play with the formatting options--and to ask questions if you're not sure how to do something--but don't feel overwhelmed by all the buttons: most of the time you can say exactly what you need to say with text alone.

To Add a Picture: The easiest way to add a picture to your post is to use the "Attach" function under "Additional Options" (the link to which is just below the post text entry window:

To Create a Topic: To start a new topic on an existing board (in Board View), first, be sure that you are logged in to the Forum, then click on the "New Topic" button (on the right-hand side of the window):

This will take you to the Forum's text editor window; it operates here just the same way as it does when you post a reply to an existing topic. Be sure to title your new topic (in the "Subject" field)--otherwise other readers won't know what you're topic is about!