The Jazzorg Forum 'Help' Page.
1. Overview.
A forum is part of a website, which enables you to contribute your own views and ideas to any subject matter, relevant to the forum. To avoid casual, often irrelevant, contributions, it is usual for websites, as with Jazzorg, to permit guests to read the content of the forum but to confine contributions only to registered users.
The organisation of the forum is constructed so that the website administration defines categories (e.g. Jazz Singing) for discussion, mostly at the request of users. A subset of the category is a selection of forums (e.g. Jazz Singers), which is also defined by admin at the users' request, where you might want to rave about your favourite singer. However, there is one further subset, of the forum, called a topic (e.g. who is your favourite singer and 'why?') and this narrows the discussion to that aspect. In any forum, a topic may be started by any registered user and, in the case of our example, another user might want to discuss 'vocal exercises', as a topic in the Jazz Singers forum.
It may seem a bit complicated, but many of these forums developed from technical exchanges and administrators tried to meet the need to constrain discussions to a specific subject. Having a topic such as 'vocal exercises', saves the individual searching all the 'Jazz singing' category for that particular aspect. (see Section 2. Searching). Even so, many contributors have some difficulty in judging whether a contribution to a topic is really relevant to that topic or, sometimes, they can't be bothered to find the appropriate subject. There is a frequent tendency, therefore, to take the easy route and merely start a new topic. Under these circumstances, it's possible to have a number of different topics discussing the same thing. The watchwords are 'don't start a new topic unless you really have to do it!' Also, if there is a significant topic that has a large number of contributors, it might be better to get 'admin' to generate a separate forum for that topic.
- To post a contibution to an existing topic, you select the post reply option.
- To post a new topic, you select the post new topic option.
- Choosing either of these options, if you are not registered, will cause a reminder that you have to be registered to contribute.
2. Searching.
To facilitate finding the contributions of your choice, there is a 'search' box provided on each page of the Jazzorg Forum. This box is marked 'search Jazzorg Forum'. All you have to do is enter the keywords, e.g. vocal exercises, in the box and press [return]. All the topics, containing the keywords, will be displayed as a list. The usual rules for narrowing a search also apply in this instance.
3. Viewing the forums.
The Jazzorg Forum 'Forum Index' page lists the forums which are current at the time of your visit and selecting the Forum Index option, on the forum page, will return you to this page.
- Clicking on the name of your selected forum displays a list of topics in that forum.
- On the list of topics, clicking on the name of your selected topic displays the posts on that topic.
Alternatively, at the 'Forum Index' page,
- Clicking on the arrow/page icon, at the right hand side of the page, displays the posts on that topic.
4. Contributing to the forums.
If you are a registered user, you can contribute 'topics' or 'replies' to any forum.
- To post a contibution to an existing topic, you select the post reply option.
- To post a new topic, you select the post new topic option. In this case, you are asked to give a subject title to your new topic.
In entering the reply/new-topic page, you are confronted by an array of buttons and animated icons (emoticons). Don't worry about them, they can be used to jazz up your message, if you want to do so. (See Section 5. Jazzing up your presentation.) Until you get used to them, all you have to do is type your message in the box provided and click on [submit] at the bottom of the message section. If you want to, you can [preview] or [cancel] your message, by clicking on the appropriate button, also at the foot of the message section.
When you select to reply to an existing topic, the most recent contributions (usually the last 6) are listed after the message input area, so that you can easily refer to them.
5. Policy on message content.
The forums on this site are not 'moderated'; that is they are not monitored by an authority prior to any modifications to the display by new messages. You must not post or send offensive, inappropriate, libellous or objectionable content anywhere on or to the Jazzorg site or otherwise engage in any disruptive behaviour on this website. Jazzorg will vigorously pursue any individual or entity involved in that activity and reserves the right to use whatever information that is available to it, to stop such behaviour and bring about appropriate judicial actions.
That being said, we hope and believe that the message is unnecessary for jazz enthusiasts. We would like the forums to be lively, informed and humourous. Remember, too, that the readers' appreciation of your wit, perception and artistic sensitivity will be considerably enhanced, if your grammar and spelling are moderately accurate. This comment, of course, does not apply to Users, whose first language is not English, who have Jazzorg's unreserved admiration for being multilingual. A useful source, which provides free translations in a number of languages is at 'babel fish'.
6. Jazzing up your presentation.
If you would like to do something more than just typing your message, then you can use a selection from the formatting buttons and emoticons. What these tools do is allow you to increase the impact of your message to the reader, by emphasis or a small animation.
Dealing first with the emoticons, all you have to do is position your cursor in the message box where you want the emoticon to be, then click on your selected emoticon. This action inserts a small piece of code in you message which looks like '::this::' and this is replaced by the icon, when the message is displayed in the forum.
The other buttons are described as 'Boardcode'. Boardcode is a collection of special tags that will allow you to format your messages. Currently, the forum supports links, bold, italic, bold, "quoted" text, image (img), size, list and coloured text. To use a formatting tag, first position your cursor where you want the tag to start and then click on the tag button. Enter your text etc. and then position the cursor where you want the tag instruction to end and again click the tag button. Each time you click the tag button, a small piece of code is inserted in the message, which is interpreted by the reader's browser. The tags are used as follows:
[b]Bold[/b] will produce Bold
[i]Italic[/i] will produce Italic
[u]Underline[/u] will produce Underline
[size=4]Size[/size] will produce Size
[color=#FF0000]Red[/color] will produce Red
[img=150]link to image[/img] will produce a image with a width off 150 pixels.
Please remember you can go to a maximum width of 499 pixels.
[ul][li]item 1[/li][/ul] will produce an unordered list, but please keep in mind you'll have to insert
the [li][/li] tags around the list items. See example below.
[ul][li]item 1[/li]
[li]item 2[/li]
[li]item 3[/li][/ul] |
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The [ol] tag will produce a similar list, but ordered (with numbers):
[ol][li]item 1[/li]
[li]item 2[/li]
[li]item 3[/li][/ol] |
- item 1
- item 2
- item 3
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[url]http://www.yahoo.com[/url] will produce a high-lighted link to another site thus: http://www.yahoo.com. This is useful if you want to direct a reader to another source of information.
[url=http://www.yahoo.com]Yahoo![/url] will produce Yahoo!
If you would like to take a quote from another user's message, in order to make your contribution more relevant, using the 'quote' button puts it in a grey rectangle thus : [quote]Quote[/quote] will produce
Quote You can also click on 'quote', when replying to a message and the whole message will be displayed in a quote box, for readers' reference.
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