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  • Welcome to the new site. Here's a thread about the update where you can post your feedback, ask questions or spot those nasty bugs!

OPF Navigation 101

Even those with tons of experience with different forums and forum engines may feel slightly uncomfortable when joining a new online community. Thousands of existing posts, hundreds of yet unfamiliar posters, each with different point of view, attitude, experience, ego, etc.
Here is how you can make your life a little bit easier, at least at first time.

First of all, go to the top (click Open Photography Forums in the breadcrumbs section on top of this page and mark everything read (menubar: Quick Links: Mark forums read). This will "clean the slate". You can always get to any of that stuff later, but for now you want to start fresh.

Second, go to your Control Panel (menubar: UserCP), then select Edit Options from the navigation bar on the left. Locate Messaging & Notification section, Default Thread Subscription Mode group and set the value to No email notification. If you want make some other changes while you're there - that's fine, just don't forget to click Save Changes button at the bottom of the page.
This option will automatically subscribe you to any thread you start or post to. The advantage of this step is that you can easily access the threads you've participated in by using menubar Quick Links: Subscribed Threads command.

To make your life even easier, you can create a desktop or favorites shortcut on your PC and set it to http://www.openphotographyforums.com/forums/subscription.php. This way you can always launch OPF in this your very own highly personal mode.

This is all fine, but you probably haven't posted yet, so all those precautions were for the future. What to do now?
Well, the answer is pretty simple: use the menubar New Posts link. It will bring you the threads that has changed since you've last visited them (or since you've marked them "read", as you did in Step One of this little tutorial). If you want to start OPF in this mode rather than in your personal mode, simple create another shortcut and set it to: http://www.openphotographyforums.com/forums/search.php?do=getnew

Once you done all these simple steps, simply following your Subscribed Thread and New Posts will let you quickly get on top of all the things that are going on. And if nothing draws your attention, it means it's time to read the archives - or get your camera, go get some shooting done and post about it:)

Happy posting!

(PS. Asher, you can make this a sticky:)
 

Suzanne Gee

New member
Bumfuzzled

Thanks very much for creating the tutorial and pointing me in its direction.

I think I've figured out what breadcrumb navigation is...or at least that there is something called breadcrumb navigation.

I am having a bit of difficulty finding my way around. Things like reply boxes I can't open to make a reply are flummoxing me at the moment. I see that you can make a reply in other ways than opening a reply box, however.

My settings don't allow for popups, so I may be missing out on some conveniences you have built into the site.

I'll take another couple goes at your tutorial to see if I can get the hang of OPF.

It's already a rich learning experience.

Suzanne
 

nicolas claris

OPF Co-founder/Administrator
Bonjour Suzanne
a warm welcome from me to!
There are no pop-up windows in OPF.
You have 2 ways for replies:
1- click on "quick reply button" on the bottom right of last message and type your message in the reply box at bottom of same page.
If you have clicked on the "quick reply button" of a specific message (the one you want answer to) you may also wish to click on "Quote message in reply?" check box just under the quick message box.
Should you change your mind and wish more editing option you may click on ""go advanced" or:
2- click on the "reply" button on the left bottom (just under the last message. A bit more options for editing text in there.
a 3rd possibility is to click on "Quote" button. Try it it is self explanatory.

Hope you'll get rich (reached?) again!

Best
 

Ray West

New member
A couple of simple requests, please.

Hi Nicolas,

move this if it corrupts your instructions, but at the bottom of the reply window as well as 'submit reply', and 'preview Post', any chance of a 'delete post'? Also it seems that the 'New Posts' is a bit erratic, and I miss a number of threads. There is a 'today's post ' iirc, on the front page? could that be placed on each page, perhaps adjacent to the 'New Posts'.

Best wishes,

Ray
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
Ray West said:
Hi Nicolas,

move this if it corrupts your instructions, but at the bottom of the reply window as well as 'submit reply', and 'preview Post', any chance of a 'delete post'? Also it seems that the 'New Posts' is a bit erratic, and I miss a number of threads. There is a 'today's post ' iirc, on the front page? could that be placed on each page, perhaps adjacent to the 'New Posts'.

Best wishes,

Ray

You can Edit for 24 hours. Deletion is not swtiched on to keep out threads intact. However, if we could have a soft delete, we'll do it!

Asher
 

Ray West

New member
Hi Asher,

I did not mean delete a post that had already been posted, but to be able to delete one cleanly when composing a reply before posting. At the moment, if I change my mind about posting a reply, and decide not too, but having written something in the reply box, I have to navigate away using the browser buttons, and things 'tend to get screwed up' to speak in technical terms. A simple additional button would do it, or else I will have to retrain myself, ensuring my brain was in gear before opening my mouth, so to speak.

Its not a major issue, just thought it would be useful, to me at least.

Maybe button labelled 'close without replying' would do the trick.

Best wishes,

Ray
 

nicolas claris

OPF Co-founder/Administrator
so, just to see what Ray means, I click on "quick reply" button, write this and then click on one of the nav links on top of page, let's see what happens…
Coming back here, the "message" window is emptied and my post has not been sent…
 

nicolas claris

OPF Co-founder/Administrator
So now, I do the same, but click on say… calendar
Exactly the same: Coming back here, the "message" window is emptied and my post has not been sent…
So I don't understand what Ray means… You don't want to post what you've written before clicking "post reply"? then just move and you're fine.

Ray if I'm wrong, please explain more!

Have a nice day

By the way, "Submit Reply" doesn't work often for me, if it happens to you, click on "Advanced" button and submit… on more mystère of this software…
 

Nill Toulme

New member
Slightly different subject — to me it's highly unintuitive that the Quick Reply box is sitting down here at the bottom of the page inviting me to put my cursor in it and start typing, but in fact you have to click a Quick Reply up in one of the messages before the text box goes active. Seems to me if it's visible, it should be active. If it's not active, then it shouldn't be visible until you click a Quick Reply button.

I also wonder why, more often than not, when you click on Post Quick Reply, pretty much nothing happens for what seems like forever (and may in fact be forever — I've never waited). Clicking Go Advanced and then Submit Reply then saves the message promptly. What's up with that?

Nill
~~
www.toulme.net
 

Ray West

New member
Hi Nicolas,

Its a decision process. If I'm writing something, and there is a couple of buttons which say submit, or preview, there is no alternative shown for cancel.

I understand what you say re returning, but on the way, I find the 'New posts' have been shortened, or something else odd seems to happen.

This is not a criticism of the folk involved, but I still find a lot of stuff on this forum is not straightforward to use. It may be connected with my age, or whatever, but I find much of it 'Kludgy'. I've no idea about this particular software package capabilities, whether the extra button is possible, or even if its deemed desireable.

Recently the whole thing _appears_ to be running slow for me, which may be nothing to do with the forum itself.

Anyway, thanks for looking, even if you 'didn't stand in my shoes' ;-)

Best wishes,

Ray
 

nicolas claris

OPF Co-founder/Administrator
Nill Toulme said:
Slightly different subject — to me it's highly unintuitive that the Quick Reply box is sitting down here at the bottom of the page inviting me to put my cursor in it and start typing, but in fact you have to click a Quick Reply up in one of the messages before the text box goes active. Seems to me if it's visible, it should be active. If it's not active, then it shouldn't be visible until you click a Quick Reply button.
Hi Nill unfortunately Vbulletin doesn't allow for this. To my knowledge… sorry.

Nill Toulme said:
I also wonder why, more often than not, when you click on Post Quick Reply, pretty much nothing happens for what seems like forever (and may in fact be forever — I've never waited). Clicking Go Advanced and then Submit Reply then saves the message promptly. What's up with that?
I do know this bug that happens randomly for long time, and have asked Asher to report this to our hosting company… no result yet…

I'm affraid I've got no good news today!

Have a cool week-end
 

nicolas claris

OPF Co-founder/Administrator
Ray West said:
Its a decision process. If I'm writing something, and there is a couple of buttons which say submit, or preview, there is no alternative shown for cancel.
Well as I've said, don't submit, it's equal to cancel… Anyway, I can't change add or delete buttons. AFAIK.

Ray West said:
I understand what you say re returning, but on the way, I find the 'New posts' have been shortened, or something else odd seems to happen.
This is not a criticism of the folk involved, but I still find a lot of stuff on this forum is not straightforward to use. It may be connected with my age, or whatever, but I find much of it 'Kludgy'. I've no idea about this particular software package capabilities, whether the extra button is possible, or even if its deemed desireable.
Please read above my answer to Nill

Sorry!
 

Nill Toulme

New member
Navigation Tip:

Make a Favorite or desktop icon with this URL (no quotes):

"http://www.openphotographyforums.com/forums/search.php?do=getdaily"

It will always bring up the last 24 hours' threads.

Nill
~~
www.toulme.net
 

nicolas claris

OPF Co-founder/Administrator
Great tip Nill, you can also find it in the OPF home page in the left hand menu:In the forums/Today's posts
Thank you for the suggestion of having it as a favorite or bookmark…
 

nicolas claris

OPF Co-founder/Administrator
Nill Toulme said:
Slightly different subject — to me it's highly unintuitive that the Quick Reply box is sitting down here at the bottom of the page inviting me to put my cursor in it and start typing, but in fact you have to click a Quick Reply up in one of the messages before the text box goes active. Seems to me if it's visible, it should be active. If it's not active, then it shouldn't be visible until you click a Quick Reply button.
Hi Nill
I made a search on this in Vbulletin:
Quick Reply
If you enable Quick Reply, a box will appear on the showthread.php page allowing users to reply to the current thread without needing to load the full newreply.php page.

When Quick Reply is enabled, you may specify whether or not users must click the Quick Reply icon in order to start typing in the Quick Reply editor.

If you choose not to require a click, the system will not know to which post a user is replying, making both the threaded and hybrid display modes non-sensical.

I guess it is wise to keep the necessity to click on "Quick Reply" as some users may use the threaded display mode...

Hope it helps to understand the complexity of interfacing the fora ;-)
 

nicolas claris

OPF Co-founder/Administrator
Nicolas Claris said:
Hi Nill unfortunately Vbulletin doesn't allow for this. To my knowledge… sorry.
I do know this bug that happens randomly for long time, and have asked Asher to report this to our hosting company… no result yet…
It could also be a Java bug… what system OS/platform/browser are using those having this problem with the "primary" submit button?
 
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