Nikolai Sklobovsky
New member
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
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