Chapter 3
Clicking on Complete Registration completes the process, and a confirmation page is displayed.
Touring the Forum—Members
A member, also known as a "registered user", will see a number of changes in the way that the forum looks and behaves, and they will have a lot more options and customizations open to them.
New Threads
To begin with, they can create new threads for others to read by clicking on the New Thread button and filling in a short form.
The main components of the form are:
•Title—the title of the thread
•Message—the main text of the message
•Post Icons—icons that appear next to the post title
These three fields will need to be filled in before a new thread can be posted.
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Chapter 3
Finally you click on the Submit New Thread button. Not only can the post contain text, but you can also use emoticons (also called smilies—those little smiling-face graphics) to add character to a post. Also, files can be attached to the posts and made available to other members.
At this stage, you might be thinking that this seems like a lot of power for an ordinary member, and you might not be sure that they should have this power. Don't worry—when we look at the discussion board from the point of view of the administrator, you will find that you actually have a lot of power at your disposal to control what members can and can't do—just because they can do something by default, it doesn't mean that you can't take that power away from them later!
Replying
Posting a reply is similar to starting a new thread. All you need to do is click on the Post Reply button, and you are taken to a short form similar to the one you saw when you created the new thread.
The main difference between posting a new thread and a reply is that a reply does not require a new title.
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Editing a Message
Editing a message (say to remove typos or to add something) is an ability that most users will want at some point or other. And vBulletin makes this easy.
All you need to do is click on the Edit button. This loads the current message into a form like the one used to post it.
You then can edit the post, or delete it.
Controls on editing
Different user permissions can be set for editing posts, and many forums utilize rules where a message cannot be edited after a fixed period of time (a few hours usually). There are several good reasons for this. The first is that edited messages don't show up as new messages, and this makes it hard for the administrators and moderators to moderate comments. Secondly, editing old messages places an additional load on the server (because current messages are cached while old ones are not).
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