The Africa Guide Forum Help And FAQ

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The Africa Guide Forum Help And FAQ

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Table of Contents
1. About The Africa Guide Forums 2. Useful Definitions 3. Forum Icons and What they do 4. Using the Forum 5. Cool Tricks

1. About The Africa Guide Forums

Here are some facts regarding The Africa Guide Forums:

These Forums are intended to be a discussion area for all African countries and African continent related subjects.
Please do not post messages outside of the above subject areas.
This Forum is a moderated discussion forum. A moderator is assigned to each forum(s) by the webmaster and, once assigned, is responsible for keeping the integrity of his/her forum(s).

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2. Useful Definitions

Public Forum: Public forum is where everyone can participate without registration. Everyone is allowed to read and post new threads. At this time ALL Forums are Public.
We would like to keep them that way but may have to switch to Protected if the forums are abused.
Protected Forum: Protected forum is read-only for non-registered members. That is, if you want to post your own messages, you must first register.
Private Forum: Private forum is only accessible by registered members with one of the following user group: admin, moderator, and member. In order to access the forums, however, the moderator of each forum must grant access on user to user basis.
Main Index: Main Index is the 'front door' of our Forum. This is where all available forums are listed. In addition to names, forum description, number of current threads, and forum moderator name is displayed.
(Forum Name) Index: This is where the listing of threads for a given forum are displayed.
Thread: A thread is the page containing threaded messages for a given topic.
Top: Top of a given thread. Equivalently, the Table of Contents.

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3. The Africa Guide Forums Icons

We currently use [text links] but icons can also be used..
There are several icons and/or text links in each page. Here's what they do:

For Everyone

FOLDER icon...If you are logged on and you are on the Main page, the threads with this folder icon does not contain any new messages.

NEW FOLDER icon...If you are logged on, the threads with this folder icon contain new messages.

LOGIN icon or [Login/Logout] textlink...If you choose to, you can login at the beginning of your discussion session. This will allow the script to display which threads contain new replies since you last MARKed a forum (See MARK button below).

LOGGED ON ONLY - NEW icon or [New Messages] textlink...If you are logged on, clicking on this ICON will bring up all new messages in forums that have been marked.

LOBBY icon or [Main Index] textlink...can be accessed from both MAIN page and from each messages. It takes you to the MAIN Forums page.

MAIN icon or [(Forum Name) Index] textlink...it takes you to the main page of a given forum.

HELP icon or [Help] textlink...displays this page.

LOGGED ON ONLY - MARK icon or [Mark Forums] textlink...time stamp to mark the last time you finished reading threads in given forum. If you MARK for the LOBBY, it will mark all the forums.

POST icon or [Post] textlink...button can be accessed from the MAIN page. It is used to post a new topic (thread).

EMAIL icon or [SEND EMAIL] textlink...this is displayed if a poster submits his/her e-mail address. You can click on this button to directly e-mail him/her. Be sure to remove the phrase 'REMOVE_THIS' from the the email address.

LOGGED ON ONLY - PROFILE icon or [PROFILE] textlink...this is displayed if the author of given message is registered user and has his/her profile setup.

LOGGED ON ONLY - EDIT icon or [EDIT] textlink...it is used to edit your message. This feature is only available to users who are registered. Of course, you must be the owner of the message in order to edit it.

REPLY icon or [REPLY] textlink...it is only accessed from each THREAD. You can reply to a given message by clicking on this icon.

REPLY WITH QUOTE icon or [REPLY WITH QUOTE] textlink...it is only accessed from each THREAD. You can reply to a given message by clicking on this icon. Doing so will include the original message in the textarea so that you can respond to specific topics.

TOP icon or [TOP] textlink...let you jump to top of a THREAD. Takes you back to the table of contents.

SEARCH icon or [SEARCH] textlink...allows you to search the discussion forum(s) - you can search either current threads or archives.

LOGGED ON ONLY - ALERT icon or [ALERT] textlink...button allows you to alert administrator of bad message. You must be a registered member in order to use this function.

For Administrator and Moderators

ARCHIVE icon allows administrator or moderator to archive given thread without starting the administration script.

REMOVE icon allows administrator or moderator to remove given thread without starting the administration script.

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4. Using The Africa Guide Forum

Registration:

If you'd like to participate in Private forums, you must first register. The Registration form can be accessed by clicking on the 'Login' icon. A 'Register' button will be displayed on the login page if we have decided to enabled it. If it is not shown, you must e-mail the webmaster for information on how to register.

Navigation:

Getting around the Forums is easy: you can navigate either by using icons or using hyper links. For example, you can use the forum links at the bottom of each page to jump from one forum to another. Or, you can instead use the Main Index link/icon to go back to Main Index and choose a forum from there.

Starting New Thread (Topic):

You can start a new thread by clicking on the POST icon. If you are trying to post a new thread to a private forum, you will need to log-on first.

Replying to an existing message:

You can reply to any given message by clicking on the REPLY link/icon directly below the message you are replying to. If you click on "Include Original Message on Reply" check box, the original message will be included in your POST REPLY form.

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5. Cool Tricks

Here are couple of really cool features that you can use...

Embedding URL or Hyper link

The forum script automatically removes all HTML tags. However, you can still embed a URL simply by typing the URL. That is, if you type
http://www.yahoo.com
The forum will automatically link it and display
http://www.yahoo.com

Embedding Some Default Icons

There are a few cool icons that you can embed directly into your message. For example, if you type :-) or :-( or ;-) you will get and and

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