How to use the forum

If you’re not used to Message boards/Forums, or you’re from the old BBC boards and have never ventured outside of them, it can be a very daunting experience when you first visit our boards. It doesn’t look like the BBC boards and can seem very complicated to begin with, but really, it’s very simple, and should only take a short time to get used to if you follow this simple guide :)

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This guide is broken up into steps, If you feel you already know enough on one step, feel free to skip ahead to the next step :)

Step 1 – Forum Index Page

Step 2 - My Controls

Step 3 - PM's (Personal Messages)

Step 4 - Topics and Posting

Who's in Charge?

Rules
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Step 1 – Forum Index Page


Getting Started - The Index/Front Page

We’ll start by explaining the index page, or front page as some call it. This is what you first see when you visit us at either www.culttvboards.co.uk or http://s7.invisionfree.com/Cult_TV_Boards/index.php?act=idx. To be certain you’re thinking of the same page, take a look at this image, which is a screenshot of the index page, Yours may differ slightly, which isn’t a problem at all :)

At the top of the index page will be a picture, this is our banner which includes our logo, the banner will change almost every time you refresh the page or look at another page on the board. There are around 8 or 9 different banners available to see. The banner will always be at the top, whether you are posting or looking at a thread. If you click on the banner, it will always take you back to the index page :)

Underneath the banner is an advertisement by Google, which will display various different things from time to time, you can just ignore that :)

Underneath the Google Ad is a blue bar which spans across the page. At the left of the bar, it will say “Logged in as:” and then your username. If you click on your name, it will take you to your profile - we’ll discuss profiles further on ;) If you have not registered with us yet, then instead of your user name and “Logged in as:”, It will say “Welcome Guest ( Log In | Register )”. To register, click on the register link and follow the easy steps. If you already have an account with us, click on “Login In” and follow the easy steps :)

Registration is free, you will never have to pay for anything, nor do you need to reply to any emails. When registering, we do ask that you give us your real email address. We won’t bother you with any form of spam, we won’t even send you news and updates, we’d just like it because if something were to happen to the board which resulted in it being shut down for whatever reason, we would use your email address to contact you and explain to you what’s happening :)

To the right of the blue bar is “My Controls • Inbox (0) • View New Posts • My Assistant”

Step 2 – My Controls


My Controls

When you click on “My Controls”, you will be taken to a different screen, which only you can see. Every member has one and they are personal and private. It’s from here that you can add an Avatar (Picture under your name), Signature (Image/text under your posts) and various other things. We will go into detail on Avatars and Signature later on in the guide :)

On the left, in the “My Controls” screen, you will see a link called “Edit Profile Info”. Click on this and you will be taken to a screen where you can type in all your personal information that you’d like other members to see, when they click on your profile. You can tell us about your interests, your location, even your date of birth. If you enter your date of birth, your username and age will appear at the bottom of the index page on your birthday, letting everyone know that it’s your birthday :) Someone may even start a new thread wishing you a happy birthday :)

When you’ve made changes to your profile info, be sure to click on the “Amend my profile button”, which saves all the changes you have made :)

Step 3 – PM's (Personal Messages)


Inbox (0)

Topics and posts will be viewable to everyone and are not private, anyone can see, reply and quote you. The only exception to this is the Mod/Admin board, which only Moderators and Administrators can use, and The Lounge, which guests can’t see in any way. If you’d like to speak privately to anyone, you’d need to PM them. PM stands for “Personal (or Private) Message”, and it is just that. They are 100% private, only you and the person you send one to can read and reply to it, no one else, no exceptions :)

When you receive a PM, the “Inbox (0)” will flash read and the 0 will change to a 1, or more depending on how many you receive. To see your message, click on the flashing red link and it will take you to your inbox where your message will be waiting for you to open. By now you may have noticed strong similarities to PM’s and email (such as Hotmail). That’s all PM’s really are, emails that only registered members can send each other, they are also a nice, easy way of talking privately to someone in real time :)

If you’d like to send a PM to another member, simply click on their name and then click on “Personal Message Click Here”, which will take you to the text page for the message.

Just like an email, give it a title, enter your text and then click send. To reply to a pm, open it up, then either click on the “Quote" button in the top right of the pm, or the “Reply” button at the bottom of the pm, then type out your message and click send :)

Underneath the blue bar is a text link which says "Help keep the board up-to-date, Click here!", you can ignore that for now ;)

Underneath that, To the left is another text link called "Cult Tv Boards". Like the banner, if you click on it, it will take you to the index page. If you look at the index page, you can see that it’s broken down into 3 main areas, which are “About This Forum”, “Cult Tv” and “Misc”. If you were to click on one of these headings, the “Cult Tv Boards” link will change to say “Cult Tv Boards -> About This Forum” (or a different area depending on which you clicked on.

If you were to click on a thread then that would also be added to the list, this is what we call the Legend, it tells you where you are.

Underneath the Legend are the names of different Cult television programs that scroll across your screen from right to left, they don’t do anything else and are purely there for show :)

Underneath the scrolling text to the left, it will say something like "Latest News". You can ignore that for now :)


Step 4 - Topics and Posting

Now that the top part of the board and controls are out of the way, we can concentrate on the important stuff, topics and posting :)

The boards are always listed on the left hand side of the forum index, and the newest topic title for that board will always appear on the right hand side of the forum index. When you are on a board’s main page, you can see all the topics listed for the first page (Just like the BBC had). When a topic gets posted in, the topic automatically goes straight to the top of the list, then when another is posted in, or even started, that goes to the top of the list and the previous topic gets knocked down to second in line – and so on :)

Like I mentioned earlier, the board is broken down into three main areas for topics and posting.

"About This Forum" – If you ever have any problems, have any suggestions or comments about the board, or even want to trade banners with us. This is the place for all of that. Note that there are two boards for this section. One of the same name which is for what we just talked about, and one called "Admin/Mods Board", which only Administrators and Moderators can use.

The next section is called "Cult TV" – This has all the boards for all of the different shows we feature. If you want to post about a certain show, make sure you post it in the right board. If there isn’t a board for the show you’d like to post about, you can use the "Other Cult Shows" board, which is for just that ;) To enter a board, click on it’s name e.g “Alias” or “Buffy The Vampire Slayer”. Under the board names is a short description of the show and the names of the people who moderate the board

Note that some of the boards have other links in there index descriptions, these links might say "Season 1", "Season 2 or "Season 4 at US Pace". The links lead to what are known as “Sub-forums or “Sub-boards”. They are mainly used for rewatches of that boards show. So if a board had a sub-forum called “Season 1”, the moderator of that board might be posting a thread for a different season 1 episode each week on that sub-forum, and you’d then use that thread to discus that episode - Using the shows main board for all other discussions. If a show had a sub-forum with “Spoilers” or “at US Pace”, it would mean that that board is not at UK terrestrial pace, and that you should take care when reading because you might get spoiled for an episode you haven’t seen yet :) If you’re still not sure on where to post, you can always PM the moderator of a board and ask them, they don’t bite ;) much :shifty:

The last section is called “Misc” (Miscellaneous) – This has boards for things that aren’t Cult related, films, American Dramas ect. We also have a board called “The Lounge” where you can talk off topic freely, about your day, what you had for breakfast, anything really :) There is also a board for you to post and read Fanfic, but please do remember, only post fanfic that you have created.

After you’ve clicked on a board heading and you’re in its main topic page, you’ll see two buttons at the right of the screen. “New Topic” and “New Poll”. To start a new topic, click on “New Topic”. You’ll now be taken to a posting screen, which is a lot like a PM posting screen.


The Posting Screen

In the middle of the posting screen is a big white text box, it is here that you will type out your message and make whatever modifications/changes you wish.

To the left of the Posting screen, you'll see a table with emoticons (or smiles/smilies). These are little images of faces that can be used in your posts. They are mainly used to show emotion, say for example you were happy about something, you’d post your message and then put a happy faced emoticon at the end or wherever :) <- just like that ;) <- and that :lol: <- and possibly even that :ermm: :unsure:

To see the full list of available emoticons, click on the “Show all” link at the bottom of the table, which will open up a small window with all of the emotions listed, to use an emoticon, just click on it and it’s code will show up in the white text box. You don’t have to click on an emoticon to use it though, emoticons don’t show up in the white text box, you will always see their code instead, and you can type their codes straight into the box if you can remember them.

For a happy face, the code would be

Type this into the white text box, then click post and you’ll get a :) where you entered the code.

At the top of the white text box, there are some buttons and drop down boxes. These are all for making cosmetic changes to your message. You can use these to change your font in style and colour, bold, underlined or Italic – you can even use them for inserting text links to other sites and email addresses. They are called tags – To use them, click once on one of the buttons and a “[]” will appear in your text box with a letter inside, it all depends on what tag you use , bold would be

Colour would be

These are just two examples.

Place this tag at the beginning of the text you want to change, then click on the same button again and it’s closed tag will appear in the text box, usually looks something like

For example.

The closed tag needs to go at the end of the text you want to change, so you should end up with something like this.

So when you click post and you are taken to the thread view page, your text will look like this -> This is my text. You can use as many tags as you want, all at the same time, just make sure that all the tags are in order, the first tags are at the front and the closed tags are all at the back.

Quoting

If you’d like to quote another members post, just take a look at their post and in the top right corner, there will be a button called “Quote “ click on it and you’ll be taken to the posting screen. Type your message out as normal, click post and the quote will be at the top of your post.

You might also have noticed a “Preview” button next to the “Post” button. You can use this button to see a preview of your post, before submitting it for everyone to see. The preview will appear above the white text box.

Polls

To create a poll, instead of clicking on “New Topic” , Click on “New Poll”. This will take you to the familiar posting screen, but with extra options at the top. You now need to enter a topic question as well as a topic title, and for your poll options, you need to enter them in the top white text box with one option per line. You can have a maximum of 15 options. Then enter your message as normal via the other white text boxes and then click “Post” :)


Posting images and links

To post an image, you need to use the image tags, just like we did earlier with the text tags. The image tags are

In between the image tags, you should have the image’s URL (address). The address has to end in either .jpg or .gif, nothing else or the image will not show up.

So, for example

will show up as

Another way of posting an image is to simply click on the “IMG” button above the white text box and a small grey window will appear, paste or type your image URL into the little grey box, press enter and the URL with tags will show up in your post, this same thing can be done with posting links to other websites and email addresses, but instead of the “IMG” button, use the “HTTP://” button for links and the “@” button for email addresses.

Who's in Charge?

There are three main types of member group, there are Administrators, Moderators and Members. Members are exactly that, they are ordinary people who have registered and post topics/posts ect. They will have 5 gold stars underneath their avatars. If you have registered here with us, you are a member.

Moderators have 5 big blue stars, they are members who run boards. They are in charge of a board or boards and make sure that everything runs smoothly. They have the right to edit or delete your posts and can also edit your signature and avatar if needed (due to them being over sized for example). Moderators names also show up in the colour purple instead of blue.

Administrators own the board and have power over everything, they have 5 big red stars and their names show up in the colour orange. There are only three of us.

If you ever need help with anything, or have any questions, please don’t be afraid to pm any Mod or Admin, it’s what we’re here for :)

Rules

Click here to view our own Forum rules. If you are unsure of anything, you only have to ask :)