An introduction to starting threads and quoting

[HiDesert]

If you've been around forums a while, this will probably be old hat. If you're new to forums, however, this will show you how to... well, do the things the title says.

To start a new thread, go to the forum view and click on the "New Thread" button.



That will get you to a screen that looks like this:



Enter a title (and good titling is an art; you want it to catch attention, but also be clear), type your text, and if it's at all complicated (has links, different fonts, etc), it's best to use the preview function first (arrow 1) and then submit it (arrow 2). A few of the other buttons are also identified above.

I'll assume the "Post reply" button is pretty self-explanatory, so I'll move on to quoting. You might want to quote a post if it's not the most recent and you want to make it clear what you're replying to, or you can quote (and edit the quote) to make it clear which sentence(s) of a long post you are replying to. Click on this button to quote:



The result will look like this:



You can do whatever you want [ ]between the brackets[ ] and the result will look like this:



But if you are cutting down and lose a bracket from either end, you'll get a messier post. So when quoting, either quote the whole thing, or make sure {quote=name,number} is all there at the beginning, and {/quote} is all there at the end.

[HiDesert]

Now for a more advanced trick; multi-quoting. Sometimes you want to answer one previous post, and then make a related comment on another previous post. You can do this with two separate posts, but that clutters up the thread, and doesn't let you show off your mad TriumphRAT skillz. So here's the sophisticated way to do it:

Click on this button for each post you want included in your multi-quote:



Then click on Reply. Once again, you can trim the quotes if necessary, add your pithy comments, and click on preview. Just to make sure it's all correct. Then submit reply. The result will look like this:



Finally, you can also use the quick quote button to reply to a particular post. That button is shown here:



This takes you straight to the usual reply view, with the text already quoted. It's really the same as using the quote button, as far as I can see. Here's the quoted text as it looks before you hit submit.



I hope this was helpful. If you have any questions, save 'em. I'm going riding.