A Guide to Navigating the Forum

[MaraAdmin]

Introduction

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So, you signed up and introduced yourself. What now? How does any of this work? Why are there two search options on the same page? If you have found yourself asking those questions, this is the guide for you. Here, I will go over aspects of the forum I think defer the most from other roleplay forums. Therefore, any qualms about migrating from another site are addressed and you have more time to roleplay, instead of spending 3 hours just trying to figure out how to make or reply to a topic. If something you have trouble with isn't listed in this guide, then feel free to send me a PM after reading.

Navigation Bar

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Home: Self-explanatory, brings you back to the forum's default homepage. Rules: Again self-explanatory, an easy way to check the rules before you go all keyboard warrior. Search: A link to the Advanced Search, which is more in-depth than the quick-access search bar. Here you can search for keywords in topic titles or general posts. Usergroups: View the groups you are a part of. The only groups that exist right now are staff groups, but this feature will become less redundant for regular users in the future. Profile: Brings you to the profile editing field, so you can change your contact information and such. Messages: Informs you if you've received any private messages and brings you to your inbox regardless. When you scroll past the boundaries of the navigation bar, it will collapse into a little button on the left of your screen. Clicking this will cause the Quick Navigation dialogue to show, which is identical to the regular navigation bar in all but presentation. It's useful to note that Quick Navigation also features buttons for instantly scrolling to the top or bottom of the forum.

Forumotion Navbar

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This particular navigation bar isn't as useful for navigating the forum, but it still has some significant features that can help. First of all, it acts like an on-site notification bar, so you can disable email notifications without the stress of missing out on activity. Furthermore, you can view your profile (as other members would view it), topics, posts, private messages and topics you're currently watching. You can click the little arrow to collapse it and it'll stay there until you need to open it again.

Widget Menu

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You'll notice there are two plus icons on either side of the forum screen, (hopefully) perfectly aligned with the forum contents. These are the buttons to active the right and left widget menus, which reduces clutter and provides more space for people to display their quality posts. The widget menus contain: --Left Menu Calendar: If there are any topics linked to the calendar's current month, you'll see them here. Notepad: Uses your browser's cookies, if you clear them your notes will disappear. They save on a by-browser basis, not by-user. Similar topics: Shows you topics that have similar (or identical) keywords to the one you're currently viewing. Latest topics: The ten most recently created topics on the entire forum. --Right Menu Chatbox: An easy access version of the chatbox, made for multitaskers. The full chatbox is recommended, though the widget form works just as good. Friends: Displays people you have added to your friends list and their current status (online or offline), à la Steam's friends list. Most active topics: The ten most active topics on the forum, determined by the frequency in which people post in it. Most viewed topics: The ten most viewed topics on the forum — multiple views from the same user count towards this. Abuse the system and I'll find out.

RP Subforums

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At long last, the main feature of the forum — the magnum opus. A lot of forums share the subforum style that Chaotic Neutral has, but I want to clarify anyway for those rare sites that use different styles of categorisation. A singular roleplay subforum is technically a 3 in one. For the sake of this example, let's use Adept Roleplay. There's Adept Roleplay, which is used to post OOC (Out Of Character) and Interest Check threads. (For the sake of even better organisation, it's required that OOC/Interest Check threads specify tags somewhere in their topic title or description.) Listed in the Adept Roleplay subforum are two sub-subforums — In Character and Character Sheets. These should be pretty self-explanatory, but I'll spell it out for you anyway. In CS, you make a thread for players to store their character sheets after being accepted in the OOC, either for quick reference or just to showcase them. On the other hand, IC is where the 'main' thread of a roleplay gets made, the place where the roleplaying actually happens. It's up to you if you want to link to both of these threads in your OOC, though it's highly recommended that you do so. If you're unsure if you've set up your roleplay correctly, just let a moderator or higher know and they'll be willing to help you.

Conclusion

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Aaaand that's about it. Now that you (hopefully) know your way around, get out there and get roleplaying! Like I said in the introduction, if you're confused about anything and it's not discussed here, shoot me a PM and I'm more than happy to help. I'll update this guide whenever I add new features that I think could be confusing for new and existing members alike, and if I don't then give me a slap round the head to get me into gear.