MEETING 22.05.13 - Using the Forum

[jennie tpf]

Hi,

I am not sure if a reason the forum is kind of sat here in a corner gathering dust is because people aren't sure how to use it or (like me) are overwhelmed by the number of topics going on. I realise most of you do not need this but I am sure there are some out there that are less familiar with this kind of platform and I thought giving a few pointers on using the forum might make it easier and more accessible.

I will speak to Daniel about maybe editing the topics a bit. For now I would suggest just focussing on the MEETINGS area as that is where most current activity will be going on. The other topics will be a good way for us to slowly gather information that will eventually be needed for the website i.e. participating companies, freelancers, suppliers etc. so although they will be fairly quiet for now, and won’t really be of day to day interest, it is certainly worth keeping them to be built up slowly. Things like Questions and Answers (near the bottom) could eventually be a really useful tool for all of us if/when the forum gets some momentum/ traffic.

Nothing has been happening on here for a while so a good place to start is clicking 'mark all topics read' on the top right to clear your viewing history. From now on when you logon just click 'view posts since last visit' for a quick look at what has been happening since you last looked. You can also click 'view unanswered posts' to see if there is anything pending there you could contribute to.

A quick guide (explained at the bottom of the page) is that the black text circle next to a topic means nothing new, a red one means new posts.

In any given thread/conversation you can also click 'watch this topic for replies' under the last post. then when you next login and select the main topic (MEETINGS) click on 'actions' on the top right, select 'topics being watched'. this is a good way to keep track of topics that you may not have contributed to/ have forgotten about but which seemed interesting at the time. You can always deselect it from your watched list if it is no longer relevant.

Most importantly we need to get people to join up to this as the method of communication - I am sure it says something like 14 registered users! And lots of unanswered posts with many views. It is important that we all contribute or it won't work.

Hope this wasn't totally useless information and look forward to seeing you all around here a bit more often! If anyone does need any other assistance with navigating around the forum/ getting to grips with it, I would be more than happy to help so just shout.

thanks Jennie