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Posting in the Basin Forums

This guide reviews how to post on the Basin forums, describes formatting techniques, and reveals some of the tricks for creating special effects.

Contents

The Basics

The basic functions of creating a thread or posting in an existing thread are similar to forums hosted by other organizations, though our forum pages offer more extensive options than are typically found elsewhere.

If you haven't registered on the Basin forums already, you need to before you can begin posting.  Be sure to review the Forum Guidelines as well.

Once you are ready to post, feel free to launch right in.  "Learning by doing" is the quickest way to get off the ground.  You can use this guide as a reference for specific questions that arise along the way.

You can also use this guide as a tutorial, in which case you'll find out early on everything about posting that you are likely ever to want to know.

Always feel free to use the Testing Grounds forum.  It exists solely for folks to try out the posting tools and techniques available here.  Open a new thread there whenever you want to try something.

The Post Drafting Interface

Regardless of whether you are starting a new thread, posting to an existing thread, or editing an earlier post, the Basin gives you virtually the same interface to work in:

At the center of the interface is a large white field for your text input.  That's the Post Window, and it works like a word processor.  The buttons and icons that surround it are tools to help you create a post, but you don't have to use them.  In fact, except when you start a thread (in which case you must also enter text in the Topic Title field), every post you will ever write can be created entirely by typing in the Post Window.

Posting a Response

To add a post to an existing thread you must start with that thread open.  At both the top and bottom of the thread are a set of buttons:

Left-click the "Add Reply" button, which takes you to the standard post drafting interface.  Enter your text in the Post Window, and when you are satisfied click the "Add Reply" button.  Your post is added at the bottom of the thread, and is automatically listed in the forum index as the most recent reply in that thread.

Starting a Thread

To begin a thread you need to be in the forum in which you want it to appear.  The forum page and each page of threads in that forum has a button to start a thread.  It takes you to the same drafting interface as when you draft reply posts, with two additional fields.  The first of these is the "Topic Title" field.  What you enter here is what appears in the first line of the "Topic Title" forum page entry for your thread.  The second field is the "Topic Description."  An entry here is optional, and appears as a subheading in the second line for your post in the forum index of posts.  The Basin recommends that you use these fields to state concisely what your post is about, so that forum readers will know whether they should read and respond to it just by scanning the entries for all posts on the forum page.  Be particularly careful when you enter the Topic Title and Topic Description.  Once you post the thread you cannot edit those two entries.

Creating a Poll

A poll is a variant of a standard thread.  To create one, click the button that is on every page of each forum.  It launches an interface page very similar to the post drafting interface, except that it includes a mandatory field for input of the post question (with a maximum of about 250 characters), and a mandatory field for you to define 2 to 10 poll choices.  Most of the ib codes for regular posts work when you create a poll, but a few do not, such as the LIST code.  For most of the Basin guilds' forums, including the D2 forums, the software is set so that you can include url links and imported images in your poll.

The standard poll allows viewers to vote and also post replies in the thread.  But you may enable the "Make Poll Only" option, which allows respondents to vote but not post to the thread.  Viewers can see the results of a poll only if they submit a vote.  But in addition to adopting one of the poll options, a forum viewer can vote by clicking the "View Results (Null Vote)" button, which makes the voting results visible without tallying any vote by that person.

Previewing Your Post

To get an advance look at how your post will appear before you actually submit it, click the "Preview Post" button.  It takes you to a screen that displays your post as it would appear in the forums, with the editing interface for your post below that.  As you make more edits you can continue to click "Preview Post," check how your edits look, and continue with editing until you are fully satisfied.  Your post isn't added to the thread until you click the "Add Reply" button.

Particularly as you begin using ib code tags, the "Preview Post" function is essential to creating the appearance that you want.

Editing Your Post

Even after you have created a thread or posted a reply you can go back and edit it.  Just click the button.  It takes you to the same drafting interface as when you are creating a new post.

Submitting an edited post on the D2 forums automatically generates a time/date note as part of your post to record the fact that you've edited it.  You should consider including a comment in your edited post to describe what edits you have made.  Readers will then know how your post has changed since the last time they may have seen it.  If you are making a substantive edit and folks who have earlier read or responded to the thread might not re-read your original post to see what you've changed, consider adding a new post to the end of the thread so readers are alerted to your edits.

Creating Your Signature

The bottom section of each post is reserved for your signature.  You create a signature in your account controls.  (Click "My Controls" at the top of any forum page, then "Edit Signature".) The signature editing interface works exactly the same as the post drafting interface, and ib codes work the same way in both fields.  However, there is a limit to the size of the signature field, so test your signature if it is lenthy.  The only other restriction is that image files may not be included in the signature field.  Although the forum software accommodates them, the Basin prohibits them both to maintain a relatively clean appearance to the forums and to cut down loading time for readers.

Choosing an Avatar

Nearly everyone posting in the forums has an avatar.  Many people choose one from the menu the Basin provides.  Others supply their own.  Either way, you set your avatar by going to your Controls page (via the "My Controls" link at the top of each page in the forums), and then clicking "Edit Avatar Settings."  Scroll through the list of pre-installed avatars to choose one hosted by the Basin.

You can use your own avatar by entering the url for the image you want in the appropriate field of the form.  A quick way to do that is to bring up the image on your browser (even if it is part of another web page), right-click on it, and choose "Copy Shortcut" from the menu.  This copies the url for the image onto your clipboard.  Place your cursor in the field for filling in your avatar, and paste (Ctrl-V) the shortcut you just copied.

If you set your avatar to an image on your computer's hard drive it will display correctly on your own computer, but no one else will be able to see it.  That's why an avatar needs an internet url to work properly.  If you plan on linking to an image at a third party website, be sure you have their permission.  Most of the time it's best to put the image you want on a server site of your own, or of someone you know.

If you go searching for a third party avatar look closely at how big it is, both in display size and file size.  The maximum space for a Basin avatar is 64 pixels in height by 64 pixels in width.  You can reduce either dimension in the "Edit Avatar Settings" page to prevent the image you choose from being distorted.  Even more important, check the size of the image file.  Forum pages frequently have over a dozen avatars, and for pages to load smoothly (particularly for users whose access is via a modem), the presence of a huge avatar file somewhere on the page can slow loading to a crawl.  A good rule of thumb is to limit the file size of your avatar to 20,000 bytes or so.  To check the size of any image, right-click on it and then choose "Properties" from the menu.  If you want to use an avatar that is significantly larger than 20kb, image software programs like PhotoShop and many others give you options to convert an existing image into a much smaller file.