How to Post a New Topic

Please don't post the same topic more than once!

To post a new topic, you must be logged in as a registered member of the MacFixIt Forums. If you're not a registered user, you can click on the create a free account link in the blue bar at the top of any Forums page. (If you're a registered user but can't seem to find the New Topic button referred to below, you may not be logged in. Look at the blue bar at the top of the page: if it reads Existing users, log in. New users, create a free account. Lost password?, then click the link to log in.)

Where to Post a New Topic

Assuming you're logged in, the next step is to figure out where to post your topic. If you've been reading threads here for awhile, you'll probably have developed some understanding of which types of topics belong where, but if you're new to the Forums, you can get a sense of the way topics are classified by studying the main Forums list, accessed by clicking the Forum List in the navigation bar.

The brief descriptions that accompany each forum name are the obvious starting points, but questions sometimes fail to fall neatly into any single classification. In these cases, how do you choose?

First, please don't try to "cover all the bases" by posting in more than one forum! Community-based troubleshooting is most effective when all the participants in the process are on the same page. This isn't possible when multiple dialogs are taking place among different people in different locations.

Beyond the forum descriptions, you may find that spending a few moments studying the overall structure of the forums—which forums are grouped together in which categories—will help clarify where to post a topic that at first glance appears equally suited to two different locations.

Ultimately, though we appreciate posters giving thoughtful attention to where to post, the fact is that it's sometimes a judgment call. Do your best, and if a moderator feels that a different forum is better-suited to your topic, he or she will move your thread and leave a pointer to it in the original location, so you shouldn't have any trouble tracking it to its new location.

Composing your Post

Once you've chosen a forum to post your topic in, click on that forum's name in the Forum List to be taken to that forum's list of posts. Just above the list of posts, you'll see a New Topic button and a Forum Options link. Click on New Topic, and you'll open what I'll call the Post Composing window:



Enter a concise but descriptive title for your post in the Subject text box (A). Subject lines that are too long will not fully display in the forum's index page, making it difficult for those viewing the page to know what the post is about. Subject lines that are too short, vague, or otherwise non-descriptive are likely to be passed over for the same reason: many users who read posts in order to provide help have only a limited time available to do so, and are disinclined to view a post titled "HELLLPPP!!!", for instance, on the chance that it may pose a question that they can answer.

If you like, select one of the Posting Icons (B), or No icon (otherwise, the default book icon will be selected). This icon will precede the title of your post in the forum's post list. Your choice of icons, though not of great signficance, may help provide those browsing the forum's post list with another clue as to the type of post to expect.

Enter the text of your post in the Post text box (D). The size of this text box can be decreased/increased by clicking the up/down arrows at the right of the UBBCode Tool Bar (C). The other tools in the Tool Bar are all shortcuts for formatting your post using UBBCode. From left to right, they allow you to create hyperlinks, email links, and lists; make bold, italic, underlined, or strikethrough text; put text in a Spoiler box, a Quote box, a Code box or a PHP box (I'm not sure what the function of that one is); insert Smilies, apply color to text, and choose an alternative font or font size.

Using the Preview Post button (F), you can see how your post will display once it's submitted. Note that unlike earlier versions of the Forums software, this version of UBBThreads uses AJAX to provide the preview beneath the Post Composing window without loading a new page. If your post is fairly lengthy, you may not see the preview at all unless you scroll down.

If you've created a signature as part of your profile, you can choose whether or not to add it to your post (E); you can also choose whether to add your topic to your Watched Topics, but that's a subject for another post.

Click Submit—You're (almost) Done

Please read your finished post after your new thread loads! It's easy to overlook big mistakes when you're focusing on details, and seeing the "published" post often allows you to catch errors you missed in the composing stage. If you do want to make corrections/additions/deletions, please don't repost; just click on the Edit button at the bottom of your displayed post and make your changes in the Post Editing window, using the same tools and techniques you employed to compose the post in the first place.

That's about it. Good luck!