Registration & Login
This blog does not support anonymous contributions, so you are required to create an account before posting. To take advantage of all the features offered, such as setting your own avatar, tracking post counts, emailing users, private messages and many other you will need to have an account. It only takes a few seconds to register, and it is recommended you do so.
To create an account you will need to visit the Registration page and complete the form for creating a new account. Here you will specify details such as your login name, email address and specify a password.
After successfully registering you should have a username and password. You can then visit the login page and enter your username and password to login.
When logging in if you do not check the ‘Remember Me’ option you will be automatically logged off after 30 minutes of inactivity. If you would like the site to always log you in automatically, please check the ‘Remember Me’ checkbox.
If you forgot your username and/or password you can visit the Forget Your Password page and have both your username and a new password emailed to you by entering the email account you're registered with. You will be sent a new password since we store your password encrypted and have no way of retrieving the original value. Once you receive your username and new password you can login and change your password.
If you’ve registered and can’t login, check to ensure you have a valid username and password. If you are sure the username and password are valid, but still can’t login you may either require account activation or your account may be on hold. In this case it is best to contact the board administrator(s) or moderator(s).
First check to ensure your username and password are correct. If you still can’t login your account has either been put on hold or deleted due to inactivity. Please contact the board administrator(s) or moderator(s).
User Profile & Settings
A profile is information about your account that controls how you view information within this blog. This includes details about posts you’ve contributed to, personal information you wish to share such as your web address or weblog address, as well as setting that control how you interact with this blog site such as: themes, time zone, and many other settings.
Setting your timezone will display all dates and time relative to your time zone.
The date format used to display any date information can be configured from your profile.
Email tracking is a feature which will send emails to you when messages that you are subscribed to change. You can turn off all email tracking globally from your profile.
To protect the privacy of users who have shared their information or to prevent unwanted/unsolicited emails, you are required to be logged in before viewing/using these areas.
Privacy & Security
Once logged in you can change your password from your Profile page.
Unless the administrator has configured the site to allow username changes you cannot change you username. Otherwise you can change your username from the Profile page.
Once logged in, you can change your private email address from your Profile page.
You can set the option in your profile and your name will not appear in any member listings, including the listing of who is online.
Posting
Yes and no. You cannot type HTML directly into the editor. If you are using Internet Explorer the default editor for creating new posts will be a Rich Text Editor that will automatically format posts using HTML. If you post with a browser other than Internet Explorer a standard HTML textbox is used and BBCode can be used to mark-up posts.
BBCode is a special syntax for formatting plain text posts.
Yes, however, this requires the moderator(s) or administrator(s) to enable this permission for user’s on a blog-by-blog basis.
Emoticons are graphical elements that can be added within the body of a post to add emotions to the post. Common examples are the use of smilies within the contents of a post. Community Server comes with a pre-defined set of emoticons, however the administrator can add additional ones.
You can reply to an existing post using either the Reply or Quote image buttons displayed with the post. If you do not see the Reply or Quote image buttons when viewing a post you either do not have permissions to reply or the post may not allow replies.
If the administrator or moderator has configured the blog or your role to allow editing of posts you will see an Edit image button next to posts you have made. Clicking on this image button will allow you to edit your post.
If the administrator or moderator has configured the blog or your role to allow deleting posts you will see a Delete image button next to new posts you have made. If a post you have made has one or more replies you will no longer be able to delete the post.
The administrator may have specified a word filter for posts. When word filters are enabled certain words that are deemed to be offensive are filtered and replaced with the ‘*’ character.
See How do I add Signature to my Post? in the User Profile and Settings section.
See What is an avatar? And How do I Set my Avatar in the User Profile and Settings section.
User Groups & Permissions
Permissions control what you are or are not allowed to do while browsing the site. The permissions you are granted control all aspects of your view within Community Server.
An administrator is the highest permission level within Community Server. By default, an administrator has full permissions to perform any action, e.g. moderating posts, approving users, and so on.
A moderator is the second highest permission level. By default a moderator can perform any number of tasks. This includes approving posts, moving posts, deleting posts, editing posts, or banning users. If you have a problem the best place to start is with a moderator. Moderators belong to varying groups configured by the Administrator.
A user group, also known as a role, is grouping of common users for the purpose of assigning permissions. In addition to common permission assignment a role can also be used to display an image for a user in that role. Roles make the job of administering and moderating the site easier since users can be assigned to roles and then permission applied based on those roles.
Private Messages
A private message is like email within Community Server. You can send a private message to other users within this Community Server site that is visible only to them. No private information, such as the user's email address, is ever disclosed.