This tutorial is a set of guidelines intended to help those who have trouble getting around the site. Taking a few minutes to read this will likely help you navigate. So, you arrive at Frisco.org. After the software change the landing page is the forum index: So, what now? It depends on what you want to do. Do you; 1) Check the site for new posts since your last visit, or 2) Go to some particular forum on the site? Let's start with New Posts.
New Posts: You want to know what has happened here since you were last here. You have two choices; 1) New Posts and 2) Recent Posts. What's the difference? Let's look at the page: New Posts: Threads that have been posted to that you have not read. Recent Posts: All threads recently posted to, regardless of whether or not you have read them or not. By the way, a little off the beaten path here but remember this: If you go to the MEDIA section, those link disappear and show things like New Media. But, you can still easily get to the New and Recent Posts links as demonstrated below: Al you have to do is mouseover (not click) on "forums" and this menu will drop down and you can see with the green arrows those same links.
Let's look as the "Recent Posts" page: In the image below, look at the red line and the posts both above and below it. What's the difference? Note that above the red line, all of the threads have bold titles and all of the topics below the red line do not. Why is that? The ones with the bold titles contain posts that YOU have not read. (Everyone sees something different.) The thread titles that are not in bold (below the red line) do not contain posts that you have not read.
This brings up a question: How does the site know what I have and have not read? COOKIES. Cookies are small files that websites (including this one) set on your computer. The cookie keeps you logged in and helps remember what you have and have not seen.. IF you are one of those guys that deletes cookies or uses software to block them, then none of this is going to work for you.
MARK FORUMS READ: What's this? If you click Mark Forums Read, you'll see this: When you click to mark the forums read, then everything will be marked as read and the New Posts page will not show any threads until someone posts:
Ok, let's turn a corner here. Don't get thrown off by these next screenshots because they are from TrainBoard, not Frisco.org. They will make my point easier. In this screenshot, we are looking at the list of forums (the main page). Note that the green arrows point to the forums that are shown in bold title: These forums are listed in bold because they have posts in them that I have not read. Now, let's go into one of the forums. Here we are looking at the list of topics inside a forum. Note that only two threads show bold titles: Why is that? Easy, it's because only two threads in the forum have posts in them that I have not read.
Now, a lot of conversations here have focused on finding new content. In other words, how do I read just the posts I have not seen? Here we go (examples from TrainBoard but the same on Frisco.org): Look at the following picture... This looks confusing but look at the top green arrow. It points at a little dot to the left of the thread title. Note that when I mouseover that there is a little popup (second arrow) that shows "Go to first unread message." When you click on that, it takes you directly to the first message in the thread that you have not read. Awesome! It is very important to understand this as this is a great help to you.
Final point: What's this? This little doo-dad is visible on all pages. Click on it! This thing is your best friend! You can use it to go anywhere from anywhere on the site. Genius! Use it!
This concludes this tutorial. This has been intended to teach people how to navigate the site and find new content. If you don't understand, please ask! We will get you there. Charlie
One thing that I might add that can make it even more productive: If I have multiple threads in a forum that are unread, I will right click on each of the unread thread titles in bold and select Open link in new tab or Open link in new window. That way I don't have to find my way back to the New Posts each time I finish reading the posts in the individual threads, I just close the tab or new window of the thread that I have read.
Charlie, as a training specialist, I can tell you that you have done an excellent job on this tutorial.
