Marcus-SanDiego
12-16-2010, 08:48 AM
Let this thread serve as a road map for ZHPMafia.com. Some will be old hat to some while it will be new to others.
I'll make a list of features on this site, in no particular order, so that it makes your experience here as enjoyable as possible.
First, there are many ways to get back to the top of the forum -- without having to use the scroll bar to do it. There is a ZHP Mafia graphic of the bottom of the site. You can use that to get back to the home page. Likewise, there is a button at the bottom of the site that says "Top." Use that to get back to the top. Ditto the link that says: "BMW 330 ZHP Mafia Performance Package | Official ZHP Mafia Forum." And, of course, you can always click the ZHP Mafia banner at the top to refresh the home page. Not surprisingly, the little icon, that looks like a house, will also refresh the home page.
Next, there are two ways to figure out if you have any unread threads or posts on this site. The "New Posts" button at the top of the site (top left on the navigation bar) will take you to a page that lists all of your unread threads.
Of course, dark blue roundels on the home page also signify that you have unread topics. A light, light blue roundel means that you're up to date on your reading.
I suspect that the most important tools for everyone exists in the box where you compose responses or create new posts and threads.
There are two ways to reply to messages on this forum. You can do a quick reply, which has less tools, or you can go advanced, which gives you a panoply of things.
Quick Reply user interface:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v125/marcussandiego/quickreply.jpg
The four most important buttons for me are off to the right side. You have the link function, which allows you to embed a link -- with a description. Here is an example:
My Favorite Forum on the Site (http://www.zhpmafia.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?2-General-Forum)
Then you have the "insert image" icon, which is used to embed a picture on our site (while the picture is hosted elsewhere, such as Photobucket). That's how I embedded the previous pictures in this post.
The third one over -- moving from left to right -- is the "insert video" icon. If you're ever on YouTube, for example, and you like a video that you'd like to share with ZHPMafia, you just grab the YouTube link and embed it here.
Examples:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5DuORx8eZdM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A9AXwmy9Sqs
Finally, you have the wrap icon. This is most useful when you want to quote a bunch of long text that is not your own.
For example:
ZHPMafia is all about the ZHP. However, there are other things we're interested in. For example, we're interested in literature. One of our favorite passages includes this:
Reading groups provide a fruitful site for examining women's uses of literature in life, since discussing books with other women gives rise to insights that come with sharing perspectives on both literature and participants' lives. This research focuses on white women's reading groups in both nineteenth- and twentieth-century Houston, Texas. Nineteenth-century groups found in their literary and associational practices the warrant to embark on a broad program of collective action; twentieth-century groups, by and large, severed this link yet still met important needs for women, such as providing the occasion for reflective normative discussions. Comparing the continuities and disjunctures between women's reading groups over time demonstrates that broad social and cultural "frames" (to use Erving Goffman's [1974] term) strongly influence how literature enters our individual and collective lives.
Of course, that's BS. None of us are interested in that but you know what I'm saying. This seems like an appropriate time to add a smiley. Since I want full access to all of the smileys, I will go advanced at this point.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v125/marcussandiego/goadvanced.jpg
I could choose one of the smileys below (a post icon) but I like the ones off to the right. I'll hit the "[More]" link. :conversation
Instead of hitting that "more" key, I could have just used a colon ( : ) and a smiley name to insert the smiley to make the group smiley appear.
Below the "post icons" section, there is a "tags" section. You use that to identify the kind of thread we're in. Here, I think I will tag this particular thread as "tutorial." If there are other threads at ZHPMafia.com with the tutorial tag, someone will be able to find all of them with a simple click of the tutorial link.
Another invaluable tool is the "similar threads" feature. You can find other threads, just like the one you're reading, at the very bottom of each thread. If you're reading a thread about DIS software, chances are that there will be other threads on the site that discussed that topic as well. If that's the case, you'll see similar threads at the bottom of the page.
I'll make a list of features on this site, in no particular order, so that it makes your experience here as enjoyable as possible.
First, there are many ways to get back to the top of the forum -- without having to use the scroll bar to do it. There is a ZHP Mafia graphic of the bottom of the site. You can use that to get back to the home page. Likewise, there is a button at the bottom of the site that says "Top." Use that to get back to the top. Ditto the link that says: "BMW 330 ZHP Mafia Performance Package | Official ZHP Mafia Forum." And, of course, you can always click the ZHP Mafia banner at the top to refresh the home page. Not surprisingly, the little icon, that looks like a house, will also refresh the home page.
Next, there are two ways to figure out if you have any unread threads or posts on this site. The "New Posts" button at the top of the site (top left on the navigation bar) will take you to a page that lists all of your unread threads.
Of course, dark blue roundels on the home page also signify that you have unread topics. A light, light blue roundel means that you're up to date on your reading.
I suspect that the most important tools for everyone exists in the box where you compose responses or create new posts and threads.
There are two ways to reply to messages on this forum. You can do a quick reply, which has less tools, or you can go advanced, which gives you a panoply of things.
Quick Reply user interface:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v125/marcussandiego/quickreply.jpg
The four most important buttons for me are off to the right side. You have the link function, which allows you to embed a link -- with a description. Here is an example:
My Favorite Forum on the Site (http://www.zhpmafia.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?2-General-Forum)
Then you have the "insert image" icon, which is used to embed a picture on our site (while the picture is hosted elsewhere, such as Photobucket). That's how I embedded the previous pictures in this post.
The third one over -- moving from left to right -- is the "insert video" icon. If you're ever on YouTube, for example, and you like a video that you'd like to share with ZHPMafia, you just grab the YouTube link and embed it here.
Examples:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5DuORx8eZdM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A9AXwmy9Sqs
Finally, you have the wrap icon. This is most useful when you want to quote a bunch of long text that is not your own.
For example:
ZHPMafia is all about the ZHP. However, there are other things we're interested in. For example, we're interested in literature. One of our favorite passages includes this:
Reading groups provide a fruitful site for examining women's uses of literature in life, since discussing books with other women gives rise to insights that come with sharing perspectives on both literature and participants' lives. This research focuses on white women's reading groups in both nineteenth- and twentieth-century Houston, Texas. Nineteenth-century groups found in their literary and associational practices the warrant to embark on a broad program of collective action; twentieth-century groups, by and large, severed this link yet still met important needs for women, such as providing the occasion for reflective normative discussions. Comparing the continuities and disjunctures between women's reading groups over time demonstrates that broad social and cultural "frames" (to use Erving Goffman's [1974] term) strongly influence how literature enters our individual and collective lives.
Of course, that's BS. None of us are interested in that but you know what I'm saying. This seems like an appropriate time to add a smiley. Since I want full access to all of the smileys, I will go advanced at this point.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v125/marcussandiego/goadvanced.jpg
I could choose one of the smileys below (a post icon) but I like the ones off to the right. I'll hit the "[More]" link. :conversation
Instead of hitting that "more" key, I could have just used a colon ( : ) and a smiley name to insert the smiley to make the group smiley appear.
Below the "post icons" section, there is a "tags" section. You use that to identify the kind of thread we're in. Here, I think I will tag this particular thread as "tutorial." If there are other threads at ZHPMafia.com with the tutorial tag, someone will be able to find all of them with a simple click of the tutorial link.
Another invaluable tool is the "similar threads" feature. You can find other threads, just like the one you're reading, at the very bottom of each thread. If you're reading a thread about DIS software, chances are that there will be other threads on the site that discussed that topic as well. If that's the case, you'll see similar threads at the bottom of the page.