Contents
1. How to Add an Avatar
An avatar is an excellent way to show who you are at a glance. It can be serious, funny, show your face, logo, or even a cartoon version of yourself. This will make your profile and threads more personal instead of the default shadow avatar.
To add your avatar you will need a Gravatar account. Go register an account at Gravatar using the email address associated with your forum account. Once you do that your avatar will be updated in the forum.
This is a great system because the avatar follows you. For example, if you leave a comment on the StudioPress blog using the same email address it will show up beside your comment. This way people who know you from the forums will be able to quickly identify you in comments as well.
2. How to Add A Signature
A signature can be a great way to tell people a bit more about yourself. It is a good place to share your social network links and other contact information. It’s also a nice way to say something inspirational, funny, or maybe some personal quote.
To add your signature you will need to edit your profile. You can click on your name after logging in, or in any post you have made. This will take you to a page with your profile and any threads you have started, replied to, favorited, or subscribed to. There is also an “edit” link. Click that link and fill out signature field in the “About Yourself” box. After editing your signature and anything else you would like to update in your profile click “Update Profile.”
You can use basic HTML in this field but the signature may not be super long, in fact the limit is about two lines.
3. How to Find Your Posts
Sometimes you create a post but forget to subscribe, so you don’t get an email when someone replies. How will you find your threads now? Actually it is pretty simple. Click on your name after logging in or in any post you have made. This will take you to your profile. Once on your profile you should see a summary of how many topics you have created, replies you have made, and other profile information you have shared. On the right there are several useful links including topics you have created, replies you have made, favorites, and subscriptions.
4. How to Find Unanswered Posts
There is a super useful URL that we want everyone to know about. When you are trying to help answer threads that have not been replied to it is not convenient to sort through the various forums and pages of responses trying to find threads you can help with. Take a moment to book mark this link so you can quickly find the unanswered threads.
Unanswered Posts
5. How to Post Code Snippets
Often you will need to add code to show what you have or how to do something. We have two excellent ways of sharing code in the forums.
Please do not post the full content of your stylesheet in the forums. We recommend using an external pastebin.
Short Code snippets
In the post editor you can type in short code blocks using WordPress shortcode. This is best for short code snippets. It isn’t a good idea to share an entire file, especially the style sheet or other long files, like this. The code can be marked up depending on the type of code you are sharing. Here are some examples
PHP
To share PHP you would include
[[php]<?php echo 'Hello World'; ?>[/php]]
This would output like
<?php echo 'Hello World'; ?>
HTML
To share HTML you would include
[[html]<h1>Hello World</h1>[/html]]
This would output like
<h1>Hello World</h1>
CSS
To share CSS you could include
[[css]
#id .class {
display: block;
float: left;
}[/css]]
This would output like
#id .class {
display: block;
float: left;
}
Gist Embedding
For longer code blocks, or code you might share regularly we have the ability to embed Gists. You may go to github:gist to create your gist. After the gist has been created or when viewing an existing gist look to the right column where it says “clone this gist” and copy that URL. Simply paste the URL on it’s own line and it will automatically embed the gist like this
By the way, that gist is the code we used to add this feature and should work great on your site too.
6. How to Post a Private Reply
Sometimes you may wish to share your site URL or other information to help resolve a thread, but do not wish to make it public. There is a feature built into the forum where you may mark a reply as Private then only forum moderators and administrators will be able to see it. Simply select “Set as private reply” before submitting your reply to make it private.
An important note. The community forums are community driven and these feature will make it so your reply is only visible to the person who originally started the thread, yourself, and moderators. Other community members will be blocked from seeing your response so this may not be the best option when someone who is not a moderator is helping you.
7. How to Mark Topic as Resolved
When a topic is marked as resolved it can help users searching for similar answers. When your question has been successfully answered you can help others by selecting “resolved” from the drop down list at the top of the thread. This option is only available to moderators and for threads you have started.