Site Tips and Tricks

[Zema]

So I thought I would start this as kind of a "Things you might not have known" about some of the things you can do on the forum. Some of these may seem a little obvious to some of you, but there's going to be someone who sees this and appreaciate it. My original goal was to share with you guys some of the things I've noticed that may make things a little easier, but if you have anything you'd like to share, feel free. I think I'll start with the more obvious ones.

 

Anyway, without further ado:

 

1) All unread topics have either a circle or a star next to the topic name (If you didn't know the star means you've posted in that thread and the circle means you haven't). Clicking on this will take you to the oldest unread post in that thread. i.e. If there have been three new posts in a thread since you last read it, it will take you to the oldest post of those three.

 

2) If you're on mobile and you want to see status updates like you do on a pc, switch to the "Default" theme (not Green (default) but simply default). The status updates will be at the bottom. I would really like it if this was available on all themes though. EDIT: This has been made available on all themes.

 

3) Do you post in arcade or off topic often? Want to see how many posts you have including the ones that don't count towards post count? Simple go onto your profile and press the see activity button just below your cover photo and just above the about me button. On the left, click the button that says posts. Look at how many pages there are and multiply that number by 25. That is a very close estimate to your true number of posts. If you want to be precise, go to the last page. Use the "find" feature on your browser (The shortcut is CTRL+F on windows. I'm not sure what it is on other operating systems) and type "report" and it will tell you how many posts are on that last page. To find the true total number of posts, multiply the number of pages minus one by 25, then add the number you got in the previous step to the result. As of the time of writing I have 1996 total posts despite only having a post count of 232. I spend way too much time in arcade. Also, off topic should count towards post count now that arcade and off topic are separate.

 

4) Here's the main reason why I decided to make this post. Quotes. They can be a bit iffy sometimes, but I've found a way to mostly work around this. There's multiple things here so I'll break it up with dot points.

• The most basic one is quoting only a small section of another's post. You could click the quote button and then delete the content you don't want to quote or you could do this. Highlight the text you want to quote and a little box saying "quote this" will appear... unless it doesn't. If it decides not to appear, click off the text in such a way that it unhighlights the text. It should have definitely appeared by now. This can also be used to quote small snippets of multiple people's posts. The box can be a bit iffy though, especially if you accidently miss it. I find this especially useful when using the dark theme as quote boxes are hard to read in the text editor (which is something that should have been fixed a while ago but still hasn't)

 

• If you haven't already noticed, there isn't an obvious way of editing in a quote to a post you've already made. When you press the quote button it will put the quote into a new post instead of the old post that you're editing, which isn't always the best in my opinion. However, to put the quote into the post that you're editing, start by clicking the edit button on the post you wish to edit. Then quote the text you wish to quote. It will appear in the text editor for a new post. Hover over the quote text box, click on the cross that appears and using keyboard shortcuts, either cut or copy the text box then paste into the post you wish to edit. If that was too confusing here's a gif:

 

 Don't mind my tabs I was too lazy to close them

 

• I think at this point everyone has just accepted that nested quotes aren't possible on here or are just too bothersome to actually do. I think it's good thing that quotes aren't nested by default, but the way in which to nest quotes isn't at all obvious at first. It's quite simple really, just use the method outlined in dot point 1 of the quoting tips.  Simply highlight the post you wish to quote making sure to highlight the the quote that you wish to nest. After clicking the "quote this" button, you will have nested the quotes. It's really that simple. And in case you want to see how simple it really is:

 

(Intentionally done in low quality) You can also see that it will nest mutiple quotes used in a post which is nice.

 

I hope that someone out there finds this useful. If you have any other tips for using the site, feel free to share them.

 

 

In case you were wondering why I type the word "report" to count my number of posts with the method detailed in seciton 3. I use report because it isn't a commonly used word and the chances that you will have used it in your first 25 posts is rare and because every post on that page has "report post" written next to it.

 

 

[Philbo Wiseroot]

This is an excellent resource to have!

 

Have some

 

 

[Bipolar Bear]

Nice list! If the quotes are what is imp, but the name/timestamp aren't as necessary, the site accepts bbcode tags for quoting.You can type [.quote]insert quoted text, here[/.quote] without the periods.

 

insert quoted text, here

 

If ppl didnt know it could do that, since the editing option can be a bit wonky, using the tags is an alternative. There's a way to type them to include timestamps and usernames, but I don't recall what that is, atm. It is tedious, but an option, nonetheless.

[Blue Phoenix Ace]

On 9/13/2016 at 10:23 PM, Zemaddog said:

If you're on mobile and you want to see status updates like you do on a pc, switch to the "Default" theme

 

Fixed! You should see this with every theme now.

On 9/13/2016 at 10:23 PM, Zemaddog said:

(which is something that should have been fixed a while ago but still hasn't)

 

Unfortunately, the CSS I edit doesn't make it into the editor. I don't have any control over how the editor shows stuff.  (And the quote this thingy is working for me for the time being yay)

 

On 9/25/2016 at 7:12 PM, Bipolar Bear said:

Nice list! If the quotes are what is imp, but the name/timestamp aren't as necessary, the site accepts bbcode tags for quoting.You can type

insert quoted text, here

without the periods.

 

Like this?

[Zema]

1 hour ago, Blue Phoenix Ace said:

On 14/09/2016 at 11:53 AM, Zemaddog said:

If you're on mobile and you want to see status updates like you do on a pc, switch to the "Default" theme

Fixed! You should see this with every theme now.

Thanks for that .

 

1 hour ago, Blue Phoenix Ace said:

Unfortunately, the CSS I edit doesn't make it into the editor. I don't have any control over how the editor shows stuff.  (And the quote this thingy is working for me for the time being yay)

Damn I didn't know that. Such a shame. I really like the dark theme, it's that one tiny thing that irks me. Oh well.

 

It would be nice if the site allowed custom headings for spoilers. Believe me, I have tried to make it work but it simply refuses to. I feel like this is something intrinsic to the forum software and can't be changed however. Bit of a shame really.