Welcome To "How To Use A Forum"

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Throughout this lesson we will be using Big Marketing Forum as an example.

It is recommended that you open a new window or tab with http://BigMarketingForum.com/Forum so you can follow along with the guide.

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You are doing a great job! Now you are ready to start using the forum for what it is for. A forum is basically a 24 hour meeting place. Members can post messages any time of the day or night, and other members can read what they say and reply 24 hours a day. Forums are also very important to your marketing plan as there is a lot of unique content that search engines love. So when you have your website in your signature, and post it in the advertising section of forums, you will start to move up the ranks at the major search engines. This is the top goal of most marketers. And using a forum does not cost you anything but time.

OK, we are almost ready to post, but first I want to explain what the different areas of the forum are. The picture below shows you what the main page of the forum will look like after you login. The RED Arrow is pointing to what is referred to as a Category. The BLUE Arrow is pointing to what is referred to as a Board If you were to imagine the forum as an office building, the Categories would be the different  floors and the Boards would be the different offices on each floor of the building. Each Board is related to the Category. For instance in the office building example, you may have one floor for accountants, one floor for doctors etc. On each floor you would have an office for different accountants or doctors. The picture below only shows one Board for each Category, but you will see some Categories with many Boards in them. If you click on the Board name, you will see the next page of the forum which I will describe below. Scroll down now to learn more.

The page below is similar to what you will see when you click on one of the Board Names. The picture I use for an example is from the General Category and the General Discussion Board. The PURPLE Arrow at the top of the page is pointing to the how you got to this page. As you can see you are on Big Marketing Forum (Office Building), On The General Category Category (Floor Of Office Building) and In the General Discussion Board (Office On Floor Of Building). Clicking on any of these will take you to that section of the forum. So if you wanted to go back to the General Category, you would click on General Category. Also there is a menu bar on this page that the LIGHT BLUE Arrow is pointing to. If you would like to mark all of the topics as read you would click on MARK READ. If you wanted to be notified by email each time a new post is made in this category you would click on NOTIFY. New Topic is what you click on to add a post. You will also notice that on some categories that have multiple pages. Clicking on the page number will take you to that page.

Each time a new topic is started it will be placed on the forum. The RED Arrow is pointing to the Subject of the post. If you have not read this post since your last visit to the forum, there will be a button that says NEW on it beside the subject as the BLUE Arrow points out. The GREEN Arrow is pointing to the member who submitted the post. The YELLOW Arrow points out how many people have replied to post. The BLACK Arrow points to how many times this post has been viewed by other members. The ORANGE Arrow at the top of the picture is pointing to a thumbtack, this is known as a "Sticky" post. What this means is that it will remain at the top of the Board. Other posts move down as new posts are made, but a Sticky post does not. There are also some Posts that will have an image of a lock beside them. This is known as a "Locked" post. This means that you can read the post, but you can't reply to it. The Locked post is usually reserved for posts where the owner of the forum wants to let members know of something but they don't want replies made. You will also see on this page the date the last post was made. Below I will show you what happens when one of the subjects are clicked on.

Below is what you will see when you click on the subject to read what has been posted. The YELLOW Arrow is pointing to the post that was made by member with username "daisymae". The ORANGE Arrow is pointing to the different things this user set up in their profile. For instance, clicking on the globe will take you to their website. When you place your cursor over each picture you will see text for what it means. The GREEN Arrow points to this members Signature which you learned how to setup a few pages back. As you can see the post and signature are separated by a line. The BLACK Arrow is pointing to a Reply that was made to this post. The PURPLE arrow is pointing to a different menu bar. If you want to Reply to the post, click on REPLY. If you want to be notified when a new post is made in this topic click NOTIFY. If you want to mark this topic as unread so there is a NEW button beside it as mentioned above click on MARK UNREAD. If you would like to email this topic to someone you know, click on SEND THIS TOPIC. If you would like to PRINT the topic you can click on PRINT. The BLUE Arrow is pointing to a Quote link. What the Quote does, is when you click it the entire post will be quoted when you reply. If you click Quote it will open up the reply page, with the quote already placed. The Quote link is useful when there are many replies and you want to reply to a specific reply that was made. Simply click on Quote in the reply to you want to reply to. The RED Arrow is pointing to previous and next. If you click on Previous or teh < you will be taken to the post that was made before this one. If you click on next or > you will be take to the next newest post. This is useful when you want to scroll all of the posts without going back to the board.

Now that you know what all the information on the various pages mean, it is time to make your first post. Please click on the Next Page link below to discover how to do this.