Kioskea - Kioskea.net Forum User's Guide

Introduction to the Forum

The kioskea forum, also called the bulletin board or boards, is an area for our users to discuss information technology. Forum contributors are volunteers who want to help users looking for information. Since users come from all over the world, and mostly from different cultures, participants are asked to act courteously on the forum. The site's Terms of Use specify the conditions for using the forum and proper conduct when posting.

If a user violates the conditions given in the Terms of Use, moderators designated by Kioskea's webmaster will delete the offending messages.

The various forums

The Kioskea forum is split into several topic areas:

• The Miscellaneous forum, for all questions dealing with information technology that don't fall under any of the other technical forums.
• The Software forum, for all messages that relate to installing, configuring, or even simply using software.
• The Hardware forum, dedicated to hardware problems: what to choose, troubleshooting, optimisation, and comparison.
• The Programming forum, specialising in discussions about coding applications in various programming languages (such as ASP, C++, Java, Perl, PHP, Python, and VBScript).
• The Networking forum, for all sorts of questions about networks (including questions about protocols, installing networks, connection problems, and more).
• The Internet forum, for questions about using the Internet, hosting websites, and creating web pages.
• The Virus/Security forum, dedicated to computer security, especially fixing problems caused by viruses and worms.
• The Windows forum, for installing, using, and troubleshooting Microsoft Windows operating systems (95, 98, NT, Me, 2000, XP, 2003, Vista).
• The Linux/Unix forum, dedicated to questions about installing, using, and troubleshooting Unix-based operating systems (like Linux, HP-UX, and AIX), other than MacOS systems.
• The MacOS forum, for questions about installing, using, and troubleshooting Macintosh systems (like Mac OS 9 and Mac OS X).
• The News forum is the spot for information about computing-related news. Feel free to submit news briefs.
• The Suggestions forum is a space for kioskea users to share their suggestions in order to improve the design and operation of the website and the forum.
• The Members' Lounge is a place for users to talk about subjects other than information technology. Logged-in members are welcome there to share a laugh, tell jokes, talk about the news, or just let others know if they're in a good or bad mood. Tradition holds that a new member posting his or her first message in the Lounge "buys" a virtual round for the other members when he or she comes in.

There are tabs at the top of each page so that users can easily move from one discussion to another.

Interface

Users' messages are shown on the main page of the forum. The most recent contributions are sorted in descending order. If you reply to a message from, say, a week ago, that thread will move to the top of the forum's list.

Here's a description of the interface elements shown above.

1. Number of replies to thread.
2. Time and date of latest reply. If the latest reply was posted today, this field is shown in red.
3. Date of first message. If the first message was posted today, this field is shown in red.
4. Name of user who posted the first message. If the user is a member of kioskea, clicking on his or her name lets you see his or her profile, if you want to learn more about them.
5. User status. The legend is shown at the bottom of the window:
   
6. Thread Title. Click on the title to read all contributions to the thread.
7. Show the latest contribution. Clicking on this icon brings you directly to the most recent contribution.

Reading messages

Click on the title to show its contents, i.e. the message you clicked on and every reply to it.

The responses are hierarchical, meaning that in a discussion, you can respond to the first post (by clicking on [Reply to Thread]), or by replying directly to another user (by clicking on [Reply to ...]). In the latter case, your message will become linked to the message you replied to, shifted slightly.

To browse chronologically (i.e. in the order in which the messages were posted) you can click on the arrows (< and >) on either side of the post number. The latest message in the discussion has its title in red. You can directly access the most recent post in the discussion by clicking on [Last post] in the first post, or by clicking on the small blue square below the title of the main thread.

Writing Messages

Writing a message (whether it's a reply or a new thread) is done with a form at the bottom of the page.

• The first field (1) is for giving your message a title. The title is mandatory; this is what is shown in the discussion area. Therefore, it is essential to give your message an explicit title that describes the problem succinctly.
• The second field (2) is for entering your user name, and the third (3) your e-mail address. If you are logged in on the site, these fields will be filled in automatically.
• Field (4) lets you choose which forum to post your message in. For each of messages, you need to choose the most appropriate forum. If you post the same message in several forums, a moderator might delete them.
• With field (5) you can choose to receive all messages posted to the thread by e-mail, if you have entered your e-mail address correctly. This option should be used with caution, as every reply to the thread will cause an e-mail to be sent automatically to your inbox! If you don't want to receive any more replies by e-mail, you can go back to the discussion and post a new message with the "Don't receive any more e-mail replies" box checked.
• Finally, field (6) is for entering your message. If you are logged in on the site, you can edit your personal signature, a short text which is automatically posted at the bottom of all your messages.

If you are a member of Kioskea and are logged in on the forum, you can edit your own message for a few minutes if nobody has replied to it yet. To do so, return to your contribution to the thread and click on [Edit Message]. This lets you fix spelling errors or broken links.

Finally, the [Alert a moderator] button lets you report messages which violate the Terms of Use.

Markup

The Kioskea forum is limited in its capabilities for using markup to make message more readable.

You can, however, create:

• Bold text, by placing it between the tags <gras> and </gras>:

  Example of a message in <gras>bold</gras>

• Italic text, by placing it between the tags <ital> and </ital>:

  Example of a message in <ital>italics</ital>

• Underlined text, by placing it between the tags <souligne> and </souligne>:

  Example of an <souligne>underlined</souligne> message

• Format text by placing it between the tags <code> and </code>. With this feature, the formatted text will stay formatted the way you want it to. This tool is particularly well-suited to snippets of code which requite a specific layout:

  Example of a formatted message
  <code>
  for($i=1;$i<10;$i++) {
  	 echo "Valeur de \$i : $i";
  }
  </code>

• Add a hypertext link simply by entering the URL (it must begin with http:// or www.):

  Examples of hypertext links:
  http://en.kioskea.net/forum/
  ftp://ftp.cdrom.com

• Create a named hyperlink by entering the URL within brackets (it must begin with http:// or www.), then the keyword, separated by at least one space:

  Examples of named hyperlinks:
  [http://en.kioskea.net/forum kioskea forum]

• Create a link to a kioskea article by entering the keyword in double-brackets or within the tags <ccm> and </ccm>:

  Differences between [[routers]] and [[firewalls]]
  Differences between <ccm>routers</ccm> and <ccm>firewalls</ccm>

Message Search

With the search field, located at the top of the page, you can search for a message in kioskea's forums.

To search for a message, type keywords separated by spaces. So, if you have a problem finding drivers for a GeForce graphics card, type the following string into the search engine:

drivers GeForce

The search is not case-sensitive, which means that it doesn't matter which letters are typed in uppercase and which lowercase. Additionally, all occurrences of each word are searched, so the word graph will return all messages that include the following words:

• graph
• graphic
• graphical
• graphics
• graphing
• graphs
• and so on.

With the dropdown menu located to the left of the search field, you can search in a specific forum. By default, all discussion areas are searched.
This document entitled « Kioskea - Kioskea.net Forum User's Guide » from Kioskea (en.kioskea.net) is made available under the Creative Commons license. You can copy, modify copies of this page, under the conditions stipulated by the licence, as this note appears clearly.
 

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