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Forums Help

What are the Photobird forums?
The Photobird forums allow you to share ideas, information, and opinions about digital photography quickly and easily. Organized by message threads in an easy-to-follow format, the Photobird forums are designed so you can quickly locate information, find other knowledgeable users, and participate in conversations.

How is forum content organized?
The content in the forums is structured as follows:

• Forum Categories: Categories represent a collection of forums as well as other categories. Categories are often used to organize forums into a tree structure so members can find the right discussions more easily.
• Forums: Forums are the areas where individual discussions take place as a listing of message threads.
• Message Threads: Message threads are the discussions that consist of one or more messages displayed as a list, or in a tree structure of messages and their replies.
• Messages: Messages are the individual discussion posts made by community members.
• Replies: Message replies are posts in response to other messages and are organized in a flat or threaded display.

Do I need to be registered to use the forums?
Everyone has access to read and participate in most of the Photobird forums, per the Photobird Terms of Use. Please also read and adhere to our Forums Etiquette. Some forums may be designated for Photobird subscribers only. To post new messages and reply to existing messages, you must register. To register, just click on Create a New Account and fill in the appropriate information. At this time, your forums account is separate from your Photobird account. We have plans to merge them in the future to make it more convenient for you. We will notify you before this merge occurs.

How do I display or link to my photos in the forums?
Please only display photos that are 640x480 or less in the forums. Details on how to display or link to photos in your forum messages are available on our Links from the Forums page.

What do I do if I forgot my password?
To reset your password, simply click on the Login link and then click on the I forgot my password link. After typing your username and pressing the Submit button, you will receive an email with instructions on how to reset your password.

How do I create a thread or post a reply?
Before starting a new message thread or posting a reply, please read and adhere to our Forums Etiquette.

To start a new thread, choose the appropriate forum and select Post New Thread. Type the topic of your message in the subject line and type a message in the message box. Before you are about to post, you can spell check your message by clicking on Spell Check. You can also choose to watch the thread (which will add it to you watch list, and allow you to receive email notifications when new posts are made) by clicking the Watch This Thread box.

When you are satisfied with your message, you can preview your message to see how it will appear when posted by clicking on Preview. Or you can post your message without previewing it by clicking Post Message.

To post a reply to a thread, select the reply icon next to the message you would like to reply to. If you want to respond to specific text from the original message, click on the Quote Original button, and that will add the text from the original post in your message.

How do I set my profile and view other user profiles?
To create or update your profile, click on Your Control Panel. Your profile, forums preferences and watch settings may be set from here. To edit these settings, fill in your updated information, then click Save.

To view the profile for any user who has posted to the forums, click on their username wherever you see it as a link. You can also search for their username or ID using the search feature.

How do I search the forums?
From the main page of the Photobird forums, type your search terms into the search box, select which forums you want to search, and click the Go button.

You can also click on "Search" of "Search All Forums" to use an advanced search page where you can narrow your search by specifying a date range or filtering by username.

What are watches?
A watch notifies you by email if the thread you are interested in has been updated.

To add a thread to your watch list, click on the "Watch This Thread" link at the top of the thread page. Click on Stop Watching Thread to end the email notifications. After 30 days, inactive watches automatically expire. You can also watch forums, categories and users. For example, when a new message is posted in a forum you're watching then you'll be notified by email.

To see the current list of watches, click on "Your Control Panel" then "Watches". From this screen you can choose to receive email notifications when new posts are made. Just click on Add Email Notification next to the thread for which you want to be notified.

You can delete a watch by clicking in the Delete box for the watch you want to delete, and then click the Delete button.

How can I format the text of my posts?
To format your message text, there are three buttons for Bold, Italics and Underline. Clicking on these buttons will add tags to the message field.

For example, typing: "This is [b]bold[/b] text, and this is [i]italicized[/i] text" will appear as "This is bold text, and this is italicized text" once you post the message.

How do I check the spelling of my message?
To check the text of your message for proper spelling, just click Spell Check on the post screen.

If our spell check dictionary doesn't recognize a word in your message, it will appear in a box. You can correct it yourself by simply typing over what is displayed. If the dictionary has any suggestions, you will be able to see them in the suggestion box.

To choose one of the suggestions, simply select the suggestion you'd like to use and click on the Change button for each of the words you would like changed.

When you are finished checking your entire message, click on Post Message to save your changes and post the message with your spelling corrections. If you want to continue editing your message, hit Go Back or Edit to return to the post message area.