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Helpful UBB-to-Invision transition tips


Joel Schultz
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I'm (re)starting this topic because if you're like me, the forum change may seem a little bit intimidating and you're wondering about where some common stuff went.

Here are some quick starter tips on where to find certain things we were all used to (some of these are obvious as you bumble your way through, but these tips may help you find them a lot faster, others were not as obvious):

1. How to find your personal profile information.

The "My controls" link immediately below the header graphic at the top of the screen will take you there. I could've sworn there used to be a link to one's registration information in UBB too, but I don't see that link. Nor do I see a link to "READ THIS FIRST" and the like. Maybe this board is still in the process of configuration but for now I don't know how to get to that information. If anyone with mod privileges can find the link to the topic about profile registration, could you edit into this post with that information? Or anyone can post a reply. Thanks!

2. Personal information in your profile.

Once you follow "my controls" on the left sidebar there is a "personal profile" section. "Edit personal information" will allow you to set things like your date of birth, gender and other information.

3. Signatures.

Once you follow "my controls" on the left sidebar there is a "personal profile" section. "Edit signature" will take you to the sig editor. To insert the all-important system profile link, there's a green button that looks like a green triangle with a red "+". This allows you to create a hyperlink to your system information page. (You may have to enable scripted windows in your browser.) More information on your system profile can be found in links within the "welcome" note here (provisionally; permanent link on new board coming later according to SC). The registration database is currently down, so you may not be able to access your pages at the moment.

4. Where'd my avatar go? (My avatar wasn't set when I first logged in.)

Once you follow "my controls" on the left sidebar there is a "personal profile" section. "Edit avatar settings" will take you to avatar customization. All the old UBB avatars are under "preinstalled avatars" "custom avatars" section. There are also 3 other avatar galleries plus the ability to upload your own. Not to be confused with "personal photo", which is another "personal profile" edit option.

5. E-mail, privacy and security.

Once you follow "my controls" on the left sidebar there is a "personal profile" section. Under the "Options" subsection is "Email settings". This permits you to hide your e-mail address from others and (un)subscribe to various notifications related to the board. Note that to change your e-mail address you need to go to "Change email address". "Change password" is right below there too if you need it.

6. Time zone (mine was wrong when I first logged in) and other controls affecting board appearance and functionality.

Once you follow "my controls" on the left sidebar there is a "personal profile" section. Under the "Options" subsection is "Board settings". Among the useful things here are settings for your "time zone" and "daylight savings time" if your country does that. Plus some useful stuff that affects things like whether you want to see avatars in posts, use "fast editting" by default and so on.

7. "Get daily", finding unread posts and marking posts read.

"Get daily" is now apparently known as "new posts". The "view new posts" link immediately below the header graphic at the top of the screen will take you to a list of all new posts since your last login -- a step up from the "get daily" UBB function. Threads with unread posts will have a little orange square newpost.gif next to the topic you can click on to go to the first unread post in that thread. A highly visible link ("Mark all forums as read...") at the top of the threads list will (obviously) clear the unread flag on the threads and posts. Also the "forum options" button on the header bar of a subforum has a pulldown menu that permits "mark all read" types of functionality for that subforum. The little Invision logo bf_new.gif next to forums will also be dimmed bf_nonew.gif if there are no unread messages within that forum. Hovering your mouse over the logo will tell you what it's supposed to mean. If anyone knows how if there is a user-setting to make Invision show the first few lines of the last post in a thread, something UBB did, please reply because I'd sure like to know how to turn that back on for myself!

8. Linking to topics/posts within this forum is different than in UBB.

In UBB you inserted a hyperlink to the topic -- basically you'd cut and paste the URL in the browser. Invision handles this more elegantly. If you notice, the "topic ID" is part of the URL after the word "showtopic=". If you use the syntax (remove spaces around square brackets; I put a space after '[' and before ']' so Invision wouldn't "interpret" them!):

[ topic="####" ]linkie text[ /topic ]

You can link to the top of the topic. Likewise, all posts have a "Post #" link at the top of the post. If you over over it, or click on it you'll find a "post ID" following the word "p=" at the end. If you use the syntax:

[ post="####" ]linkie text[ /post ]

You can link directly to that post.

If anyone else can think of helpful tips to ease the UBB-to-Invision transition, feel free to add on.

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