Introduction
Welcome, fellow dreamers, to Mortal Mist, and I hope you enjoy your stay here. Within these forums are located the most advanced Dream Jounaling system currently in place on the net, complete with statistics, tagging, and a tool with which to draw your dreams from inside the posting page and easily post your finished picture into your journal entry without having to worry about finding somewhere to host the picture or fiddle with attachments. Aside from the DJ itself, the best thing here is our members, who are undoubtably the heart of the forum, and one of the most mature crowds present at any dreaming forum up. Within this guide, you'll find all the information you'll need to start using the forum to its fullest potential and have fun while doing so. Lets begin, shall we?
1 General
1.1 Personal Settings
1.1.1 Setting your avatar and signature.Profile > Forum Profile InformationThe first thing that you may want to do upon joining is set an avatar and a signature for people to remember you by, right? After all, unless you want to be one of those faceless members, you want to have a picture that people associate with you. Your first friend here, and a thing I'll be referring you to many times in the future, is the menu bar, as shown below.
On the menu bar, you'll want to go to
Profile, which is already selected in the above picture. From there, you'll see a page with, obviously, your profile, but more importantly, a
menu to the left hand side. For the time being, disregard the section labeled
Profile Info and go to the link under the
Modify Profile section called
Forum Profile Information.
Once that page loads, you'll see a rather large section at the top in which are four options. The first says
Personalized Picture and has a large empty box telling you that you have no pictures there, and can be ignored. Below that, you'll see a box [http:// ] that you can put the link to your avatar into if you already have it on the Internet. If you want to upload one from your computer, on the other hand, the next one down will have a box for you to do just that, all you have to do is click on [Choose File] and find it on your computer.
Whatever option you chose, you should now have your avatar now taken care of, and can move onto the
signature. Scrolling down through the options, you'll eventually find a box that says
Signature and goes on to explain exactly what you can and can't do inside of it. Thank you captain obvious, right?
Don't submit just yet, though, because in the sections to come I'll tell you just what the other options do.
1.1.2 Custom Title and Personal TextProfile > Forum Profile Information | To the left you should see another fine example of my mini-profile, which I'll use to point out just where the rest of the options in this page show up. The first, right below the section where you entered your signature on the profile page, is labeled Custom Title, and will show up right below your username. Mine is Wanderer. Feel free to enter whatever you'd like, plain text, and it will show up there.
If you'll scroll with me again to where you chose your avatar, you'll find the Personal Text box. "Why do I need two lovely blocks of text in my mini-profile?" you may ask, and the answer is simple, I don't know. I don't know, but the people who created the forum were kind enough to leave them both for us, so we may as well use them, no? There isn't any since in letting their time spent of that box go to waist, right? For my personal text, I put in "Follow no path but your own." You'll see that below my avatar. This is also text only, so you'll have to deal without your BBcode for a while. Onwards, but don't click that submit button yet.
1.1.3 Link to your Dream Journal in your Mini-Profile
Profile > Forum Profile Information
If you'll move to the very bottom of the page, the third box below that horizontal bar is listed as your Dream Journal Link. Provided that you actually have a dream journal already, you may put the URL there, and it will show up on your mini-profile above your avatar as "Dream Journal".
Wait--- I don't want my DJ to be called dream journal. I named it for a reason, and what's the point if no one can see what it's name is? Never fear, the next box down allows you to replace that rather ugly Dream Journal name with whatever you'd like, so break out your BBcode and get to customizing. While you're doing that, I'll get the next section ready for you. Don't even think about submitting the page yet, or you'll miss the best part!
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1.1.4 Emergency Contact Information: What and WhyProfile > Forum Profile InformationAlright, I know that you're getting restless and want to see the changes you've made to your account, but there is one final thing to go over: Emergency Contact information. Should something happen to you, or to someone close to you on the forum, or in whatever case you choose to be contacted in, you may want to give your number here so we (and by we I mean pj, Moonbeam, Burns, Clairity, Raklet, mu, Seeker, and myself from the admin team) can contact you. That information is private, and no one other than those listed above can see it, so you don't have to worry about getting a call from any random forum-goer asking you why you haven't updated your DJ in a week.
You don't have to enter it, but it may come in useful one day, so think about it. Finally, as you finish this information, you may now submit the page and save your changes, and while your page is loading I'll write up the next section for you.
1.1.5 Changing your e-mail and password.Profile > Account Related SettingsIf you'll navigate to
Profile in the menu bar and then clicking on the
Account Related Settings link on the left hand side, you'll see a new set of boxes, all with important information about your account. All of this is rather self-explanatory, so I'll let you go about it on your own and jump down to
Hide e-mail address from public?Right, should you not want your email address to be seen by just any spammer crawling along looking for victims, this box being checked comes in handy. One question you may have though, is if you've checked this box, then go to your profile, you'll
see your own e-mail address. I thought I hid it better than that, you may complain. You said that the programmers spent
hard time programming this forum, and the thing won't even hide my own e-mail when I tell it to! Never fear, for you are the only one that can see it. The programmers were a bit more clever than what you might think, and anyone else will just see
hidden.
Your e-mail is safe with us (unless of course you post it for the point of this guide).
As a second note, when you lose your password you can always have it sent to your e-mail address, but what if you lose your password to your e-mail account as well? In that case, you may want to have the
Secret Question and
Secret Answer filled out. This way, you can answer a question and have your password reset without having to gain access to your email account. Please make this something only you will know, because you don't really want to put that your first dog was sparky as a method to guard your account password, right?
One final note, is the box right below "
Hide e-mail address from public?" labeled
Show others your online status? What this box does, obviously, is choose whether you want anyone to be able to see if you're online. At the bottom of the main page is a section where you can see anyone who is online, but if you uncheck this box, your name will no longer appear there when you log in. Instead, you'll only be listed under the hidden count. For example, before you sign on, it may say
10 Guests 5 Users and after you sign in it'll say
10 Guests 5 Users 1 Hidden, and that'll be the only place you're indicated at. Not bad, right? The default for these two boxes is hide your email address [is on] and show others your online status [is also on]. Now, I will add that if you sign into the chat you'll still be listed under the users in the chat room, but that's pretty obvious, right? After all, you will be chatting, and that kinda blows your cover.
Well, that's it for the settings, dreamers. Now we can get on to some good stuff.
1.2 Forum Information Gathering
1.2.1 Search.Menu Bar > Search box.Next to be reviewed will be the search box. This is pretty obvious, and if you'll look above the menu bar, you'll se a text box next to a button labeled search. Type and click, it's as simple as that.
If you want to be more specific, you can go to a link labeled
search in the menu bar, then to the link on that page labeled
Advanced Options. Here, you can choose to filter your search results by author and by forum posted in. That's all there is to it.
1.2.2 Forum Statistics.Info Center > Forum Statistics Box > Pie ChartNow I will lead you to a page that has all the information about the forum that you could ever want, except of course the total time spent logged in by every user. At the bottom of the main forum page, you'll find the Mortal Mist Info Center, and inside a section labeled Forum Statistics.
If you click on the pie chart beside that section, you'll find a section that has a compilation of almost all the forum-wide information you'll ever want.
1.2.3 User Statistics.User Profile > Show general statistics for this member.Ladies and gents, for my next spying trick, I'll teach you how to get any information on a user that there is to have. First, click on anyone's username (I would recommend Luminous, because you'll get a lot to look at, and you can be sure that everything is working properly), then click on the link that says
Show general statistics for this member.Now you should be on a large page with all the information that you could want. The only thing that I'd like to explain here, is th
Total Individual Dreams section. Here, this chart will show you there dreaming stats for the month. Why I'm bringing this up is that once upon a time, no matter whose profile you went to, it would always show your chart. Now though, it seems to be fixed, and if you went to Luminous' profile, to prove it, she has over 140 posts for the month of April (2009, when this was written). Any questions on that one?
1.2.4 Finding Posts by a User.User Profile > Show the last posts of this person.You may have noticed on the user profile page there is a link that says
Show the last posts of this person. This link will take you to a page that has, from newest to oldest, every post that the selected user has ever made. Happy hunting!
1.3 Posting.
1.3.1 Member Ownership: You Own Your Posts.Here I will give you all the information that you need to start posting here, but first, I must explain to you whose property your posts are. From the moment you hit submit on a post until you delete it, or don't, you own that post, and can do anything that you want with it. We, as far as I know, will never use your post anywhere (with the exception of the quote button) without your permission, and as far as I know, no admin has ever had to delete someone's post before. That being said, you bear responsibility for what you post, and that means that you should never give a mod (well, we don't have mods actually, but you understand) the need to edit or delete your post. Do that, and everyone will be happy.
1.3.2 Basic Post LayoutI'll keep this to a short explanation of the posting page. The top bar is the subject and will dictate what your post's title is, and the icon is the icon that will usually appear to the left of the title. Next, you have an array of formatting buttons, but these all come with labels that will explain what the button does. Simple right?
The only button that I'll waste your time explaining (that is, if you haven't already skipped past this section) is the code button, which looks like this -> {#}. This will allow you to post BBCode without having it translated into formatting. In simpler terms:
[b]This is not bold. :([/b]1.3.3 Quoting Single and Multiple PostsNow we come to a pivotal point in all forum-goers' lives, and, in fact, the lives of everyone who can communicate in any form: Someone has said something, and you want to respond to that person. Now, you
could just reply to them, but if you want to make it known that what you said was directed towards one person's post, you should quote them. In the top right cornet of every person's posts is a button that says
Quote, which does just that.
Alright, alright, I know that, but how do I respond to multiple people's posts without the tedious copy and paste work? Well, you've come to the right place. If you hit reply, then look down, you'll see the topic summary box, but more importantly, you'll see that every post has a link in the upper right-hand corner that says
Insert Quote. You can click that link on as many posts as you want and it will insert that person's post as a quote at the end of your reply box. Simple as that.
Special Bonus Section: Double posting. Now, there are no official rules against posting twice, but please refrain from it in day-to-day use. If you're posting to a dream journal, a log, or are posting something separate that needs to be seen by anyone who has already read your last post, go ahead and post a double, but generally,
please use the edit button at the top right of your last post rather than posting two or more times in a row. Like I said though, this doesn't apply to your DJ. Thank you for your patience.
Bonus Sudden Death Section: Post Necroing. Some places frown upon posting in old threads. Mortal Mist is not one of those places. Post away, we'll love you for bring up an interesting old thread.
1.3.4 Locking Your Own TopicsYou may eventually come to the point in time where your topic is done, and no one else needs to post to it any more. There are two ways that you can lock the topic, and a third that lets you completely ax it.
First, you may celebrate the life of your topic by giving it one final post, telling everyone that the topic was fun and you had a blast with it, but now it's time for it to go quietly into the night.
Once you've written everything for the post, click the
Additional Options link right below the text box, and in the section that appears, check
Lock topic.The second way is used in cases where the topic has gotten out of hand, and to keep it from embarrassing you any longer, you can just kill it where it stands, leaving it there in stasis forever more. At the bottom of every topic you start, there is a link that says
Lock this topic. It's just that simple.
If you've accidentally posted two of the same topic, right next to the last link that gave you the option to lock your topic, you'll see
Remove topic. This will take the topic and stuff it in the convenient black hole located next to the Mortal Mist server, leaving no trace of it.
This should only be used in those rare cases though, because it would be far better to leave most topics there for future perusing, so that the information inside the topic doesn't go to waste. Choose well. I have been informed that this feature is only available if no one else has posted to your topic at the time of removal, due to the member ownership of all posts. So, feel free to delete your own topics so long as no one has posted to them.
1.3.5 Subscribing to TopicsAlso in the above mentioned
Additional Options menu in the posting page, you'll find a option labeled
Notify me of replies. This will subscribe you to that topic so that you receive an email alert every time someone replies. Also, if you go to the topic itself, there's a
Bookmark Topic option that does the same thing. I feel that it's worth mentioning that it will only notify you of one reply, and after that it won't send you notice again until you log in and read that topic, that way you won't get spammed by a popular topic.
If, however you want to be emailed every time someone posts, so you don't delete the notification and forget about the topic, for example, you can go to the
profile option on the menu bar, then into
Notifications and Email and you'll be able to change the notification settings to however you like.
1.3.6 Posting to the CalendarIf you have something like an event that you want to add to the community calendar, you may feel free to do so, without contacting an admin for help. First, make a topic detailing your event, then, at the bottom f the topic page, next to the Remove and Lock links, you'll see a link that says
Link to Calendar. If you click this link, you will come to a page that looks suspiciously like the editing page, but has three new options at the top.
First,
Event Title is what the event will appear as on the calendar.
Year, month, day, is the starting date, and
number of days is the amount of time you want to leave it up as an event. For example, if you look in the month of April, you'll see on the fifth of April, for one day, is Kromoh's birthday. Making that event would go like this:
Event Title: [Birthdays: Kromoh (18) ]
Year: [2009]
Month: [April ]
Day: [5 ]
Number of days: [1]
1.3.7 Posting to the News Flasher.Right above the menu bar, you'll notice a line or two of text with a dreaming related quote or an announcement, and each time you reload the page you should notice it changes. This, like everything else, is free for members to add to, and can be accessed through the
Admin tab in the menu bar.
Once you go to the
Admin tab, enter your password and you'll be taken to a light administration panel. The only option here of any importance is the bottom link on the navigation panel that says
News and newsletters. Going there, you'll see a list of all the current menu items, and at the bottom of the page a
link that lets you add another item to the list. All you have to do is click it, paste the text you want to add to the news flasher in the box, and click save. To remove something you've added to the flasher (I haven't tested this to see what you can or can't remove, so use some courtesy here), check the box beside it, and at the bottom of the page will be a button that says [Remove Selected]. (
Helpful hint: If you are announcing something via the flasher, please be sure to include a link to the thread where it's being discussed.)
1.4 The latest posts.
1.4.1 In case you didn't know...Probably the two most useful links on the site in my opinion are located at the top, right next to your avatar. The first is
Show unread posts since last visit. and the second is
Show new replies to your posts. They do exactly what they say they do. Just thought I'd call attention to them.
1.4.2 Please forget that I posted in this topic!If you post in a lot of topics, you may find that your new replies page becomes cluttered with loads of posts that you intended to post once in and don't want to see anymore. To remove these annoyances, go to the new replies page and locate these useless posts, then at the far right hand side of their row, click the checkbox they have beside them. Finally, go to the bottom and click [Ignore Selected].
Here is the process illustrated.
Section Notes: Alright, you've made it through the first section! This is the stuff that no one wants to read, but it's necessary for those who want to know how to do something specific. Next comes the fun part, Dream Journals! Stay tuned, people.
