RapCentral has changed massively over the past 30 days. You will noticea brand new layout, new features, new security, and a lot more. This is the 4th version of RapCentral's forums and its the biggest change yet so ive decided to bring you a little "Quick Fire Guide" to getting along with our new baby. Here Goes
The first thing we should discuss is that the User Profile (were all your settings and private messages are stored) is now called the [url=forum/ucp.php]User Control Panel (UCP)[/url] and is packed full of new features, a smoother navigation, and alot more secure than before.
User Control Panel (UCP)
User Control Panel (Overview); here you can manage and view all of your:
- Subscriptions: Navigate to a topic/forum of your choice and you will notice at the bottom of the page you can subscribe to the topic/forum. Once subscribed you will instantly be notified by pm/email when there are any new topic/posts made in that forum.
Bookmarks: Near the Subscription link is also a "bookmark" link. This will help you keep an eye on all topics you wish to keep a close eye on. All Bookmarked topics can be found by clicking this link in your UCP.
Drafts: If your user/group permissions allow you to save draft posts to prevent loss, then your draft (posts that you saved) are stored in here.
Attachments: If your user/group permssions allow you to upload files to our server and attach them to your posts or replies then all your uploaded files can be found here. You can also remove your uploaded files here.
Profile: Here you can change your personal settings.
This includes editing your personal profile fields, some of which are displayed for other users to see in your profile and/or on your posts, such as: ICQ number, AOL Instant Messenger, MSN Messenger, Yahoo Messenger, Jabber, Website, Location, Occupation, Interests, Birthday, Gender, Favourite Rapper, Favourite Album.
Signature: Here you can change your signature settings. This is visable in your public profile and goes underneath every post you make on the forum, it can be an image or text.
Avatar: Here you can change your Avatar settings. This is a small image (150x150 max size) visible in your public profile and to the right of every post you make above your profile info and should be an image that identifies you from others on the board.
Acount Settings: Here you can change your account settings such as username (if permitted), make a new password, and change your email address.
Board preferences: Here you change how the forum is displayed to you personally. If you dont like images in posts, you can turn them off, you can stop people signatures displaying when you coem on the forum (they will still display to others just not you personally) and change how people can see/use your profile details.
Private messages: Here you can check and manage your pm's. New feature is that you can make folders and orginise your pm's, and also that any new PM's you receive whilst your inbox is full will be "held back" for you so you dont miss them until you free up some space.
Friends & Foes: This is a great new feature to the forum, especially if want to easy access to your favorite members on the board? Add him as your friend and make the communication between each other simple. If you dislike a member, you can add him as a "Foe". If you add a member as a "Foe" you can completely ignore the member .
Making new posts and topics:
Making new posts and new topics/threads is still the basically the same as with the old forum, but now we have now some new features aimed at making it easier for members to make posts, and quicker.
1: The "Quick Reply" box is hidden, but it is in the same place as before, (at the bottom of the threads page) and this time you have to click the "Quick Reply" button to show it, once clicked it will show the reply box:
2: You can also use normal reply method which enables you to use all functions such as bbcode (underline, bold, images, hide content, etc etc) and insert smilies. Heres an overview at some of the reply features:
- You can just use the hide hack exactly the same way as on previous versions of the RapCentral forum. If you click the hide button it will insert two hide tags, an opening tag, and closing tag, whatever you place inbetween these two tags (images, text, links, anything) will be HIDDEN FROM ALL USERS until they reply to the post.
- The "Load" and "Save" buttons: You can now "Save" your posts as a draft, and post it later by using "Load" button. Your drafts can also be found in your Control Panel as explained in more detail earlier.
- Upload files! If you have the required permissions and access, you can now upload your own files and add them to your post, as part of your post for users to download. Once you have a file uploaded, it'll be saved on the server and it can be found and deleted when not needed from inside your Control Panel, as explained earlier.
- You can include a poll in your post by clicking the "poll creation" tab below the text field, this will enable you to set up a multiple choice poll for all users to vote on and share feedback.
Chatbox on frontpage:
As on the old versions of the forums we have a chat/shoutbox for users to instant chat to each other. It is in the same place as before, on the forum index underneath all the forum sections ,and above the "Who's Online" section. However the new shoutbox is AJAX based meaning there are no page reloads and it updates live every 5 seconds and displays who is active in the shoutbox, and who has "gone away" in the right hand side of the shoutbox.
Forum Search:
At the top of each thread/forum their is an option next to the "new thread" and "post reply" buttons to search within the selected forum. You can now easily search within a specific topic, forums, or within sub-forums. There is now also a search box at the top of each page which will search the whole forum, every topic. This means users can now access our search engine via every page of the forum.
Report posts:
You can report posts to the forum admin, Global Mods, or moderators by using the report button on the message/post in question.
A GUIDE FOR GLOBAL MODS, AND MODERATORS WILL BE COMING SOON..STAY TUNED
