Using the Forum
Updated for Logos 10+
Forum Home page
Basic help on the Forum Home page
- Sign In/Out
- Sign in to be able to add a new post or reply to a post. Threads that you have viewed will be remembered.
- To change your forum display name see Changing Forum Display Name
- Edit
- These are the different forums where you can view or post in.
Be careful using the link labeled Mark Forum Read as you cannot undo the marking.
- Various Shorcuts
- This will take you to the Wiki.
It contains helpful information on using Logos software which has been provided by other users.
Recent Topics
(on Home page)
- This area shows recent topics/threads across all forums. It can be sorted per items 1,2,3, or 4, per instructions below.
- All Recent is the default. It shows the most recent topics that have been changed.
- refresh the home page to update the list.
- Unanswered shows the most recent topics which have not been replied to.
- Unread shows the most recent topics which you have not read.
- Your Discussions shows the most recent topics to which you have replied or posted.
- This is the subject.
- click on the subject to open the thread.
- This is the forum where the thread resides.
- click this to open the Forum page.
- This is the author of the last reply on this thread.
- click this to take you to the author’s information page.
- This shows you the number of times this thread/topic has been viewed (on the left) and the number of replies it has received.
- This is the time when the last reply to the thread was received.
- click this to open the last/latest post in the thread.
- View more will open Recent Topics into a full page view.
Forum page
General features
- Once that you have selected a Forum from the home page, you will be brought to a Forum page which shows the threads/topics within that Forum.
- The name of the Forum.
- Clicking here will take you back to the Forum Home page.
- Clicking here will refresh this Forum page.
- Clicking here will allow you to customize how the threads are displayed on this forum page.
- Click here to create a new post. You will be taken to the forum post editor (see Basic editor).
- Click here to mark all threads in this forum as Read (careful you cannot undo this).
Thread links
- Subject of the thread.
- Blue subject indicates that you have not viewed this thread.
- Black subject indicates that you have read the thread.
- If someone adds or edits a reply within the thread, then it will turn blue again.
- A link to the last reply to this thread.
- The author that last replied.
- clicking on the author’s name will take you to their public information page.
- Date/Time of the last reply.
- When you see number(s) here there are multiple web pages to view.
- click a number to take you to that specific page.
- This number indicates the number of replies to this thread.
- a new thread will show 0 as no one has replied to it.
Threads
Basic parts of a Thread
- This is the page where you can view the thread along with its replies.
- Subject for this thread
- Details about this thread (found on the 1st page).
- Quick Reply allows you to add a reply using the Basic editor.
- Reply allows you to open the Reply editor so you can respond to this post.
- It will also allow you to quote from this post.
- More will display a drop down menu of options.
- Report Abuse will take you to a page to report an abusive forum user
- first make all possible attempts to resolve this through discussions within the post.
- Delete will open choices for you to delete your reply.
- This item is time dependent and also requires that you have not edited your reply.
- Edit will take you to the reply editor where you can make corrections or additions to your post.
- This item may only be available for a few hours.
- Add this post as a favorite will add a link to this post in your public profile
- click on your display name in the top right of the forum webpages to view your Profile.
- Add this forum as a favorite will add this forum as a favorite in your public Profile.
- Email me when someone replies will send an email notifying the poster that someone has replied to their thread.
- You may see this signature text under some posts.
- click Edit in the upper right corner of the Forum page to edit your Signature in your Forum Profile.
Basic editor
- When you click on Quick Reply or Write a new post (found on the Forum page) you will be directed to this editor.
- When writing a new post, please don’t forget to add the subject.
And please try to make the subject descriptive.
- Click in the body of the editor. And start typing your reply.
- You can enhance text within your reply by selecting the appropriate text that you’ve entered in the body. Then select the enhancement from the toolbar.
- Once that you have your reply finished, click on the Post button. (do this only once. Sometimes there is a delay in the web and clicking on it multiple time will enter your post multiple times.)
- Enhanced Toolbar Components
To get the Enhanced content editor with full toolbar controls:-
1. Click Edit in the upper right corner of the Forum screen.
2. Under Site Options select “Enhanced” for the Content Editor.
3. Click Save at the bottom of the screen.
4. Press your browser’s Back button.
- Top row (left to right)
- Font Family
- Font size
- Paragraph/Heading styles
[hint: to avoid double spacing hold the shift key down when hitting the Enter key.] - Text Color
- Background Color
- Cut / Copy / Paste
- Paste from Word
[hint: use this to avoid extraneous text from showing up after copying text] - HTML editor
[requires some knowledge of HTML]
- Bottom row (left to right)
- Bold
[hint: you can use Ctrl+B on your keyboard to toggle this] - Italic
[hint: use Ctrl+I on your keyboard to toggle this] - Underline
[hint: use Ctrl+U on your keyboard to toggle this] - Strike-through
- Indent
- Unindent
- Bullets
- Numeric lists
- Insert/Edit Table
- Hyperlink
- Insert Image or file
[hint: after an image appears click on the right side of the image and press Enter to get a new line under it. You will probably have to scroll back down to see the new line.] - Inser Image from Amber
[hint: this tools allows you to paste and catalog images without saving them on your computer] - Smiley drop down list.
Note: Most browsers will have a spell checker where a red underline will indicate a misspelled word. Right click on those words to correct, or add to the local dictionary.
Hints:
- After you finish editing and have posted your changes, do not use your browser’s Back button as it will return you to the Editor page again.
- After hitting the Post button be patient and wait for the Logos server to complete this action, otherwise if you press Post again it might duplicate your post.
Reply editor
- When you click on Reply in a specific post/reply, the Forum will direct you to the reply editor.
- Use your mouse to select the text in the poster’s reply that you want to insert into your reply.
- Click in the body of your reply where you want the quoted text pasted.
- Click on Quote.
- The editor will insert the quoted text.
- Click behind the quoted text to position the cursor there. Press enter to insert a new line and finish composing your reply.
- To preview your reply, click here.
- If you have previewed, and decide that you want to continue editing, then click here.
- Not applicable to current Editor.
- When you are satisfied with your post, press Post to complete the process.
If you want to cancel your reply (before Posting!), use the Back button in your browser to return to the post.
Adding a picture to a Post
You can insert pictures into your post. So if you are trying to capture image(s) from your computer screen and do not know how, please see this wiki page.
Your pictures do not necessarily have to be saved as files, so see How to upload pictures to the forum.
Adding Links to a Post
You can add links inside your post, to other posts or websites. Below is an example of adding a link to another post. To add a link in which you already have a URL saved in your clipboard, skip to step # 2.
- In the Address bar of your browser use your mouse to select the entire address. Then right click on the selected address, a pop-up menu should show. In the pop-up menu click on Copy to have your address copied to the clipboard.
- The simplest method is to position the cursor and then paste the link into your post
you must press the space bar after pasting
- Another way is to type some text that you want to be a hyperlink:
- select the text with your mouse.
- click on the chain link icon in the toolbar.
- a pop-up box will appear for adding the address.
- paste the link into the Link URL box.
- click on the Insert button to add the address to your selected text.
Editing your Forum settings
- From any of the Forum pages when you are logged into the forum you can edit your forum settings.
Please notice that links shown below appear in the upper right corner of forum pages.
a) If you click on your login name it will take you to your public viewed page. See Public page subtopic below.
b) If you click on the Edit link, it will take you to a page for editing your Profile/Site Options. See Profile/Site Options subtopic below.
- You can view other’s public page by clicking on their avatar within a post. Or click on their name next to a post.
Your Public page
- Others on the forum can view this page, but only you can edit it.
Information includes:
- The number of posts/replies that you have submitted to the forum.
- Your Picture or Avatar.
This can be changed if you click on the link below the avatar.
- Your favorite posts:
When viewing a post, click on More and click on Add this post as a favorite to include it with your favorites.
- If you have a lot of favorites you can click below the list to view all of your favorites.
- Your recent Acivity which will show the forum posts that you have viwed/replied to/posted.
This can be changed on your Forum Profile under Site Options.
Editing your Profile/Site Options
- Be aware that your account profile is at Faithlife profile
- The Forum Profile page is basically self-explanatory:
- Options not shown are Timezone and Date format
- Click Save when finished.
Searching for posts
At the top of the Forum Home page and every Forum page is a Search box like this
It is a very basic search feature. Type your search terms in and press Enter or click the magnifying glass icon.
- You can use double-quotes for a phrase search.
- You can enter multiple non-quoted search terms and it will OR them together by default (the OR keyword is not understood).
- You can combine two single-word search terms using AND (it must be upper case), but not more than that
- You can’t AND phrases together with each other or with other terms, nor can you use parentheses.
The results appear in no particular order. You can page through multiple pages worth of results using the controls at the bottom of each page:
On the search results page, you can also refine your search further using the controls at the top:
Searching the forum using Google
Since the forum search functionality is so limited, many people prefer to use Google with site:community.logos.com as one of the search terms. Then you can narrow it down as much as you like using the power of Google’s boolean operators (AND and OR).
- AND is the default when terms are combined together with no operators between, or you can be explicit about it using AND.
- You can specify OR using the vertical bar or “pipe” character (|) which is shorthand for OR (the latter works as well).
- You can omit specific terms from the search results by preceding them with a minus sign (-) with no spaces between.
- Google search understands the wildcard character (*).
- You can combine boolean operators in complex ways using curly brackets { } (equivalent to parentheses in Logos searches).
- You can restrict the results to a particular forum (e.g. General) by including the “breadcrumb” text that appears at the top of any thread in that forum e.g. “Home > General”.
- For more information about Google Search capabilities, see Basic search help and More search help
Editing or deleting posts
- Click the “More” button to the right of the post
- A menu will drop down
- You can Edit a post for up to several hours after posting it
- You can Delete a post only if you do so fairly quickly, within a couple of minutes after posting.
- If you miss this window of opportunity, you will no longer be able to edit the post and the Edit and/or Delete commands will be missing from the menu.
Following up on threads
If you’ve posted a question or added a comment to a thread, chances are you might want to follow up on that thread to see if someone has posted a response or replied to your comment. While you can use the “Email me when someone replies” option you have to click it for every single thread you’re interested in. And it can flood your email Inbox. A better way is to click on “Your Discussions” under Recent Topics every day or so and visit the unread threads (the ones marked in blue). Click on the date column to the far right to get to the most recent post, and be sure to read any intervening posts to get the full context before commenting again.
