There are two primary ways to create a post. In the View Forum and View Topic pages, you may click New Topic. This will take you to the posting form, and, when you have posted, will create a new topic with your post as the first one in the topic. In the View Topic page, you may also click Reply. This will take you to the posting form, and, when you have posted, it will add your post to the topic you replied to. To reply to a specific post, you may also click the Quote button in the upper right corner of that post. Posting Form When you post a new topic or post a reply, you are taken to the posting form, where to enter your post. Subject - The subject of your post. If this is a new post, the subject is required, and it will be the name of the topic. If the post is replying to another post, the subject is not required, but may be added, and will be shown at the top of the post. Message Body - The Message body is a large text area where the body of your post is input. Plain text is the only thing allowed in this text area, but special formatting, links, smilies (emoticons), images, etc. may be added through the use of Smilies, BBCode and/or HTML. Smilies - Smilies (also called emoticons) can be added to posts. You may only use smilies in your post if they are enabled on the board you are using. To see if smilies are enabled, look in the lower left corner of the posting form, you should see "Smilies are ON/OFF". If smilies are enabled and you would like to disable them in your post, check the box next to Disable Smilies in this Post. BBCode - BBCode allows you to add special formatting to your posts. You may only use BBCode in your post if it is enabled on the board you are using. To see if BBCode is enabled, look in the lower left corner of the posting form, you should see "BBCode is ON/OFF". If BBCode is enabled and you would like to disable it in your post, check the box next to Disable BBCode in this Post. HTML - You may only use HTML in your post if it is enabled on the board you are using. To see if HTML is enabled, look in the lower left corner of the posting form, you should see "HTML is ON/OFF". If HTML is enabled and you would like to disable it in your post, check the box next to Disable HTML in this Post. Signature - You may add a signature to your post. To do this, check the box next to Attach Signature. You may change your signature by editing your profile. Reply Notification - When you post, you may be interested in knowing when that topic is replied to. If so, you may check Notify me when a reply is posted. Polls - To add a poll, look to the bottom of the posting form. These options will only be visible to a user if they have permission to make Polls. Announcements Announcements are a special type of topic. In the View Forum page, Announcements appear above all other topics (at the top of the forum). Announcements will also appear on every View Forum page. Sticky Topics Sticky topics are a special type of topic. In the View Forum page, Sticky topics appear above all other topics except for Announcements. Sticky topics only appear on the first View Forum page. Polls Polls are a special type of that allow community members to vote on an idea or issue. Polls can only be made from the top post in a topic. Poll Question - This is the subject of the Poll, the question that is being answered by the poll. The poll question appears at the top of the topic, above the poll options. This is required for the poll. Poll Option - Poll Options are the possible answers to the poll question. To add poll options, type the option into the text field and click Add Option. To have a valid poll, at least two options must be offered. Run Poll for - Number of days to run the poll for. After the specified time has passed, the results of the poll are displayed in the topic, and no one else may vote. BBCode BBCode is a system that will allow you to format your posts in special ways. The BBCode system uses tags in a way nearly identical to HTML. The primary difference between BBCode and HTML is that BBCode uses square brackets [ and ] instead of angle brackets < and >. For a more detailed description of how BBCode works, click the small BBCode link on the lower left corner of the Posting Form. You may also go to http://www.phpbb.com/phpBB/faq.php?mode=bbcode. Smilies Smilies are small images that appear in posts. Usually they are small images of faces, and are often used to show emotion. To use smilies in your posts, you need to enter a series of characters. Common character series are :) for a happy face , :( for a sad face , etc. Another common style for smilie character sequences is :emotion: (i.e. the emotion the smilie shows, with a colon ":" before and after this). Examples of this are :wink: for a winking face , :lol: for a laughing face , etc. Many templates (including subSilver, the default template) have smilie buttons on the posting form. Normally, this is a grid of the smilies, any of which may be clicked to insert the appropriate character sequence at the current text insertion point. Quoting Messages Quoting messages allows you to include other's posts in your own. It is useful for showing that you are replying to a post, or part of a post. To quote all of someone's post, look at the top right corner of their post and click Quote. This will take you to the posting form, and will allow you to reply to the post. It will also automatically add the appropriate BBCode to your post to quote the post you are replying to. The proper syntax to quote a post is: <name to quote> is the source of your quote, and <text to quote> is what you are quoting. So to quote the user Cheese Man saying "Power the behold of cheese." Editing Posts Editing posts allows you to go back and fix errors, remove incorrect information, or add new information to your posts. To edit a post, look at the top right corner of your post and click Edit. You will be taken to the posting form to edit your post, and then click Submit to enter it into the database. If you edit a post after it has been replied to, a small message will appear at the bottom of it indicating how many times it has been edited, and when and by whom the last edit occurred. To delete a post, click Edit and check Delete this Post. Click Submit to finish deleting the post. You may not delete a post if it has been replied to (i.e. it is not the last post in the topic)