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If you are not registered with Nodus Forums then your initial view after clicking on the Forum Button will be something like below.

This shows the principle “Nodus General Forum”, and in this example two Main Forums, “General Discussions” and “Example Forum”, which was just added for demonstration purposes. The General Discussions forum has two sub forums, “How to Use a Nodus Forum” which links to this document, and “Editing Forum Entry”.

Access to a forum is by clicking on one of four places as below.

1 Click on main Title “Nodus General Forum” gives the same as above, which appears to be not particularly helpful. However if you are registered for one or more of the controlled forums then clicking on one of the main titles will just show that forum alone.

2 Click on the specific Forum Title eg “General Discussions” This lists the Sub Forums and the topics in the selected Forum. Then click on the name of the topic we wish to see, for example 'First Posting' and then we will be in the actual forum.

In the above note that the main icon symbol in the subforum “How to Use a Nodus Forum is now green. This tells us there is something new in that particular forum.

Note that there is also a 'route banner' shown which tells us where we are.

If we click on one of the green parts then we will be taken back to the selected part.

3 Click on Sub Forum Name

This takes us directly to the choosen sub forum where we can then click on the selected topic by clicking on the topic title. Normally there are several topics but for simplicity there is only one topic in this example.

4 Use the Pulldown

Clicking on the 'jump' pulldown gives the list of available topics as shown on the right. Note how the sub topics are indented a little below their 'owning' topic.

Whichever route we follow ultimately we click on the name of the topic we wish to read or contribute. This then takes us to the selected topic something like that shown opposite. In the example shown it is being viewed by someone who is not registered with the forum. This gives the possibility of reading but not posting. You can actually just see in this much reduced size picture the words 'Administrator has disabled public posting'. The messages themselves are on the right and the left shows the name of the user, their avatar, and total number of posts.

If however the person viewing the forum had registered and logged in then it would appear something like below.

Reply buttons and similar have appeared. Also an Edit button appears on those posts that you entered, so you can correct something even after it has been posted, but note it is then marked as editted. Also note that the default avatar is shown as the user has not sent one yet, or of course they may not wish to have an avatar.

By scrolling down to the end of the topic or by clicking on the reply button takes you to a simple entry screen, such as shown below.

You can just simply type in a post. There are a whole set of icons that allow you to customise your post, including inserting a table but most often one just types in a message as it is. When message done you can submit it or first preview it to check for typo's and so on.

Notice the small tick box Suscribe under the Options. This is normally set by default. What happens is that if someone else makes an entry to the forum(s) to which you have subscribed then you will get an email telling you a new entry has been made.

The email will be from nodus with a subject line like “new Nodus Forum entry” and will be of the form as shown opposite. Clicking on Topic will take you directly to that forum, but you will not be logged in. To overcome this use the Home menu button at top left of page, login and then use the back arrow to return to the previous page.

We will discuss using the Edit buttons in another article.

Hope this helps

Nodus Admin Team