For the most part, your posts will contain plain text, but on occasions, you may want to emphasize certain words or phrases by making them (for example) bold or italic.

Depending on the rules of the forum, you may use HTML code to produce these effects. However, more often than not, the administrator will have disabled HTML code, and opted instead to use vB Code: a special set of tags which you can use to produce the most popular text-effects. vB code has the advantage that it is very simple to use, and is immune to malicious javascripts and page layout disruption.

You may also find that the administrator has enabled smilies, which allow you to use small icons to convey emotion, and the [img] code, which allows you to add pictures to your message.

For more information about vB code, click here.

Smilies are small graphical icons which you can insert into your messages to convey an emotion or feeling, such as a joke or embarrassment. For example, if you entered a sarcastic comment, rather than type 'that was a joke', you could simply insert the 'wink' smilie.

If you have used email or internet chat systems, you will probably be familiar with the concept of smilies already. Certain combinations of text characters are converted into smilies. For example,:) is converted into a smiling face. To understand smilie codes, tilt your head to the left and look at the text: you will see that :) represents two eyes and a smiling mouth.

For a list of the smilies currently used by this forum, click here.

On occasions, you may want to prevent the text in your message being converted into smilies. You will see a checkbox which you can select when you make a new post, which will allow you to 'Disable Smilies'.

These controls allow you to quickly and easily enter vBcode into your posts and messages. To use them, simply click the appropriate buttons or select items from the lists to enter vBcode.

There are three editor modes available: Basic, Standard and Enhanced mode. When using the Basic editor, there are no vBcode buttons to assist your editing. You must enter any vBcode markup manually in this editor.

When using Standard mode, highlight the text you wish to modify and press the appropriate button. This will place the proper vBcode tags around the selected text. Pressing a button while not having any selected text, will insert vBcode tags at your cursor. You may then enter your text between the tags.

When using the Enhanced mode, pressing a button will modify any highlighted text. This mode is a WYSIWYG mode, What You See Is What You Get, whereas your final post appears the same while being edited. Clicking a button while having no text selected will not have any effect.

To use the clickable smilies, simply click the smiley that you want to insert into your message, or click the Show All Smilies link (if available) to access the full list of smilies.

To vote in the New Forum Polls, which can be found at the top of each forum page, simply select which option you want to vote for by clicking in the circle next to your choice, and click the [Vote Now] button. You may view the current results for a poll before you vote by clicking the 'View Poll Results' link. Voting in a poll is entirely optional. You may vote for any of the available options, or cast no vote at all.

Once you have voted in a poll, you will not be able to change your vote later, so place your vote carefully!

For more information about voting on these polls, please visit the Requests Forum, which can be found here.

The administrator may have enabled message icons for new threads, posts and private messages. Message icons allow you to specify a small icon to accompany your posting, which is used to convey the emotion or content of a post at a glance. If you do not see a list of message icons when you are composing your message or post, the administrator has disabled the option.

If you have registered, you will be able to edit your posts. Note that the administrator can disable this ability as he desires. Your ability to edit your posts may also be time-limited, depending on how the administrator has set up the forum.

To edit your posts, click the button by the post you want to edit.

After you have made your modifications, a note may appear, which notifies other users that you have edited your post. Administrators and moderators may also edit your messages but this note may not appear when they do so.

Moderators oversee specific forums. They generally have the ability to edit and delete posts, move threads, and perform other manipulations. Becoming a moderator for a specific forum is usually rewarded to users who are particularly helpful and knowledgeable in the subject of the forum they are moderating.

Certain words may have been censored by the administrator. If your posts contain any censored words, they will be blanked-out like this: *****.

The same words are censored for all users, and censoring is done by a computer simply searching and replacing words. It is in no way 'intelligent'.