Silversurfers Forum: “How To” Guide

This is a quick guide on how to use the Silversurfers forums for you to raise any issues of interest that you would like to discuss with fellow friends and members of Silversurfers.

Finding the content that interests you!

There are a wealth of topics in the Silversurfers forum for you to interact with – so we thought it best to make finding the topics that interest you, as simple as possible. Silversurfers forum offers a number of navigation elements to assist you on your journey:

The navigation panel, illustrated above, can be found near the top of all Silversurfers forum pages.

A The search box

The search box is always a good place to start looking for content – especially if you have a particular interest you are looking for. You can enter a single word or short sentence – hit enter, or click the magnifying glass – and we’ll return forum categories and topics that best match your search term – ordered by relevance.

B The Category Menu

A click in this box will drop down our forum category tree. Simply click the category that interests you, and we’ll show you all the topics (or sub categories) that belong to it. This is a great way to find a general category that you are interested in, and see all the topics which have been attributed to it. If you want to start conversing with the community, but don’t have a specific topic you want to discuss – using the category menu is a great place to start.

C The Breadcrumb Trail

The Breadcrumb Trail, so called because it shows a route back to the start (a la Hansel & Gretel), is a good way to find content related to the content you are already looking at. Let’s say you are looking at a topic that one of our community members has added, and you want to contribute to a similar topic – have a look at the breadcrumb, and simply click the category that the topic belongs to – and you’re away!

D Add a Topic

So you’ve searched the forum, delved into relevant categories, but have not found the topic you were looking for? Don’t despair! Take ownership of your thoughts and add your own topic using this handy little button! Give it a click and you’ll be presented with a simple form which you can add a topic title, topic description, and choose the category that you think this topic should be added to. Once you save this, one of our moderators will make sure all’s to order, and make it visible to the community. You must be logged in to see this feature.

Interacting with the Community

That’s what forums are for, after all. To interact with the community you need to be a logged in and registered Silversurfers member. It’s totally free, and very easy to get started. Details of this are at the top of this page.

Make your voice heard with comments!

You can add a comment to any topic in the forum. This can be as a reply to another users comment, or a totally new comment. To add a new comment, simply add your comment to the box at the top: “Please write your comments here…”, and the click the “Add your Comment” button.

To reply, simply click on the “Reply” button shown beneath all existing comments. When you reply to someone’s comment, your reply will be listed at the top of the comments, with a quote of the comment (and member) you replied to listed in a grey box above your comment.

Comments are always from newest to oldest, keeping the conversation fresh and up to date, without having to scroll through pages of comments to see the latest. However, we know when it comes to replies, it’s nice to be able to read the conversation from start to finish. If a comment is a reply to a reply (or beyond) we add a link to the grey quote box: “Show full conversation” which allows you to see the full conversation, from start to finish, without leaving the thread.

Thumb up, Thumbs down

If you are logged in, you can show that you agree or disagree with a comment by clicking either the green thumbs up button, or red thumbs down button.

Keep it clean, keep it friendly.

We want you to feel comfortable in the Silversurfers community forum, so please show respect for the other community members. That’s not to say we expect all members to agree on all topics, we are huge advocates of freedom of speech and opinion, but not to bullying or abuse. We have moderators constantly monitoring comments to ensure the forum remains a welcoming place – but naturally, sometimes a rogue comment will slip the net. It is for this reason that we provide you with the opportunity to “Flag as Inappropriate” any comment that you deem aggressive, abusive, or overtly offensive. When you click this link, it will highlight the comment to our moderation team, who will vet it for you.

Your finger on the pulse. Keeping up to date with notifications

We know it can be hard to keep track of all the topics you are involved with, which is why the Silversurfers forum comes with it’s own notifications system. When you are logged in, you will see a brick red notifications bar stuck to the bottom of you screen. Give this a click to see, near realtime, useful notifications – to get you right back into the chat.

We will notifiy you whenever a community member leaves a reply to one of your comments, when leaves a comment on a topic you have become involved with, or when they comment on a topic you started. We will also notify you when a new topic becomes available – so be sure to keep an eye on that clever red bar!

The notifications bar is pretty straight forward to use. Click the bar to show the notifications. The number displayed is the amount of notifications you have, but have not clicked “View” for. Clicking view takes you through to the comment, or topic it is related to. If you want to remove any notifications, you can do this by clicking the “dismiss” button.

That’s all, folks!

We really hope you enjoy using the Silversurfers forum, and manage to make some lasting friendships with like minded people.

If you any queries, or have any suggestions on how you feel we can improve it for you, please do not hesitate to send an email to Sally at [email protected]

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