How to Use Web Forums

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A web forum is a online website community where you can post messages and questions and other people can respond with comments and answers.  It is essentially a web community. There are many different web forums sites on the Internet catering to different topics or subjects of discussions.

Each forum, depending on the software they are using, will have different menu systems and methods of registration and participation.    The rules for each web community will be different as they will be defined by the forum administrators.   So it is important to read the rules specific to each forum that you plan to participate.

In this tutorial, we will go through some user scenarios in interacting with a mock forum so that you can gain the general concepts behind forum participation.  The forum in our example is one that uses the open-source phpBB forum software.

On the home page of a forum site, you would find a login or registration link  …

Although you can usually browse through the contents of the forum without registering or logging in.  Most forums will require you to “login” before you are able to make any posts.  And before you are able to “login”, you need to go through an one-time “registration” process.

The login link is for people who have already registered on the forum or have participated in the forum before.

How to Register on a Web Forum

If you are new to a particular forum and would like to participate in it, you would want to click the register link.

Most forums will have a set of terms that you need to agree to…

After agreeing to the terms of the particular web forum, you will get to a registration screen that may looks something like …

Come up with an arbitrary creative username for yourself.  This will be the name in which people will know you by on the forum.  If the name that you have chosen is already taken, an error message will be displayed asking you to pick another one.

Then enter your email address.  And come up with an arbitrary password for your forum login.  Usually, there will also be an image validation to ensure that you are a real person instead of a software robot trying to register.

Click the “Register” button at the bottom of the screen.

To complete the registration, some forums will send you an email with a link that you need to click.  This confirms that the email address that you had supplied is correct.

Click the link in the email in order to complete the registration process.

Log Into the Web Forum

After successfully registering on the forum, you can click the login link at the home page of the forum to login …

Enter the username and password that you had created during registration.   Sometimes there will be a checkmark for “auto login”.  If you checkmark this, the forum will place a cookie on your computer to remember your login credentials so that if you do not need to login again if you come back to the site later on the same computer.  This is not recommended if you are on a public computer or if you are sharing a computer.  But if you are the only person who has access to the computer, then it might be convenient to do so.

Click the Login button, to login to your forum account.

Setting Up Your Web Forum Profile

You can tell that you are logged in because it shows your username and you see link to “User Control Panel”…

If this is your first time logging in, you should first set up your profile by clicking the “User Control Panel” link.  Your profile may contains public information that other can see.  Some of the information may be optional, so put only what you want others to see…

Some forums may allow you to have a “signature”.  A signature is a snippet of text and possibly links or images that is placed at the bottom of each of your message posts.  Typically people would put a link to their website or blog in their signature.  But each forum has its own restrictions on what you can place in your signature.  So you have to read their rules.

Some forums may also let you upload your own picture known as your avatar or profile image.There are various other settings in the user control panel that you can explore.  One that I would recommend that you find is the email notification of replies.

Set it so that you get an email reply whenever other people responds back to your post.

Most forum also allow members to send direct messages to other members — also known as private messages.  This can be turned on and off …

If you turn it on, it is recommended that you set email notification upon receiving a private message as well.  So that you get emailed whenever you get a private message.

Posting on Web Forums

After logging in and navigating to a topic of interest.  You can reply to a post by clicking the reply button…

and then type your reply…

Note the in the above, we had checkmarked “notify me when a reply is posted“. By doing so, we have essentially subscribed to a forum thread.  Therefore, the next time you log in, you can see a list of your “subscriptions” …

Sending Private Messages

You can send a private message to another member if he/she has enabled this option.  Just click on their username.  In this example, we’ll send a private message to “admin”…

Then you might see an editor interface similar to the following…

You also may see the section in your control panel similar to an inbox where you can see your incoming private messages.

When you are done, there will be a logout link to log out of the forum.  Be sure to remember to do this if you are on a public or shared computer.

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