OUR SIDE-SHIPS: James / Lily, Draco / Ginny, Ron / Luna. This layout's designed for a 1024 x 768 screen, Firefox and Windows.

[SusanBones23]

Oops. I feel dumb. But thanks.

MOD NOTE: It's not dumb, many others have done that same thing. ~gal-texter 5Dec2004

This post has been edited by gal-texter: Dec 5 2004, 12:41 AM

[SusanBones23]

Oops. I feel dumb. But thanks.

MOD NOTE: It's not dumb, many others have done that same thing. ~gal-texter 5Dec2004

This post has been edited by gal-texter: Dec 5 2004, 12:41 AM

[TheBlackPearl]

Can anyone tell me how to put a poll on the forums?

Any help is appreciated.

Pam

[sartone]

Can anyone tell me how to put a poll on the forums?

Any help is appreciated.

Pam

I don't know how far you've gotten
1. Click the New Topic button
2. Click on 'Click here to manage this topic's poll' near the top of the thread
3. Fill out your title
4. Add Poll Question
5. Add Poll Choices


MOD NOTE:

The link in #2 shows up only for sections that allow for polls to be made. (This is set in the forum admin control panel.)

If you don't see the Click here to manage this topic's poll link, then contact the mods by posting your new topic here in the Forums Help Desk. Your new topic should list your poll question and choices. The mods would then insert the poll for you.

Do the same steps if you want mods to insert polls in an existing topic. Give them a link to that topic where you'd want the poll to be inserted.

- Pen/gal-texter, 2009

[TheBlackPearl]

Thanks, I got it all done. Now just gotta wait for the mods to approve the post!

Pam

[LadyAkako]

Forum topic views -
choosing Standard, Outline or Linear views

Hmm..well every once in a while when I get onto portkey instead of just being able to read right through a topic I only see the very first post and then have to click on each individual post through links at the bottom and as you can imagine after 10 posts or so, it gets a bit tiring. Is there anyone else getting this same thing?

Is there any way to switch it back cause the index thing really drives me up a wall...


Julie


EDIT: Nevermind, thanks to a little help from nadja, everything's looking fine again. I feel so un-computer/forum savvy right now. After three years you would think, wouldn't you?


Putting this here in case others are having the same issues:

What Lady Akako had described above is called Outline Display Mode. To switch to the other modes like Standard or Linear, look for the Options menu on a thread. It's usually on the top right of the thread.

I think the board software occasionally goes to Outline mode for guests or people logged in, to make the webpages load faster.

-gal-texter, 2008

[gal-texter]

How to find moved posts latest edit Feb 2009
RELATED TOPIC: ERROR: Sorry, the link that brought you to this page seems to be out of date or broken


Q: Where did your post go?

A: It was probably merged with another thread or moved to another forum. We know of at least three ways to look for your moved posts

ALTERNATIVE 1: Go to your forum profile (by clicking on your username), then select Profile Options -> Find member's posts. Click to enlarge screencap ->

ALTERNATIVE 2: Go to My Controls and scroll down until you see "Recently Read Topics."
You can also access My Controls by clicking on it on the top right of your screen, on the same row as your PM alerts.

ALTERNATIVE 3: Use the "Search" link on the top right of the screen. It displays the Advanced Search form by default.



Q: Where did my favorite thread go? I didn't post on it, so I can't do the procedures above.

A: Use Alternative 3 above. If you remember someone who did post on the thread, you can enter his/her username in the Search form.

A: Or you can use the Enter Keywords - Search forum box below most forum's topics list. Portkey has a very powerful search engine.


NOTE: If you see the message along the lines of You do not have permission to view this topic, then it means the post was moved to a hidden forum --most likely Trash. That happens when the post was deleted by a Mod or the poster him/herself. Mods may delete a post without warning if said post violates forum rules.

[gal-texter]

How to see subforums and their descriptions
Click screencaps to enlarge them!



One of the complaints about the current board layout was:

Seriously: It hides oft-used sub-F's [subforums] from the main page;

You can see the children forums & descriptions by clicking on the link for their parent forum.

Here are two ways to do what I've said about clicking the links to the parent forums. In these screencaps, the parent forum is the Draco/Ginny shipping section.

See D/G subforums from the board's home page ->

If you're in a D/G subforum, here's how you can jump to the page showing most D/G subforums:

Doing either of the above two steps will lead to this same page that lists D/G subforums.

.

[gal-texter]

Change how topics are listed in a forum page

by Topic Starter's Name, Topic Title, Topics you've started or replied to, etc.

Most PK forums are sorted by date of the last post, ie, threads with the most recent replies are positioned on the top of the forum page. But you can temporarily change the sorting order by hitting the dropdown menus at the bottom of every forum page.

Click to enlarge screencap -->

Examples: Say you want to sort essay threads posted here according to who wrote them. You can use this tool to arrange them by topic starter's name, as the essayists usually make the first post on those threads.

EDIT Jan2009: You can also use this tool to view locked threads in some forums. One of the dropdown menus (screencapped above) allows you to display all topics or only the open (unlocked) ones or only the closed / locked ones.

Why PK mods lock topics:

Portkey mods generally lock a thread at around 100 - 150 posts to make each one load faster and less difficult to follow. Posts in excess of that are carried over to threads 2, 3, 4 and so on. As of 2009, we've been marking those serial threads as T01 for thread 1, T02 for thread 2 and so forth.

[gal-texter]

Why do we recommend the Firefox browser for this site (and pretty much any other site)?

EDIT MARCH 19 2009: Plenty more info here about our layouts' colors, font sizes, graphics, issues with OS other than Win Vista and browsers other than Firefox


Apparently, the word wrap command works in Firefox but not in Internet Explorer (IE) 6 or 7. Compare how PK's shipping forums look:

in Internet Explore 6 or 7 (for Windows XP SP2 and Vista):

Click to enlarge -->


in Firefox:

Click to enlarge -->

Uploading fanfics works best with Firefox too. So go download it now!

EDIT DEC 2008:

Here's another advantage of Firefox.

Copied from this post:
"First off, i'm hating my notebook right now! i've written a very long reply already and something went wrong that i lost all of it! argh!!! now i have to start all over again.. "

Copied from My reply

"Use Firefox if you haven't yet. Most of the time, I only need to hit its back button to recover the reply window with my text intact, even before I've hit the "submit post" button. I use its "History -> Recently Closed Tabs" feature a lot too."

I'd like to add that in some cases, hitting Firefox's Forward button also works.


EDIT MAR 21 2009:

We try to make adjustments for IE's shortcomings, but sometimes it's not worth the trouble esp for amateur web designers like ourselves. Pro techies have been complaining about IE 7 and older:

Microsoft has been notorious for building Web browsers that only partially follow Web standards, or agreed-upon ways of reading Web designers' code and displaying the page as described. With IE 8, Microsoft has promised to adhere to standards. But since many Web pages, including Microsoft's own corporate sites, were built to work best with IE, the new version may "break" some pages.

The fix? A button that reverts to the old, nonstandard way of operating

You won't see us PK skinners switching to IE anytime soon.

.

[gal-texter]

Too many forums?
Collapse or Expand some to save on screen space

Hello everyone, individually, there are some Portkey forums that we could care less about, right? Forums that we hardly glance at as we scroll down the board's home page? Well, we can click on the Collapse / Expand toggle button on the root forum's top right corner. It alternates between sporting a - and + sign.

Say you're not really interested in our shippy discussions. You can collapse the "Glory to thy PK ship" root forum like so:

Expanded root forum - this is what we normally see

click to enlarge screencap -->


Collapsed root forum

click to enlarge screencap -->

You can toggle from one view to another as often as you want. Obviously, you can permanently collapse such areas as Potions Lab (Testing).

NOTE that your expand/collapse settings would be reset everytime you delete cookies from PK's board. But we would recommend that you delete cookies every time you log out, so consider that a minor convenience.