Welcome to my second My Lego Network Organization guide; this time I'll be showing you around MLNO a bit. In this guide, I will show you a few things about navigating the forum, what each tab does, what different buttons do, and what some things mean.
Now, here's how this guide is going to work. I've incorporated some images in here using the Helios Red style. (I find this style easy on the eyes, especially at night, as well as it looking good (in my opinion, of course!)) So IN the image, next to the ugly green boxes, there is a number in the same color. Below the image are corresponding numbers in numerical order (or going 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, etc) telling about each of the outlined areas.
==Table of Contents==
Pre-Content - Intro and how this works.
A. The Navigation Bar (and other things)
B. Posting
C. The Result of Part B
D. Wrap-Up
A. The Navigation Bar (and other things)
1. The Style Switcher:
The style switcher is how you can customize MLNO by how it looks, only to you. Anyone can use the same style as you, but changing it yourself will not change it for others. By clicking on on of the boxes to the LEFT of the style you want to check out. It will change the look of the forum, but just the colors; no need to worry.
2. The News Box:
The news box contains the current forum status (info can be found in the Forum Help Center board), as well as some important news. There is not much else to say about the news box, but if you want to read something, hover your cursor (or mouse) over the news box where the text is scrolling, and it will pause as long as you keep your mouse in the box.
3. Official Forum Date & Time:
This is our forum's official time, or yours, if you have an offset. The time zone, however, is Central Standard Time (-6 GMT I believe). It also has the date in it.
4. The Navigation Bar:
Here's a quick summary of what each of these buttons do.
Home - Takes you to MLNO's "portal", or homepage.
Forum - Takes you to the Forum home (where you view all of the boards in the forum).
Help - Takes you to a page with help for a few major functions here; I haven't personally used it, but I looked at it.
Search - Allows you to search for members, posts, and topics.
Profile - Takes you to your profile homepage. From here you can edit all sorts of information.
Arcade - Here, you can play games and try for Hi-Scores.
My Messages - When you have a new message, a flashing letter will be there along with a number inside brackets, like this [2]. Also, if you want to send messages, you can do that.
MLN Wiki - This RE-DIRECTS your browser to the MLN Wiki, which is run by us: MLNO.
Note: The Wiki is a separate site.
Staff List - This is slightly inaccurate, but this list basically is now used to show who is on what team.
Calendar - You can see important dates here, and some people can add them.
Members - Displays a list of all of the members here at MLNO; you can organize the members by their status (on or offline), username, joined date, posts, and a few other things.
Logout - Pretty self-explanatory: click this to log out. I myself like to stay logged in 24/7, but you don't have to.
B. Posting
This section is devoted to the what you can do when posting a topic or when just posting.
5. Message Icon:
Message Icons appear in the top of your post next to the topic title, and also when you are in the board where the topic is, you can see the message icon. There are various images you can use for the message icon.
6. BBCode:
These various buttons insert code known as BBCode (BulletinBoardCode) into your post. These BBCode 'tags' can cause your text to appear differently, for example, the Italic tags make your text appear like
this,
Bold,
Underline, etc. There are also many other tags which you can experiment with; these are only a few of them which I've shown in text.
7. Smileys:
Smileys can be used to show emotions in posts, for example, if you are joking with someone, you might use the
smiley, or emote. By clicking on the picture of the emote you want, it will insert the code for the smiley, which will appear when you post.
8. Additional Options:
Here, you can choose to lock the topic when you post it, to not use smileys, to notify you when people reply, or return
to the topic when you post instead of going outside the topic to the board you were in. Below what I've outlined, there
is an attachment feature which I'm not going to explain as it's not so important.
C. The result of Part B
9. Topic options:
From here you can do various things, which I'll briefly explain.
Reply - Lets you reply to the topic unless it's locked.
New Topic - Lets your make a topic in the board that you're currently in.
Notify - Notifies you of any replies to the topic you're currently in.
Mark Unread - Marks the topic unread if you want to know to come back to it later or for some other reason.
Send This Topic - Lets you send the topic to a friend via E-mail.
Print - Prints the topic out for you on your printer.
10. Users Viewing:
This shows who is viewing the topic; in this case, I was viewing the topic and no one else.
11. Topic Post Options:
These options allow you to various things to the posts; Quote quotes the post in the reply or quick-reply window;
Modify allows you to edit your post to add things in order to help prevent double posting (
Note: You can only
Modify your posts unless you are a moderator.); Remove is for removing a post.
12. Post Profile Information:
I'll briefly explain this, by re-creating it in text:
---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
Username
Custom Title (available to important people or given as a reward)
Team position/Forum Rank
Post Rank
*Forum Rank image*
MLNO Rep: Your rep
*Status* Online/Offline status.
Gender: *Male/Female*
MLN Name: Your MLN Name here
Posts: How many posts you have here.
*User's Avatar*
Personal Text here.
---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
13. Reporting:
Use these two buttons to report a post which may contain spam or other rule-breaking content, and the moderators will take care of it.
By clicking these buttons you are NOT a tattle-tale. No one but the moderators know who reported the post, and they will keep that private.
14. Signatures:
A signature is a custom area inside the post, at the bottom. You can put text or images in your signature, quotes from members, and various other things; be creative!
15. Contact:
You can use these buttons to contact the member through various different methods, such as E-mail, Instant Messaging, and Personal Messaging via here: MLNO.
D. Wrap-Up
This concludes my guide to MLNO. I hope this guide has helped you. Any questions can be posted here or PMed to me. Comments? Liked my guide? Want me to make another about a different topic? Let me know! I'll get on it if I can.
Regards & good luck,
Ab§olute_Z3R0,
Ex-Admin, LEGO Expert & Old Timer