The Rich Editor

The Rich editor is the default post editor for this forum. It is simple in use, and creates good results without having to be an expert in any weird formatting language. However, it is not very flexible if you want to do anything beyond what is listed here, which is the main reason for sometimes picking another editor.

Wysiwyg

The rich text editor is a Wysiwyg (what you see is what you get) editor. This means that the preview in the edit box will be the same as what you post, with some minor exceptions. So if a link isn't turned into a hyperlink in your edit window, it won't magically be so when you hit the post button either (see below for automatic link parsing information)

Paragraph Formatting

Click the paragraph mark to the left of your current line of text, right outside the text box itself to access paragraph options. This allows you to do whole paragraph formats, such as headings, lists, code blocks and spoiler hiders. The icon to the left of the paragraph will change to indicate what formatting is in effect.

Text Formatting

Select any piece of text in the editor, and the formatting toolbar will show up. This allows you to do simple formatting, Bold, Italics, strike-through, code, and hyperlinks.

Emoticons

If you prefer graphical emoticons instead of plain text ones, click the button a the bottom of the editor to insert them.

Images

The editor supports multiple ways of inserting images into your post. For more about image posting, see this guide. Note that images has to be on their own line, there is no option for inlining images in text.

• You can click the image button in the bottom of the editor, which will open a browse dialog where you can pick the image
• You can drag and drop an image file into the editor window
• If you have an image on your clipboard, you can paste it by Ctrl+V (Or right click -> Paste)

Embedding

Certain content, such as YouTube videos and images can be embedded. Click the embed button in the bottom of the editor, and it will embed them appropriately. For example, a YouTube link will result in an embedded video player.

Attachments

And if you need to attach something, such as a CC3+ map, click the attach button. The forum has a limited set of file types it will allow, so if you need to post something not on the list, zip it up first. Use zip compression, the forum does not allow any other kinds of compressed files. Note that if you use the attachment button when attaching an image, it will just show up as an attachment link instead of being visible inline.

Automatic Link Parsing

The editor parses any link that is posted on a line of it's own, and turns it into the appropriate content. For example, a YouTube link will automatically be turned into an embedded video player, and a regular link will be turned into a "rich" link as in my example below.

Links that appear inside a line of text will be automatically turned into a link as long as you paste it, but not if you type the URL manually. If you do that, you need to turn it into a link by selecting it, then picking the link option from the formatting toolbar that shows up, and add the URL to the dialog. Using the formatting toolbar is also the way you want to go if you want to make regular text an URL to somewhere.

It is worth noting that the automatic embedding/rich link generation cannot be disabled, but it only occurs if the URL is pasted on a line of it's own. To avoid this, for example to have a regular link to a YouTube page instead of the embedded video player, paste the link inside a sentence.

Here is an example of a rich link

Quotes

You can quote other posts in the discussion by hitting the Quote link appearing in each other post. This will embed their full post into yours, and if it is longer than a few lines, will be shown in a collapsed state, only showing the first few lines until the viewer clicks to expand it. Note that since this is an embedded version of the post, it is NOT editable, you cannot edit it to show only the relevant lines for what you are replying to. Here is an example of me quoting my post above:

If you just want to quote a few lines, you can do it manually instead. Copy the lines you want to the clipboard, then in the Rich editor, set the Paragraph format (see above) to quote, and past in the copied lines. I like to start the first line with @username wrote and then paste the quotes on the next lines. The @ indicates a mention (see below) which clearly indicates who you are replying to.

Mentions

A mention is just typing @username into your post. You should see a selector appear once you start typing the username, that allows you to select the right user to mention. If done correctly, it should turn into a link instead of just plain text, as in my manual quote above. Note that for a mention to work as intended, the username must be correct. A mention will notify the user that he has been mentioned, so a mention is also a way to draw the attention of someone not in the conversation already, provided the user pays attention to their notifications.

Markdown

The rich editor has limited support for markdown formatting if you like to use that.

Commenting on an existing discussion or creating a new one should be simple enough. For the former, there should always be a text editor on the last page of the thread to write your comments in, and to start a new discussion, there is a button in the top left to do this (or in the hamburger menu if you are on mobile/small screen). For creating new discussions, you may want to check out the difference between a Discussion and a Question.

The Categories

There are multiple categories in this forum, intended to help divide the discussions into relevant groups. While the forum software running here puts the posts in focus, contrary to how many forums do it, where you have to click on a category/board first to see the posts within, this forum still have categories. You can read more about them in this guide.

When posting, it is important to select the right category for your post, so I recommend a little bit of familiarizing yourself with them. One important fact to be aware of here is that if you hit the new discussion button on the front page of the forum, you do get a selection box in the new discussion dialog where you can select the category, but if you click the button when you are inside a discussion and reading the post, it will automatically create a new discussion in the same category as the post you are reading. So make sure to go to the front page first if you should be posting in a different category.

Categories in grey in the list are categories you can see, but don't have permission to create new discussions in.

Tags

When you create a new discussion, you also have the option to add tags to it. You can choose from the existing tags, just click the Show popular tags link to see them. Tags help people find relevant discussions, so please use the relevant tags that seem appropriate for the content of the post, but don't spam every tag that is somewhat remotely related.

Attach Poll

Check this box to add a poll to your discussion that people can vote. Each poll can have multiple questions and multiple answers. Use the left/right arrows to navigate between questions and add new ones, while the down arrow lets you add more answers for the current question.

The Editor

The most important component is obviously the editor window. Here, you will use the currently selected editor to write your discussion or comment. The default editor used in this forum is the Rich text editor, which is simple in use, and can make great-looking posts easily.

If you prefer, you can change to a different editor on your edit profile screen. There is a long list there, but the relevant ones are described below, one post for each editor, check those for the particulars about each editor. Unless you have a special reason, I do recommend sticking with the standard Rich editor though.

Note that editing an existing post will use the editor that was used to create that post, not whatever you have chosen. This is because vanilla stores your posts differently depending on the editor, so other editors can't interpret what another one made.

The list of editors are

• Rich
• Wysiwyg
• Html
• Markdown
• Text
• BBCode

Drafts

While you write your post, drafts are automatically saved periodically in case something happens, like your browser or computer crashing. Drafts will automatically repopulate the appropriate box, so if you where in the middle of writing a comment in a discussion when the crash happened, the comment box in that discussion should automatically be pre-filled with your draft. You can also access all your saved drafts from the My Drafts link in the sidebar, where you can also delete unneeded ones.

Editing Posts

Everyone can edit their own posts, but for spam prevention reasons, new users can only do so for a 4 hours after posting, which should be enough to fix mistakes. As you rank up, this time will extend. First to one week for the Traveler rank, and then unlimited as you reach Surveyor.

There are multiple categories in this forum, intended to help divide the discussions into relevant groups. While the forum software running here puts the posts in focus, contrary to how many forums do it, where you have to click on a category/board first to see the posts within by showing all discussions on the front page, this forum still have categories, and if you prefer, you can easily show the posts per category.

Just go to the Categories page (the link is also found in the main menu at the top [or hamburger menu if you are on mobile/small screen]) and you will see the categories, and from here you can click on a category to see just the posts from that category.

This page lists all the categories, with a small description of each, which should describe what it is intended for.

From this page, you can also follow a category by clicking on the cog icon, and also marking posts in that category read.

Following a category is used together with the view selector on the all Discussions page:

Basically, if you set the View to Following, you only see the posts from the categories you are following. You can use this to filter out categories you feel are not that interesting to you, or perhaps by having a view to what you are most interest in.

Note that some of the categories require special permissions. For example, you can't post at all in the Forum Rules & Guides Category, and you can only comment, but not start new threads in the Resources category.

You're welcome. We'll be here if you have more questions.

When starting a new topic here in this forum, you have the choice between creating a discussion or ask a question:

So, what are the differences between these?

Discussion

A discussion is just the regular forum topic, and what most the topics here in this forum are. This is basically the default choice, and it is always appropriate, there are really no situations where you should absolutely use a question over a discussion. In some cases, a question may be better, but a discussion is never a wrong choice. Use a discussion if you are unsure.

Question

A question is a special case of a discussion. The idea behind questions is that you can ask a question, and then select the best answer to that questions. This allows other users know that there is a solution to this question, and is helpful when new users stumble upon it, as they can immediately see what the solution is instead of reading through the entire thread in the hope that there is a solution in there.

Mostly, it behaves exactly as a discussion, but there are a couple of differences you need to be aware of

• Questions allow the poster to accept or reject any answers that people provide. This is done via the links that appear on the bottom of each answer. Your responses here will be shown to the other users of the forum. As the asker of the question, it is expected that you do take the time to at least accept one of the solution (provided there is a suitable one). You don't have to go around rejecting all the others, but if the answer is clearly wrong or misleading, you should reject it. Note that people do get points from accepted answers, so accepting a valid answer is an expected way to say "thank you" (Although you can still make a thank you comment if you want)

• Questions show up on the discussion list with a tag showing it's status. It will show either Question (when there are no answers, or all answers have been rejected), Answered (Somebody has provided an answer, but it hasn't been accepted or rejected) or Accepted Answer (The asker have accepted one of the answers). These tags is a visual indication to others if there is a question that might need their attention, or if you are looking for a solution, you can see if one has been provided yet.

• Accepted answers are shown at the top of the page, right below the questions. This means they are taken out of the natural comment order. This means that a question ideally should be as self-contained as possible, because an answer that says something like "Just replace X in Somebodys answer above with Y and it will work" will look weird, because when accepted, the comment they are referring to may even be on another page. It is possible to accept multiple answers though, so if someone gives a good answer, and then somebody gives a good clarification, both can be accepted. But I do recommend that people avoid referring to other posts when answering questions, or if they need to, use a proper quote containing all the relevant details from the post you are talking about.

Questions work best when they address a single concrete problem that can be answered in a single comment. They should expect a concrete answer that can be marked correct, so they should not be opinion-based like "which color scheme do you think look best for my map", those kind of questions are better used as a discussion. Questions of a very complicated nature that are bound to lead to many comments back and forth with follow-ups and clarifications are also best suited as a discussion.