Forums are for discussing topics of interest to members on LiveModern. Anyone can read conversations on LiveModern but only registered members can actively participate in forums by starting conversations and/or adding comments.

Definitions

First a few definitions to help you understand the structure of forums:

• Forum—A collection of related conversations. There are several forums on LiveModern. Some are sponsored by LiveModern others by featured companies, and still others by geography. All are listed in the forums directory.
  
• Conversation—This is a collection of comments related to a particular topic, usually established in the initial comment. Conversations are where all discussion happens.
• Comment—This is an individual contribution to a conversation, often called a reply.

Reading Conversations

The trick in reading forums is to follow the conversations. Start at the beginning of the conversation, and scroll down through each following comment. Or click any link within the discussion to jump right in. Note that you will be able to tell where you are in the discussion by checking both the navigation bar (right under the tabs at the top of a LiveModern web page) as well as right under the Comment header at the top of a threaded page.

For your convenience, new discussion comments and replies, those that have been posted in the past day, show up in a search of recent documents. Forums also have their own portlet, and you can see all of the recent comments in one place.

Adding Comments and Replies

First, you need to be a registered member of the LiveModern community to start conversations or add comments. Once registered, login and you will notice that you have the capability to add comments. (Try viewing the bottom of a discussion page, first when you are not logged in, then when you are.)

Second, be sure to add comments or replies to web pages that your comment or reply is most immediately related to. Usually, this will mean adding a reply to a comment or reply at the end of a thread, but this comment or reply can be anywhere in a thread. For this reason, you normally do not need to quote any text from previous comments in your reply. Posting your comment/reply in this way will help keep the discussions comprehensible.

To add a comment, go to the end of the conversation where you will find the Quick Reply form (an easy way to get there is to click on the Most Recent Comment link at the top of any page in the conversation). The body of your comment is simply text, though you can format it using the tools in the content editor too bar (except Safari users, see below).

Alternatively, you can click on the "Reply to this" button that is associated with each comment in the conversation. This will take you to a new page in which the entire comment is quoted. Be sure to start your reply at the very beginning of the body text area, before the quoted text. Again, you can use the content editor tool bar while writing your comment.

Either way you comment, you can also add images to your comments. Click on the Choose File button to find your image on your hard drive or LAN. You can add up to three images to each comment (totaling no more than 1 megabyte), all of which will appear at the bottom of your comment.

Once you are satisfied with your comment, click the "Post Comment" button at the bottom of the page. Your comment is immediately added to the conversation.

When adding a comment, which can be done on any conversation web page, make sure that it starts a new topic, rather than repeats a topic covered elsewhere or replies to a previous comment. This way we can limit the number of conversations in any forum, making navigation for everyone easier, and deepen the discussion of those topics in their respective threads.

Editing and Deleting Comments and Replies

If, after posting our comment or reply, you discover a mistake that needs correcting, you can edit your it. Simply click on the edit button associated with the comment, and make your edits. (Note that if you started a conversation, you will also be able to edit any comment associated with that conversation. This is a bug in our software: don't do it.)

If you want to delete a comment, contact the LiveModern webmaster for assistance.

HTML in Comments and Replies

If you are using Safari to browse LiveModern, you will not be able to use our built-in content editor to write your comments/replies. You can simply write your reply as text. The body of your comment or reply is actually HTML. You can also embed HTML tags (to format text or reference web pages and images, for example) in the body of your reply. 

Practice Makes Perfect

If you are a first time user or are having trouble using the LiveModern forums, try the website forum. We monitor the forum, to answer your questions as well as determine how we could make this tutorial better.