BEBRF Blepharospasm Bulletin Board FAQ

BEBRF Blepharospasm Bulletin Board FAQ
Updated november 20, 1999

Back to Blepharospasm Bulletin Board

Why did the bulletin board move and why does it have a slightly different format
I can read messages on the bulletin board but when I click on the "Post Message" link, I get a "Login Blepharospasm Bulletin Board" screen. What has this got to do with posting?
What does the "register" link mean?
Why do I have to register?
What is involved in the registration process?
There was a discussion thread on the old board which was discontinued as a result of the move. How can I continue this discussion?
I regret having posted a particular message or I would like it changed. What can I do?
How do I send a private e-mail message to someone who has posted to the bulletin board?
Can I add a link to my post?
What do the four fields at the bottom of the "Post Message" form mean?
what is that "\_" ?
Can I include an image in my post?
When I post a followup, how can I include all or part of the message I am responding to?
Can I read and/or respond to messages off-line?
Each time I return to the bulletin board, all of the messages show as not having been visited (read).
How do I print messages?
How do I save messages?
How do I make the messages display in larger print?
I don't like the colors of the bulletin board (background, text, unvisited links, visited links)

Return to Blepharospasm Bulletin Board

QUESTION: Why did the bulletin board move and why does it have a slightly different format?

ANSWER: We decided to switch to new software which is more secure and less likely to crash.

QUESTION: I can read messages on the bulletin board but when I click on the "Post Message" link, I get a "Login Blepharospasm Bulletin Board" screen. What has this got to do with posting?

ANSWER: The software has been configured such that anyone can read posted messages but only persons who have registered can post messages. A registered user must login each time he/she visits the board and wishes to post a message or followup. A user only has to login once per session, even if he/she wishes to post more than one message.

QUESTION: What does the "Register" link mean?

ANSWER: This link takes you to a form where you enter a login name and a password which you will use in future when you wish to post messages? Although anyone can read messages on the bulletin board, only those who have registered (Click on the "Register link" and follow instructions) can post messages.

QUESTION: Why do I have to register?

ANSWER: The principal reason is to allow the moderators to identify anonymous troublemakers. The system has been configured such that persons who feel the need to post anonymously can do so (provided that they do not use anonymity as a shield to hide behind while making personal attacks).

QUESTION: What is involved in the registration process?

ANSWER: When you go to the new board for the first time (link below), click on the "Register" link on the top or bottom navigation bar. Fill in the form and click on the "Submit" button. Note that in the "Name" field you do not have to enter your real or full name if you would prefer not to. However, you must enter your real e-mail address because part of the registration process involves responding to an e-mail sent to that address. The information on this form can not be viewed by other users but it can be viewed by the moderators.

After you have received the validation e-mail message, gone to the URL provided in it, and read and accepted the conditions, you will be registered. Each time you visit the board and wish to post a message, you will have to login ("Login" link on the navigation bar), using the name and password you used to register.

It is possible to register under more than one name but if you do so, your aliases will show in your posts.

Note that you do not have to include your e-mail address when posting if would rather not.

QUESTION: There was a discussion thread on the old board which was discontinued as a result of the move. How can I continue this discussion?

ANSWER:

Click on the "Archives" link just below the navigation bar
Click on "Go to Archive 4"
Find the message you wish to post a followup to and open it
Highlight the URL and copy it (Ctrl-Ins in Win95)
Return to the new bulletin board using your browser's back button
Click on the "Post Message" link
Near the bottom of the Post Message form, paste the URL in the "Link URL" field
In the "Link Title" field, type or paste the name of the post in the archives which you are following up
In title field, put "Re: title of post you are following up (from archives)"
Complete the remainder of the form and "Post!" it

QUESTION: I regret having posted a particular message or I would like it changed? What do I do?

ANSWER: Find the message you want to alter on the main page. Click on your name within that entry. This will open the message. You can then delete the message or alter the content of the "Subject" or "Message" fields. If you alter the message, a note will be added at the bottom "--modified by your name at date and time". If the message were modified by a moderator, the moderator's name would show in place of "your name".

QUESTION:

ANSWER: How do I send a private e-mail message to someone who has posted to the bulletin board?

ANSWER: Open a message posted by the person you wish to e-mail. If the person has included his/her e-mail address (i.e., if he/she is willing to allow others to contact him/her by e-mail), his/her name will show colored as a link. If you click on this, an e-mail message addressed to the person will open (provided that your browser is appropriately configured). If it is not possible to configure your browser to start an e-mail message automatically in this fashion, you should see the e-mail address in the browser's toolbar when you put the mouse over the link. In that case, copy the address and use it in your regular e-mail program. If the name of the person you want to post is not colored as a link inside the message, it means that he/she did not include his/her e-mail address.

QUESTION: Can I add a link to my post?

ANSWER: Yes. Go to the bottom of the "Post Message" form. In the field labelled "Link URL", type in the URL of the link. In the field titled "Link Title", type in the name of the link. When the message is posted, what you typed in the "Link Title" field will appear as a link.

QUESTION: What do the four fields at the bottom of the "Post Message" form mean?

ANSWER: For the first two, see the FAQ above, "Can I add a link to my post?" For the last two, see FAQ below, "Can I include an image in my post?"

QUESTION: What is that "\_" ?

ANSWER: Each page on the bulletin board carries 50 messages of any order (This is in contrast to the old board which held 20 first order messages plus however many followup messages). When a message is posted, it appears at the top of page 1 and moves down the page as newer messages are posted. If you post a followup to a message which is on page 2 or 3 or..., it will still appear at the top of page 1 but preceded by "\_". If you click on your message title, you will see the message plus links to followups to your message. However, if you click on the "\_", you will see the original first order message plus links to all of the followups (including your followup which appeared on page 1 preceded by "\_"). As new messages are posted, your message preceded by "\_" will move down the page. After 50 newer messages have been posted, your message will move off page 1 and rejoin its thread on a later page.

This system may seem a bit confusing at first but it ensures that readers are aware of any new messages without having to scan through the later pages at each visit.

QUESTION: Can I include an image in my post?

ANSWER: Yes. There are two methods:

If the image is already on a server somewhere on the Internet, you can simply type the URL for it in the "Image URL" field at the bottom of the "Post Message" form.
If the image is not already on the Internet and if you have it on your computer, you can upload it to the bulletin board server as part of your message (much like attaching a file to an e-mail message). Use the Browse button beside the "Attachment (<200 kb)" field to locate the image file and click "Open" to attach it. Note that image files should be in GIF or JPG format. They must be less than 200 kb in size. If you want people to be able to view an image file without scrolling, the dimensions should be less than about 700 x 400 pixels (for an 800 x 600 display). Even with a limitation of 200 kb per file, it would be possible to fill up our server space in a hurry if people got carried away with uploading pictures. If it becomes a problem, the option will have to be removed, so please think twice before uploading photos.

QUESTION: When I post a followup, how can I include all or part of the message I am responding to?

ANSWER: There is an option in the script configuration which would automatically include the entire previous message in a followup. I turned this off for a couple of reasons. First, the parent message is often not required if the followup makes appropriate reference to it, particularly given that the parent message is only a click away. Readers are slowed down if they have to wade through the previous message again before getting to the new one. The other problem is that including the parent message increases the storage space required. This becomes really significant if a person posts a one-line followup to a 30-line message which in turn included the 20-line message that it was responding to. If all of the messages are repeated, we will only be able to archive half as many. If you do feel the need to include part of the previous message in your response, select the text with your mouse, copy it to clipboard and then paste it into your followup.

QUESTION: Can I read and/or respond to messages off-line?

ANSWER: Reading and responding to bulletin board messages offline is not as convenient as doing so with e-mail or news groups but it may be doable depending on your browser type and configuration. The following is an unsupported procedure. If it works for you - fine. If it does not, you are out of luck because the webmaster does not have the time to try to work out a specific procedure for your system. The key is to utilize your browser's cache. If you go to the bulletin board main page and your browser is set to reread a page each time, the latest version of the main page will load into cache. If you have not recently flushed your cache or overfilled it, the individual messages which you have looked at (i.e., opened or visited) will also be in cache. Because each message is a discrete html file, if you have not visited it, it will not be in cache. Thus, if you want to be able to read messages at your leisure offline, you will have to at least open them before going offline. Once you have opened each of the new messages, choose the off-line option (File > Go offline in Netscape; File > Work offline in IE) and then disconnect your Internet Connection. Now you may be able to look at each of the new messages at your leisure. Note that even if the procedure is successful, you will get a lot of error messages.

If you want to create a new message or followup offline, write out the text of your messages in your word processor and save as a file. Next time you visit the bulletin board, open the wordprocessor file, copy the appropriate text (Edit > Copy) and paste it (Edit > Paste) into the "message" box.

QUESTION: Each time I return to the bulletin board, all of the messages show as not having been visited (read).

ANSWER: Somewhere in your browser setup or preferences there will be an item about history or visited links. This allows you to specify the number of days that a visited link shows as visited. I use 30 days. The actual menu item to set varies not only with the browser manufacturer but also the version. I have listed the setup sequence for recent versions of several browsers below.

In Netscape:

Edit > Preferences > Navigator

On the Navigator screen, there is an item:

Pages in history expire after xx days

In Internet Explorer

View > Internet Options > General

On the General screen, there is an item:

Days to keep pages in history XX

In Opera:

Preferences > Link Presentation

On the Link Presentation screen, there is an item:

Visited links marked

Days XX

In AOL browser

Members > Preferences > WWW > Navigation

On the Navigation screen there is an item listing number of days for visited links

QUESTION: How do I print messages?

ANSWER: If you want to print a message on the bulletin board, you can use the print function in your browser (In Netscape: File > Print). Alternatively, you can use your mouse to select the text that you want to print, paste it into your wordprocessor and print from that.

QUESTION: How do I save messages?

ANSWER: Messages which have archival value will not be deleted from the bulletin board unless/until we accumulate an enormous number. In order to minimize the probability of this happening and in order to speed up searching, messages which do not have archival value will be deleted after approximately four weeks. The "Find" link at the top of the main page can be used to locate past postings on a particular topic. It only searches the postings on the DMRF Dystonia bulletin board so you will not get inundated with hits as sometimes happens on a Web-wide search. The bottom line here is that there is not the same necessity to save bulletin board messages that you might want to return to as there is with newsgroup messages which age off in a short time.

If there are messages which you would like to save in electronic format, there are a couple of options.

Open the message, select the part you want with your mouse, paste it into a wordprocessor file, and save the file under an appropriate name. If you pasted each of the messages in a thread into a single file, you could read the back and forth discussion all at once.
Save the message files in their html format. In Netscape, go: "File > Save as" and then save the html file in a subdirectory of appropriate name. If you save all of the files (messages) of a thread in a single directory, you can work through the thread as you would on the bulletin board itself. For example, the messages in a thread about printing might consist of the following files: 142.html, 145.html, 146.html, 148.html and 155.html. You could save these in a directory called C:\beb\message\print1. When you want to look at the messages again, you would go to that directory in your browser (In Netscape: File > Open Page) and open the file with the lowest number to start with the first message in the thread. After opening that message, you could go to any of the followups by clicking on the appropriate followup link. If there were another thread on printing, you might store those messages in C:\beb\message\print2

QUESTION: How do I make the messages display in larger print?

ANSWER: In most browsers, you can increase the size of the font in which pages display.

In Netscape 4: Edit > Preferences > Appearance > Font
In Internet Explorer 4: View > Fonts
In Internet Explorer 5: view > Text Size
In Opera: Preferences > Font and Background

Note that in Netscape, the "Variable Width Font" controls the font face and size of all fonts on the main page and within messages. The "Fixed Width Font" controls the font face and size of the font as you are entering it into the message form but does not affect the size that your text will display in the posted message.

QUESTION: I don't like the colors of the bulletin board (background, text, unvisited links, visited links)

ANSWER: Because there is no way to please everyone in terms of background, text, link & visited link colors, I have not defined the background color (the white part of the page), nor the Unvisited and Visited link colors. This means that they are whatever you have set them to be on your browser. Note that you can not set the color of the navigator bar nor the individual message link backgrounds

In Netscape 4
Edit > Preferences > Appearance > Colors

IN IE 4
View > Internet Options > General > Colors