Forum Help and FAQ’s

This is a Christian based forum. We hold the belief  that Jesus Christ is Lord, and that there is salvation in no other. Any posts that violate that view, or that seek to espouse a contrary view will be removed. The A Minute To Midnite administration reserves the right to decide what is deemed to be inappropriate. READ THE RULES

Community and Forum. Help and FAQ’s

( coming soon…..bare with us as we work to get the forum up and running )

BASICS

The A Minute to Midnite Community Forum consists of two parts.

a) A forum

b) A social community where members can post updates, chat with each other, message one another, make friends, and follow each other’s activity feeds.

The forum is viewable by the public. However, only members can post and reply to topics in the forum.

The social community is not viewable by the public. Only to members who are logged in can view this area.

It is *free* to join the community. You will never be asked to pay for anything. Though donations are always welcome and appreciated.

GETTING STARTED

REGISTERING

To get involved in our community you will need to register. You can register by clicking the “Register” link at the very top left hand corner of of any page on the A Minute To Midnite website. This will open a registration page. We suggest that you read the rules first.

ACCOUNT ACTIVATION

Once you have completed the registration form, your account will need to be activated by the A Minute To Midnite administration before your membership will become active. You should receive an email letting you know that your registration is awaiting activation by the site administration. You should receive a second email notification once your membership has been activated. If you have not received an email confirming activation within  24 hours, firstly check your spam folder. If there is still no email confirming activation after 24 hours, contact administration via the form on the Contact Page.

LOGGING IN

Once your membership has been activated you can then log into the forum and community and edit your profile. You can log in by clicking the link in the top left hand corner of any page on the website or on any pages where login fields appear within the page.

EDITING YOUR PROFILE

1) Log into your account at the top lefthand corner of any webpage underneath your browser’s address bar. Go to your profile. This can easily be accessed from the top righthand corner of any webpage below your browser’s address bar.

2) Click “Edit My Profile”. From there your profile page will open with different options available that include View, Edit, Change Profile Photo, Change Cover Image

3) You will see a tab that says Change Profile Photo

4) You can upload a photo from your computer into the box that is there. This will become the small avatar picture that you will have showing up everywhere you post.

5) Go back to Edit Tab

6) You will see Editing “Base” Profile Group

7) Editing: Details About Me

8) That’s where you can add a bio, date of birth etc if you wish to do so.

9) There are other fields such as Where do you live etc that you can add text to.

4) Uploading an Image – click on where it says Image

5) Choose File. That will be a larger picture that people will be able to see on your profile page if they go there to visit. This is not your avatar picture.

You should be able to upload a picture from your computer from there.

SETTINGS

EMAIL NOTIFICATIONS

a) Click On your username or avatar picture in the very top righthand corner of the webpage.

b) You should see at the bottom of the the box that opens the word “Settings”.

c) Hover over “settings”. Another small box should appear. Click on where it says “Email.

d) From there you can set what you want to receive email notifications for and what to disable notifications for.

MESSAGES (RECEIVING AND REPLYING TO EMAILS)

a) Click on “Messages” on the left side of your profile page

b) The Inbox should show a list of messages that you have received

c) Messages that you have not already read will be highlighted, and have the word “Read”. Messages that you have already read will show the word “Unread” ( this seems back to front – not sure why it is set that way).

d) Click on the message to open it and read it

e) A text box will be displayed underneath the message, along with the words “Send a Reply”.

f) Fill out the box with your reply and hit the “Send Reply” button.

FRIENDS

a) Here you can see “Friendships”. These are people already in your friends list

b) Friendship Requests

FORUMS

a) Here you can see forums and topics that you are involved in on the website.

PROFILE VISIBILITY

a) Here you can choose who you want to be able to see each part of your profile. Only me, All members, or My friends.

PRIVACY SETTINGS

a) Here you can choose whether you want your entire profile visible to all members or only to your friends.

*Note* Because the social community area is only visible to members who are logged in, choosing the option “Everyone” in profile visibility or privacy settings is the same as choosing “All members” or “Only Logged in members”

POSTING IN THE SOCIAL COMMUNITY ACTIVITY ( as distinct from posting in a forum)

POSTING AN UPDATE

a) A user can post a new activity update on their page by clicking on the ACTIVITY link at the left side of their main user area. This will take you to your activity stream, and there will be a text box where you can enter your update listed under “Personal”.

Alternatively you can post an activity update on the main ACTIVITY page listed under Community Forum.

TAGGING PEOPLE IN A POST – MENTIONS

a) If you add @ attached to a username in one of your posts, it will show up in that user’s activity stream under “mentions”. Here is an example:

Janedoe will find it shows up in the “mentions” stream on their profile that they have been tagged in a post that was created by Joe Bloggs. They will be able to reply to it.

FAVORITE

a) Clicking on this give a user the ability to add a specific post to their “favorites”. This can be applied to one of your own posts, or to the post of another user. A post that you have added to your favorites will appear in your activity stream listed under”favorites”.

FRIENDS

a) You can add users as friends by sending them a “friends” request. Their activity updates will appear in your “friends” activity stream.

SEARCHING FOR OTHER USERS

If you wish to search for other members, there is a search box found on the members page at the top.

POSTING IN THE COMMUNITY FORUM

FORUM VISIBILITY

The Community Forum Page is visible to all members who are logged in, as well as to visitors who are not logged in.

However, what can be seen by those who are logged in, and those who are not logged in, will have some differences. The differences are as follows:

a) Only logged in members will see fields such as post, reply, subscribe, favorite and some other fields.

b) Only logged in members will see any Private forums that may be set for members only viewing.

c) Visitors will be able to see the avatars and usernames of members who have posted in the forums, but they will not be able to access viewing the profiles of the members. If a visitor clicks on a member’s username or avatar, they will be redirected to the website home page. Members can view the profiles of those who have posted, unless an individual member has set their profile to private.

COMMUNITY FORUM HOMEPAGE

Example: Home >Forums

The community forum home page is accessible from the main menu. It displays a menu list of all forums, numbers of topics and posts, plus the freshness of the forum topics and posts. Clicking on the name of any of the forums displayed will take the user to the next page, which is the Topics Menu Page.

THE TOPICS MENU PAGE

Example: Home > Forums > General Discussions

Each forum has it’s own Topics sub menu page. From this page you can either click to open an existing topic found within that parent forum, or create a new topic.

a) Existing topics will show the following information: who the topic was started by, who posted the last reply and when, plus the number of voices and posts within the topic. Clicking on an existing topic will take you to the next page, which this the Specific Topics Page.

b) Users can Create a New Topic by adding a Topic Title in specified Topics Fields box, entering the text of the topic in the Large Text Fields box, and adding Topic Tags in the specified box. Separate topic tags by using commas.

SPECIFIED TOPICS PAGES

Example: Home > Forums > General Discussions > Read The Rules First!

a) On the Specified Topics Pages you will see the topic you have chosen to view. Here you can read all entries and replies posted under that topic. You will also find a field at the bottom of the page where you can reply to the posts.

b) Topic admin links displayed to users in the Admin links Bar are as follows: EDIT, REPLY, REPORT, QUOTE. Moderators have additional links.

c) Replying to topics can be done by entering text, BB Code and url links to webpages and videos etc directly into the large text box displayed at the bottom of the page. When you add links here to web pages if there is an embedded image in the webpage it will be displayed in your reply. Adding video links such as those on Youtube will also display the video in your reply. When you are done writing your reply, click the Submit button below the text field. Your reply will be posted below previous posts on the page.

ADDING LINKS and IMAGES in POSTS

If you add a link to the url of a website it should in a post it should automatically become a live link. Depending on where the link comes from, you may, or may not see an image associated with the linked webpage appear as well. It is also possible to add images to the post by adding a url link to an image on another website ( or locally from on the AMTM website). To add an image to a post, click on the small button that is titled “img”. A field should open that allows you to add the url of the image you wish to display. Once you have done that click “OK”. Then a second field will open that gives you the ability to add a title to the image. To find a url link to an image on a website, generally right clicking on an image will bring up the option to “copy image address”. This is the url you would post into the field that is opened by clicking the “img” button.

Currently the uploading of attachments from your computer to the forum is not supported. (Moderators and administrators do have the ability to do that, but general participants of the forum do not have that ability). However all participants can add url links to images.

EMBEDDING VIDEO INTO POSTS

To embed a video from a video host such as Youtube, simply paste the link to the video into a post and it will automatically be embedded and become visible once the post is submitted.

Use the link supplied by the “share” option that you find on Youtube videos. That is the one that you should paste into the text field if you want the video to display correctly.

( more FAQ’s coming soon)