This page is designed to help you understand how a Chatbear community is laid out, what is displayed on each page and how to make the most of the information provided and make your browsing experience as fast and pain free as possible.

Community Home

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This page shows you all the boards that are available within this community. It is normal for each board to be designed for the discussion of a particular topic. This makes it easier to keep things organised and let users find the posts they are looking for.

Also on this page you can see the number of posts a board has, the number of topics it has and when it was last updated. Next to the last updated time is the subject of the topic that was updated and a right pointing arrow. Clicking this arrow will take you straight to the last post.

On the left hand side, you can see that some of the boards have a yellow icon next to them and some of them have a grey icon. The yellow icon indicates that this board has been updated since your last visit. If a board has been updated since your last visit you'll also see a down facing arrow next to the board name. Clicking on this will take you straight to the first post that you haven't read on the board.

The exact colour of these icons can change depending on how much customisation the owner of the board has done. There is usually a key at the bottom of the page that will indicate the icons that are being used.

Topic Listings

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When you click on a board you'll see all the topics that are available. Topics are just collections of posts discussing a particular subject.

As you can see this follows much the same format as the Community Homepage. You can see the subject of the posts that are available, the number of posts that topic has, the number of times it has been viewed and information on when it was last updated. The grey right facing arrow and the orange down facing arrow fulfill the same functions as they did on the Community Homepage and the yellow and grey icons on the far left mean the same thing as well. Also on this page you may see topics that have padlock icons next to them, which means that they are locked and no more posts are allowed. Topics may also be marked as "Sticky", which means they always stay at the top of the page.

It is possible to sort this page by subject, posts, views and the last updated time (which is the default) by clicking the column headers. There are also options for this at the bottom of the page. At the bottom of the page you'll also find page numbers to skip to other pages (if there are any) and usually a search box, a dropdown list to let you jump to other pages and a key for the icons on the page.

If you wish to start a new topic, click the "Post New Topic" button at the top of the page. Next to this you'll also find buttons to Search the current board and return to the Community Homepage.

Topic View

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The topic view page is what you get when you actually click on one of the subjects on the topic listings page. This page actually shows all the messages that people have posted.

Each message says who posted it, the date it was posted and includes the message itself. Each message is also numbered in the order in which it was posted in that topic.

On each message you'll also find links to Edit or Delete it (if you are a moderator or if the board owner has allowed users to edit or delete their own messages) and to reply to that message.

Replying to Messages or Posting New Topics

This page appears when you reply to messages or try and post new topics, the only difference is that you will see the message you're replying to at the top of the page.

All you need to do is fill in a subject for your post, write the main body of your message and click the button at the bottom of the page to submit it. There are also options there for how you would like to be notified if another user posts another reply on this topic. When you reply to a post your message is added to that topic and appears on the page for everyone else to read.