A BEGINNER’S GUIDE TO POSTING MESSAGES

Purpose : This bulletin board is meant to serve as a forum for public comment. It is your opportunity to make your issues and ideas known. You will receive no response to your comments from the U.S. Forest Service.

Who can use this: Anyone with network capabilities can use this, if you are reading this you can use it.

Member: You do not have to be a member to use this bulletin board. Membership is simply a shortcut for self-identification. If you comment frequently, it saves you some time; otherwise you may skip it.

Subscribe: Subscribing means that anytime anyone adds a new message you will receive notification via your email account. You don’t have to have internet capabilities to follow the bulletin board discussion -- you can follow it by reading your email.

Leaving/Replying to a Message:

  1. In order to leave a message or reply to a message go to the bulletin board and click on the icon Add a Message "add message."


  2. The bulletin board assumes that the message you are displaying is the one being replied to, so make sure that you have the message you want to reply to on the screen.


  3. Give your message a title.


  4. The format of your message is automatically set to smart text, so unless you want to change it, you may skip that section.


  5. Enter your message in the blank white box. Note that long messages are not encouraged. If you need to leave a document-length message please set up that document in HTML format and post on a server somewhere. We are working the the Washington Office, USFS to help Forest Service employees to be able to do that easily. Stay tuned. For help learning the ropes for HTML see So You Want to Make a Web Page. For those who know only a little more you can find a handy-dandy reference for HTML codes at A Beginners Guide to HTML.


  6. You may skip keywords unless you want them.


  7. You may ignore the kind of message, or if you want to you can click on one of the icons. If you click on an icon it will appear next to your message.


  8. The notify me box is automatically checked. If anyone replies to your posted message you will be notified via your email account. If you do not want to be notified by email, simply uncheck the box.


  9. Who is the message from?
    • If you are a member enter your User ID and Password; e.g. User ID: Smokey_Bear, Password: xxxxx. (Note: Using USFS IBM systems it appears that an underscore, "_", is rendered a blank by Hypernews).

    • If you are not a member please leave at least your name. If you want to be notified you must also leave your email address in standard format; e.g. sbear/wo@fs.fed.us.

  10. Click on the bar to Preview Your Message.


  11. If you are happy with your message hit the Post Message bar.


  12. If you want to cancel your message just click on the word "Back."


  13. To view your message go back to the discussion page; then hit reload and your message should appear.




Viewing a Message:

  1. In order to view a message click on the highlighted text.

  2. Messages are viewed in an outline form; indentation shows which messages are replies to other messages. You can change how deeply nested the outline is by selecting one of the icons after "outline."

  3. Try clicking on Outline messages, Outline more messages, and Outline All messages to see how they change the depth of the outline.


  4. Instead of viewing the messages in an outline and selecting each one you want to display, you can embed the messages inline by selecting Inline messages or Inline All Messages


Remember, for more detailed explanations click on Help for HyperNews Back to the Home Page