Managing Your Account

[mentorjhuls]

MANAGING YOUR ACCOUNT in Barley Community Forum!

How do I change my settings?

You can change your account settings by clicking on your username in the top right corner of the vBulletin site. This will provide a drop-down menu. From here select “User Settings”.

On the settings page, you will see up to five tabs. Profile, Settings, Privacy, Notifications and Subscriptions. These are:

• Profile – This is the public information that is shown to everyone. You can control who sees your information on the Privacy
• Account – This tab contains the settings for your account and allows you some control over how things are presented to you on the system.
• Privacy – This allows you to control who has access to your information.
• Notifications – This tab controls how you are notified of new content you are interested in.
• Subscriptions – If subscriptions are available for purchase, they will be managed here. You can purchase new subscriptions or cancel existing ones. Subscriptions can provide additional permissions, enhanced posting rights or simply be a way of supporting the site.

There may be additional tabs depending on your permissions and site offerings.

How do I change my Avatar?

To add an avatar to your account, please visit your user profile. You can visit your User Profile by clicking on your name in the upper right corner and selecting “User Profile” from the drop down menu.

Once on your user profile, hover your mouse over the default avatar presented. You will be shown a link to upload your avatar. Click on it and follow the instructions on the screen. If you’re avatar is too large, you will be provide with an opportunity to clip the image to fit.

How do I customize my profile?

The site administrator may have given you the ability to customize your profile. This allows you to change the fonts, colors and backgrounds on different elements of your user profile. To get started click on your name in the top right corner and select My Profile from the drop down. Once viewing your User Profile, click the “Customize My Theme” button in the left column.

This will open up the customization interface above your user profile. You will see three tabs covering the different areas you can customize. These are:

• Navigation Bar – Allows you to change the look of your profile’s navigation. This is the area where it says Activity, Subscribed, About, Media.
• Content – This customizes the main content areas that show for each of the above tabs.
• User Panel – This is your information panel on the left side of the screen.

As you make changes in the customization tool, they are reflected on your User Profile for review. When you are done making changes, clicking the “Save” button will save them for you. If you wish to abort your changes, then click the “Exit Without Saving” button.

Navigation Bar

Your profile’s navigation bar has four subsections available for customization. These are:

• Active – The currently selected tab. Usually you will want to highlight this tab to provide a visual indication to the person viewing your profile.
• Inactive – All the other tabs.
• Toolbar – This controls the look of the toolbar directly under your Navigation Bar.
• Buttons – Controls the look of any buttons in the Navigation Area. These appear on the Toolbar and there are buttons present on the Subscribed and Media tabs.

Content

There are four areas of customization available for your content. These are:

• Colors – Allows you to change the border and background colors throughout the content areas of your user profile.
• Header – Currently headers separate the different areas on your About tab.
• Text – Allows you to change the font used as well as the colors used for links on your profile.
• Buttons – Changes the look and feel of all buttons located in the content area of your user profile.

User Panel

There are three areas available for customization on the user panel. These are:

• Colors – Colors of the borders and you would set the background color or image here as well.
• Text – Text color and font style would be chosen here.
• Buttons – This allows you to set the text color and backgrounds for buttons in the User Panel.

What are these codes used for colors?

The color codes are called “Hex Codes” and they can be used to represent all colors in the fashion of #RRGGBB where R equals Red, G equals Green and B equals Blue. Combining variants of these three colors make up all colors you see on your computer monitor. You can used certain named colors as well. You can learn more about colors at W3Schools Colors.

You can also click on the color swatch for each color setting to choose from a color picking tool. Simply click on the color you want and the software will insert it for you.

Can I upload images for backgrounds?

Yes, if your site administrator as allowed it then you can upload images to use as your backgrounds in your user profile. Simply choose image in the Background portion of your tabs.

How do I reset my user profile to the default?

To revert your customized Profile Theme to the default site style, click on your user name in the top right corner of the page. Select My Profile off the drop-down menu.

On your profile screen click “Customize My Theme”. This will open the Customization Tools above your profile.

Click the “Default” button and your theme should show the default site theme again.

To save your changes click the “Save” Button and exit the customization tools.

How do I edit my signature?

You can set and change your signature by going to your username in the upper right corner > click to get the drop down > select User Settings. On that page, select the Account tab and then go down to the area that says “Conversation Detail Options”. On the right side, you will see the option “Edit Post Signature”. If you click that link, you will get a popup editor that will allow you to enter/edit your signature.

This option may be disabled by the Administrator. The Administrator may also have restrictions on how many lines or characters may be in the signature.

Can I use images in my signature?

It is up to the Administrator whether you may use images in your signature. If you are allowed to attach them, then an Upload Attachments button will be available on the signature editor popup.

How do I manage my privacy?

You may manage your privacy settings by going to your username in the upper right corner > click to get the drop down > select User Settings. On that page, select the Privacy tab. On that page you may customize who can see and comment on things you started, replied, followed and following under your profile. You may select to show these things to Everyone (default), your Subscribers, or all Members.

How do I manage my notifications?

You may manage your notification settings by going to your username in the upper right corner > click to get the drop down > select User Settings. On that page, select the Notifications tab. One this page, you may select your Email Notifications (turn it on, make it daily or weekly, or choose to get it through the message center only). You may also set what type of Notifications you would like to receive.

What are Subscribers?

Subscribers are users that have subscribed to your profile. You will receive a Notification if someone subscribes to you (user settings -> notifications) and you may choose to Accept or Ignore their request to subscribe to your profile. You may also set it up so that you will automatically accept any subscriber’s request in User Settings > Privacy > Subscriber Request > enter a check-mark next to Auto-accept subscriber requests.

As a user, when you manage your Privacy, you may set things on your profile to only be viewable to Subscribers.

How do I ignore another member?

If there are particular members that are bothering you and you do not wish to see their posts or receive Private Messages from them, then you can add these members to your ‘Ignore List’.

In the top right of the forum, click your Username. A drop-down menu will appear and from here you need to select ‘User Settings’. On the page that appears, click ‘Account’ and scroll to the bottom. In the text area next to ‘Ignore List’, enter the Usernames of users that you want to Ignore.

Using Private Messages

If the administrator has enabled the Private Messaging system, registered members may send each other private messages to communicate outside of the general forum discussions.

How do I send Private Messages?

Private messages work a little like email, but are limited to registered members of this forum. You may be able to include BB code, smilies, images and other attachments in private messages that you send.

You may send a private message to a member of this forum by clicking the ‘Compose New’ button in the top left section of your Message Center, or by clicking the ‘Private Message’ button that is visible on the User Profile of a member.

When you send a message, a copy of it is automatically saved to your ‘Sent Items’ folder.

How do I work with Private Message Folders?

By default, you will have three folders in your Message Center. These are the ‘Inbox’,’Sent Items’ and ‘Trash’ folders.

The ‘Inbox’ folder contains any new messages you receive. It allows you to view all the messages you have received, along with the name of the person who sent it, and the date and time it was sent. In addition to this, it also displays the usernames of any other members that are in the private message conversation.

The ‘Sent Items’ folder contains a copy of any messages that you have sent.

The ‘Trash’ folder contains messages you have chosen to delete. From here, you can also choose to undelete them causing them to return to the folder they originated from, or alternatively you can choose to delete a message permanently.

You can create additional folders for your messages by clicking the ‘Add a folder’ link.

Each folder has a set of message controls which allow you to select messages, then either move them to one of your custom folders, or delete them. Once you have selected your messages, you can choose the following options from the toolbar:

• Move to Folder
• Delete
• Mark as Read
• Mark as Unread

You will need to periodically delete old messages, as the administrator has probably set a limit to the number of private messages you can have in your folders. If you exceed this number, you will not be able to send or receive new messages until you delete some old ones.

Whenever you read a message, you will have the option to reply or forward it to another member of the forum. You may also have the ability to forward that message to multiple members of your contact list.

Using Visitor Messages

Visitor messages are publicly viewed messages posted on member profile pages. To post a message, navigate to a member’s profile and enter your content using the form at the top of the section. The message you post will be viewable to all visitors of this profile, including but not limited to, guest users and search engine robots if the administrator has allowed this. To communicate privately with a member, send a Private Message instead using the option just above the Visitor Message form.

Visitor message can be edited or deleted by site moderators or the member who owns the profile. If you come across a visitor message that is not appropriate, you can alert the moderators by clicking the ‘Flag’ link. The ‘Go to Post’ link allows you to view all the comments on that particular visitor message. In addition to this, you can optionally choose to ‘Like’ the visitor message too.

What is Reputation?

Reputation is a way of rating users depending on the quality of their posts. If the administrators have enabled reputation, then the like icon will be visible in posts.

You can build your reputation on the site by posting informative and constructive content. This in turn will encourage people to follow your posts, press the like button on different posts and they could even subscribe to your content.

How do I give reputation?

To give reputation, click on the like icon in the relevant post. This will signify you like the content and will add to the user’s reputation. If you click on the like icon again, you will remove that reputation from the user.

How do I know what reputation I have received?

You will be notified when someone likes one of your posts. In addition to this, your general reputation will appear within the user information of your posts. These show as small graphics or pips under your Avatar. As your reputation increases, the number of pips or graphics will increase.

How much reputation is given? What is reputation power?

If the administrator has enabled this, the amount of reputation that each user will give (or take away if negative) is shown in the user’s posts as ‘Reputation Power’. The value of the reputation power is determined by the administrator and may increase over time depending on the settings they have applied.

What if I don’t want anyone to see my reputation?

You can disable the display of your reputation by going to your Account Settings and selecting the checkbox for Reputation Level.

 

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