• Registration
  • Do I Have To Register?
• RSS Readers
  • What Is An RSS Feed?
  • How Do I Use An RSS Reader?
  • How Do I Use The RSSOwl RSS Reader
• Avatars
  • What Is An Avatar?
  • How Do I Get An Avatar?
• Special Features
  • Can I Change The Form Of My Text?
  • How Do I Set An Event?
  • How Do I Add An Image?
  • Can I add A Hyperlink To My Messages?
  • Do You Have An Example Of Using The URL tag?
  • How Do I Get A Custom Signature?
  • How do I quote a previous poster's text?
  • What are the little colored stars under the user name?
• Problems
  • After using a tag, my text is messed up
  • I don't like the screen name I chose. Can I change it?
• Miscellaneous
  • Are Cookies Used For This Forum?
  • What Is COPPA?
Can't find your answer here? Send us an e-mail.

Registration is not required to view current topics on the Forum; however, if you wish to post a new topic or reply to an existing topic registration is required. Registration is free and only takes a few minutes. The only required fields are your Username, which may be your real name or a nickname, and a valid e-mail address.

The information you provide during registration is not outsourced or used for any advertising or solicitation by North Park Baptist Church.

If you believe someone is sending you advertisements as a result of the information you provided through your registration, please notify us immediately.

RSS stands for Real Simple Syndication. It's an Internet standard for publishing & pushing data to end users. RSS is most commonly used for news services. An sample user would be a Yahoo portal where you get news updates. Yahoo subscribes to an RSS feed (e.g. Reuters News). When Reuters publishes a new story, they push the information to their RSS feed. Yahoo checks the feed every 10 minutes or so and publishes any new stories as they encounter them.

For our forum, any new posts by the end user get published on our RSS feed. Users who subscribe to the feed will get an automatic update (similar to an email notification).

http://www.northparkbaptist.net/forum/rss.asp is the default address for all posts on our forum. To obtain a topic specific RSS feed, click the icon next to the category you're interested in. Cut & Paste the URL into your RSS Reader. If you don't have an RSS reader, search Google for an RSS reader. A simple free reader is the [url="http://www.rssowl.com"]RSS Owl[/url] program. There are programs for Mac, Linux and Windows.

Note: the RSS Readers won't work with our "Boards & Church Group" forums because they are list restricted.

RssOwl is a free RSS Newsreader. First download and install the version you need from their site:[url="http://www.rssowl.org/"]RssOwl[/url]. Accept the defaults during install.

Start RSSOwl. Click File | New | Favorite. Enter http://www.northparkbaptist.net/forum/rss.asp in the URL text box. Enter a descriptive name for the feed (North Park Baptist Message Forum). If you want to sort your Rss feeds you can put them in their own folders (e.g. Religion, News, etc). Click the "Change" button and select a folder. Click the "on Startup" box to open the link whenever you start the reader.

If you leave the program up, it will check back periodically to see if any new posts arrive. The default is to "Don't Reload". To change the frequency, select the refresh rate from the "Update Automatically" pull down list. I chose 15 minutes.

By default, the RSS link above will post any messages in the order they are posted on the forum. So if someone posts in "General Discussion" and then in "The Holy Spirit" and once again in "General Discussion," you'll receive the posts in that order (not categorized). If you want the messages sorted like they are in the message forum, you'll need to set up a separate RSS feed for each topic, as opposed to the complete link mentioned above (http://www.northparkbaptist.net/forum/rss.asp). Delete the link created above by selecting the subscription in RssOwl and pressing your delete button.

Next, you'll need to create a link for each topic. On the forum, click the RSS icon next to the topic your interested in. In your browser, you'll see an XML document. The address you need is the url in the browser's Address bar. Select the text and choose Edit | Copy from the menu bar. Create the new RSS link like we did above: File | New | Favorite. Paste the url into the url text box (right-click, paste) and add a description. Change the "Update Automatically" rate to suit your needs. Repeat for each topic. Now any new messages will match the correct topic. If you change the default refresh rate, you'll need to do it for each link.

An avatar is the little graphic icon under the user's name on the left side of a post.

To get an avatar, log into your profile and look down the left side of your profile for the Avatar section. There is a list box which will allow you to preview the images on hand. Select the image in the list box. It will preview to the right. When you find the image you want, click "Submit" at the bottom of the form. Your posts should have the avatar on them.

If you want a custom avatar, submit the image link or file to the Administrator and we'll get it on the site. If you want an image that moves, do a Google search for an "Animated Gif" or search on "avatars".

There are several Forum Codes you may use to change the appearance of your text. Following is the list of codes currently available:

Bold: Enclose your text with [b] and [/b] . Example: This is [b]bold[/b] text. = This is bold text.

Italic: Enclose your text with [i] and [/i] . Example: This is [i]italic[/i] text. = This is italic text.

Underline: Enclose your text with [u] and [/u]. Example: This is [u]underline[/u] text. = This is underline text.

Aligning Text Left: Enclose your text with [left] and [/left]

Aligning Text Center: Enclose your text with [center] and [/center]

Aligning Text Right: Enclose your text with [right] and [/right]

Striking Text: Enclose your text with [s] and [/s]
Example: [s]mistake[/s] = mistake

Horizontal Rule: Place a horizontal line in your post with [hr]
Example: [hr] =

To enter an event, go to the relevant forum (e.g. Worship for worship team events) and click the "New Event" link. Enter a title and a description. Enter a start & end date (if different). If the event recurs, you can enter the period using the "Recurring" pull down menu. If you don't select an end date, the "Recurring" pull down menu has no effect.

Events should only appear to those who have access to the forum (if it is restricted). Any member can set an event.

You can add an image using the "Insert Image" button in the format section of the "New Post" editor.

You can also add one using the img tag. Here is the format:

[img]http://www.MyImageUrl.com/mypicture.jpg[/url]

Picture urls must end in .bmp, .gif, or .jpg otherwise they will not work. You can test if a picture will work by putting the url in a browser. If all you see is the picture, it should work. If you see any other text or buttons, the link won't work because it's a link to a web page and not an image.

You can force a picture to the left or right side of the window by adding a left or right attribute to both the open and close tag. Like this:

[img=left]http://www.MyImageUrl.com/mypicture.jpg[/img=left]

There are three ways to add a hyperlink. You can add a link just by typing it in. If the link is really long, or you would like a cleaner look to your post, you can add a hyperlink by using the url tag manually or you can use the hyperlink button on the editor.

With the button, if you highlight your text first and click the button, it will only ask for the URL you're linking to. If you don't highlight any text, it will ask what you want the link text to say (what is presented to the reader).

Here is the form to use for manual entry:

[url="http://www.yourlink.com"] Link Description [/url]

Don't forget the quotes around the web address and don't forget the closing slash in the ending url tag. These are the most common problems with the url tag.

If you don't use the url tag, sometimes punctuation can mess up the link. For example, Go to http://www.yahoo.com. doesn't work because there is a period at the end. When the forum interprets the link, it thinks you want the period in the link so it adds it. To get around this, either put a space between the link and the period or surround the link with tags (italics or bold or url) and put the period after the closing tag. Like this:

Go to [url]http://yahoo.com[/url].

This will make a url that works:

Go to [url]http://www.yahoo.com[/url].

If I wanted to send someone to Yahoo, I would enter the following:

If you want more info, [url="http://www.yahoo.com"] Go To Yahoo! [/url]

The result would look like this:

If you want more info, [url="http://www.yahoo.com"]Go To Yahoo![/url]

Signatures are the text and images that appear below the user's post. To add a custom signature, enter the text into the Signature box of your profile (click the "Profile" link at the top right of the page). You can add images to your signature using the img tag. Please use small images for your signature pictures as these will be repeated throughout the forum board. If you have a picture you would like to use but need it resized, contact the administrator.

You can quote text, either from a previous poster's message or an external source using the [quote][/quote] tags. This will create an indented look. Here's an example. The following, [quote]This is quoted text.[/quote] will look as follows:

quote:

---

This is quoted text.

---

The stars represent the post level of the member. When you reach a certain level, you get another star and the color changes.
Here are the various thresholds for the next star:

1 star, 50 posts
2 stars, 100 posts
3 stars, 500 posts
4 stars, 1000 posts
5 stars, >1999 posts

Usually, a tag was either used wrong, accidentally deleted or incomplete. Every open tag must have a corresponding close tag or all the text will be formatted to the opening tag. This happens most often where portions of quoted text were deleted from a message. A missing close quote tag can cause the entire message to appear as a quoted message. Look in your message at the place the formatting was supposed to stop and see if the tag is missing (e.g. no [/quote]) or incorrect (used [quote] or [quote/] instead of [/quote]).

After registering, you later decide you don't like the name you chose for your screen name. If you would like to change it, send an email or post a message to myself or Pastor Glenn and we'll get it changed for you.

These Forums use cookies to store the following information: the last time you logged in, your Username and your Encrypted Password. These cookies are stored on your hard drive. Cookies are not used to track your movement or perform any function other than to enhance your use of these forums. If you have not enabled cookies in your browser, many of these time-saving features will not work properly. Also, you need to have cookies enabled if you want to enter a private forum or post a topic/reply.

You may delete all cookies set by these forums in selecting the "logout" button at the top of any page.

The Children's Online Privacy Protection Act and Rule apply to individually identifiable information about a child that is collected online, such as full name, home address, e-mail address, telephone number or any other information that would allow someone to identify or contact the child. The Act and Rule also cover other types of information -- for example, hobbies, interests and information collected through cookies or other types of tracking mechanisms -- when they are tied to individually identifiable information. More information can be found [url="http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/conline/pubs/buspubs/coppa.htm"]here[/url].