Community Forum Guide!

This guide will help you understand how the forum works and how to make the most of it.

Forums have four levels of organization:

• Categories: These are the overall themes that group the boards together. For example, the category “World Wild Web” contains boards related websites and life online!
• Boards: These are like rooms, where you can find topics related to a specific subject.
• Topics: These are the talking points or threads that anyone can create. For example, the topic “How did you come up with your username?” is a question that invites replies from other users.
• Replies: These are the responses to a particular topic left by forum members.

To participate in the forum, you need to register an account. You can do that by clicking the Register button on the top of the page. You will then be able to create topics, reply to topics, fill out your profile and more!

To create a topic, you need to go to the board where you want the topic to be, and click the New Topic button. You will then be able to write a subject and a message for your topic and pick an icon for it. You can also use BBCode to format your text, add images, links, videos, and more. If you prefer to use a WYSIWYG editor; click the last icon on the editors icon list to switch to visual mode! You can preview your topic before submitting it by clicking the Preview button.

Tips for Making a Good Forum Topic

• Pick an interesting and relevant topic, something others will enjoy!
• Do some research before topicing, its a good idea to be informed on your subject.
• Write a clear descriptive title - e.g. “What kind of programs do you use to make 88×31 badges”
• Provide a good description, explaining your topic and what kind of answers you'd like to get from people.
• Format your topic nicely and provide images or links!

A topic is about creating a discussion, so help people to know what you want to discuss and make them feel happy to reply to you!

Forums are early web technology so its important to be mindful that this forum will not automatically format your images so that they load quickly like Discord will. Please resize your images so they are not too big before posting them on the forum! - You will also need to be able to host your own images to display on the forum! You can use image hosting services like imgbb or imgbox - however, these services are not recommended as they have previously burned people and deleted images.

You can quote others using the quote, multi-quote or select quote features! Multi-Quote allows you to quote multiple people in a single post! If you select the text of someone else's message you can create a select post. An important note: If you are quoting a big post; its bad etiquette to include the entire post in your quote; please edit your quotes down to just a sentence or two ~ this avoids spamming up threads and the forums storage ^^ You can also use @ mentions to more generally respond to someone.

If your topic is incomplete or you'd like to wait a while before posting it, you can save it as a Draft, just click the Save as Draft button, this can be done on new topics or replies. You can access a list of drafts on your profile, you'll also see your drafts below the editor when making new posts! Your drafts are private and no one can see them but you, they will be saved forever until you post them or delete them.

Micro-Drafts - In addition to full drafts, the forum also saves micro-drafts automatically - if you accidentally close the editor or leave a page as you're typing, you can return to it and your text should still be there waiting for you! These micro-drafts are saved in your browser and delete themselves after 24 hours or when you clear browser data.

To reply to a topic, you need to go to the topic where you want to reply and click the Leave a Reply button. You can also use the Quote buttons, or highlight text to quote it! At the bottom of the page you'll also find a dropdown that lets you Quick Reply without leaving the page.

• A reply can just be a sentence, or something much longer and formatted like a topic, that's up to you. Keep in mind that a forum is not a chatroom so you should put a bit of time into replies!

• Replying to very old topics is sometimes called Necroposting this is totally fine to do on the MelonLand Forum and you are encouraged to respond to old topics.

• If you want to add more to your last reply; instead of replying again, click the button that says Modify, go to the end of your reply and add the word “EDIT” followed by your new text. You can do this again and again by doing “EDIT 1” “EDIT 2” etc. This helps keep the topic clean and readable for others.

• If you made a topic but it has dropped down the board you may be tempted to reply to it yourself to make it jump back to the top. This is called Bumping! On some boards like the showcase, you may want to bump your topics to tell people about new features you added, in this case it's fine.

To edit your profile, you need to click the Profile icon on the top right corner of the page. You will then be able to change your avatar, signature, personal text, and more. You can also click the “Ultimate Profile” tab to add an About Me, Interests and even theme your profile with CSS!

You can set default font/colour/size for your posts! This will effect ALL of your posts including past ones, it can be changed at any time. Go to Profile/Look & Layout, set your style at the bottom of the page and click Modify Profile to save.

Visit the forum CSS guide for tips!

The forum has a gift system ; click View Gifts on anyone's profile, to view them. Gifts are a fun way to reward people for things they have done (E.g. someone might give you a gift if you write a particularly good response to their topic). You can also delete gifts you don't want on your own profile with the delete button (this is fine to do)

To give a gift: You must be a full member (100+ posts) OR be a forum donator, then click view gifts on someones profile, you'll find an upload a gift form which lets you upload any image that is 32x32px or less.

Sometimes there will be boards that do not interest you on the forum! If you find a board is uninteresting you can select the Ignore Boards Options tab on your profile and select boards to ignore; this will hide most posts and topics from this board.

The forum is in dark mode high-contrast by default, there is also a light mode low-contrast made by cinni, the newspaper (readability) theme, and a low power theme called MelonLand98 for older computers. You can switch themes using the quick icons on the bottom left; however you can also select a default theme by going to Look & Layout on your profile page; then look for the Theme selection area at the top of the page.

Some people can find the fonts and colors on the forum a bit too much; we keep them because unnecessary creativity is what we do. However if fonts are a big issue for you, you can use this bit of css to force the font of all replies into a font you like:

div .post div {
    font-family: sans-serif !important;
}

Just apply this with a custom CSS mod on your browser like this for Chrome or Firefox!

Hopefully you enjoy your stay at the MelonLand Forum and have fun exploring the web with us!