Once you have entered your chosen Fleet from the login page you will see what we call the Fleet page. The Fleet page holds necessary links and information on that Fleet.
After clicking on your selected fleet, a new page will appear. We call this page the Fleet MOTD or Message Of The Day. It contains a myriad of information on the fleet in question, including individual fleet policies and information on the fleet command staff.
The navigation bar along the left now provides a list of the ships within your chosen fleet. Selecting any of the ships listed will forward you to that ships individual MOTD and crew roster. This provides information on the crew, command staff and mission status.
Within the crew roster, Character and user names are highlighted to allow you to access information that may be available for that character and user.
Now that you're ready to begin reading posts and making some of your own, you will need to observe the three tabs at the top right hand corner of the ship MOTD:
- View: This will return you to the ship MOTD from any other post screen within the ship.
- Captain's Log: This is an optional record the Captain may use to provide information on past missions and to keep you up to date on current happenings in character. Not all Captains keep logs and not all are up to date.
- Notes: This will access the posts within the group. Clicking this is the first step towards posting.
Once you click the notes tab, it will load a page containing a list of all posts made within the previous seven days. This can be adjusted to read back in increments up to one year. Because of the large number of posts that accrue within a year, one week is the default option here.
New posts to your account will be listed with a red *New* next to them. The familiar search box continues into this page should you wish to search only for specific notes or specific note threads. If you wish to search in specific topics rather than trolling through an entire page of alternate topics, the "In Topic" section can be used to enter a specific topic title. It will thus display only messages within the specified timeframe under that topic.
When you select a post, it will appear at the top of the list with a number of options beneath it:
- Previous Note: This takes you to the previously posted note chronologically
- Parent: This will take you to the first note in any given thread.
- Reply: This allows you to make a reply to the post selected.
- Next Chronologically: This shows you the next note posted chronologically from that point forward.
- Next In Location: This will take you to the next post in the current thread
- Next New Note: This will take you to the next new note posted chronologically.
You'll notice the text in any given post utilises several different colours. This is to distinguish each reply given. To provide these colours, the system automatically generates a series of colons in each reply to any given post. You should never edit these colons, nor preface a reply with them as it makes the post more difficult to interpret.
To reply to a message, simply click Reply. This will translate the current message into an editable boxed format.
At the top of this box is a 'Location' field in which you can either keep the current thread title or alter it if you're changing location in this post.
Beneath that is the body text. The system will have automatically input the required colons (':') to enable text colouring. If the message is too long, it's considered good practice to remove any excess portions, leaving only the relevant previous reply to give any responder an idea of what you're responding to. Any parts that are removed should be replaced with '*snip*' to inform other readers that content was removed.
Once you've made your reply, you can either preview the post, providing it in finished format with a shaded background, or simply press submit to send it to the server.
Now that you've replied, you can find the next new post in the list beneath the post and continue reading from there or create a new note entirely.
In order to create an entirely new post, you must use the left navigation bar once more. Clicking 'Post Note' will create a similar box to that you found in the reply note function. You now have the option of creating a new location or using one which has previously been utilised. These can be found in a smaller text below the Location field.
Once you've written your post, you have the same preview and submit options available to you.
You have now mastered the basics of posting.