2. Message Boards or Forums and Posting to them

The Message Boards, or Forums, are areas where members and guests may publish productions, auditions, reviews, or to participate in various discussions. There are a number of forums that focus on specific areas within the theatrical community.

Making a Topics Posting

A Forum Topic Post is the term used to denote the post that appears in the Forum Listings. It is the first post in a thread. A Thread refers to the series of comments that refer to a main Topic posting.

Only registered members can post Topics. Topic can be created in a couple of ways.

• Go to to the desired Forum (via Home Page or Menus) and select Post new forum topic.
• Highlight the Forums Menu, scroll to desired forum and select New Post 
  This second option is dependant on account setup and selected menu layout.

Submit Forum Topic

Title
All Topics require a title. Make your title relevant to your content and short.

Forums
This drop-down menu allows you to select the correct forum for you posting. Please ensure that you post appropriately. By default, the Forum from which you were previously in will appear here.

Location
This is a MUST FIELD!! Please ensure that you correctly locate your posting as it helps identify your location in Site Searches and to potential readers. Only truly non-localised topics should have the default option of Australia selected. There is also an option for International topics at the end of the list.

Roles / Genre
Both of these options allow you to target specific interest groups that you think may find your topic of particular interest. These categories are used primarily in the Site Search tool.

Body
This is where you type in the full message for your topic. If you are a dab-hand at HTML coding then you can have fun in the Non-Rich-Text mode. For most of us, you may find that the Rich-Text mode make life so much easier. Underneath the box itself you will see a disable rich-text or enable rich-text toggle option.
NOTE: Pasting items directly from Word may cause odd things to appear when you submit your post. It is suggested that you first strip all Word Formatting by copy-pasting into Notepad (or similar) first, then copy-paste from Notepad into the Body text box. Then you can apply your formatting as required.

Attachments
If your topic has associated files, such as a PDF or Image, then you can attach it to your Topic. All attached files will be listed at the bottom of the posting once the Topic is submitted.

Preview / Submit
Once you have written your topic, click the Preview button to review how it looks. You can make further modifications in the preview view and review your changes as required. Once you are happy with all the changes, the click Submit. Your Topic will be submitted to the Forum selected in the previous drop down menu.

Making Changes to or Deleting a Topic

As the author of a topic, you may be able to edit or delete. Your ability to do so is based upon your Membership Status. Regular Contributors will be able to modify most of their own posts with only a few exceptions (such as Poll Postings).

When viewing a Thread, the author of the main Topic will be able to see an Edit Tab at the top of the page. By clicking this option, they will then be able to modify the contents of the topic, or delete it completely. The screen looks exactly the same as when posting a new topic, except that there will also be a Delete button along with Preview and Submit. 

Please note that if you delete a Topic, you will also remove all comments made to it. This can cause some minor historical issues and it would be preferable that you modify the content instead of deleting.