SMF Tips

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To cushion the switchover from phpBB, here I'll occasionally highlight/explain some features of the SMF forum software.  Or I'll forget all about doing that and eventually delete this thread

Here are the topics covered so far (click to go directly to relevant post):
Board calendar and member birthdays
Changing your displayed name
Adding a custom title and/or personal text
Using column headers to sort topics
Your "User Info" console
How to inviso-text your spoilers

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When there's an upcoming event on the board calendar (be it a holiday or a birthday), then it will appear down in the info center block at the bottom of the board -- that section disappears when there are no upcoming events, FYI.

So, this is obviously a GREAT way to make sure that we don't miss out anyone's birthday!  But it don't work if you don't use it -- you must enter your birthday (either with or without the year) into your member profile in order for the feature to work.

How to do it:
Click on the profile button at the top of the board.
In the left pane, under "modify profile," click on forum profile information.
Enter your birthday in the format specified (again, providing the year is optional) and then click the "change profile" button.

There's lots of other stuff you can change in your profile, so feel free to explore while you're in there!

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SMF has the option (as "The Oracle" can attest to ) for you to change your displayed name at any time you like.  So, if you're in a mood and want to call yourself something different for the day or whatever, have at it!

In your profile click on Account Related Settings.  Under your username, there's a field for your displayed name in which you can enter whatever you like.  Then enter your current password in the last field, and click "change profile."

[The Oracle]

Dude.  My moniker just needs an article.

I'm pretentious like that. 

What I wanna know is, How did you do the custom title, "Gone viddin'"?  Is that an admin feature, alone, or can we all get sandwich boards to hang around our lil' necks? 

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What I wanna know is, How did you do the custom title, "Gone viddin'"?  Is that an admin feature, alone, or can we all get sandwich boards to hang around our lil' necks? 

Well, son, I'm glad you asked...evvvvvvvrybody can do it!

Go to your profile and click on Forum Profile Information.
Underneath your avatar options, there's a field called "Personal Text" -- that's the text that will appear below your avatar when you post.
Further down, right above where you can enter your signature, there's a field called "Custom Title" -- that's the text that will appear under your name when you post (where my gone viddin' tag appears).
Enter whatevah you like for either/both of those and then click the "change profile" button.

Lemme know if you have any problems.

[The Oracle]

 

Uhm . . . no.

This is what mine has:

• Picture
• Personal Text
• Birthdate
• Location
• Gender
• ICQ
• AIM
• MSN
• YIM
• Signature
• Website Title
• Website URL

[chasa]

I will investigate!  I have custom titles enabled (I double-checked that before posting), so there must be some setting buried elsewhere that's controlling it...

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OK...I think I found the relevant setting.  Tell me if you have the custom title field now!

[The Oracle]

TeeHee!!!  It works.  It works.

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  I've unleashed a monster!  But a really cute one

[The Oracle]

 

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Aside from using the search feature to find topics/posts that you're looking for here on the forum, SMF has a very handy and versatile sorting feature.  By default, when you enter a forum (like the "Television" forum), topics are sorted by the "Last post" column, so that the topics are sorted by the time of the last post made (the exception being that stickied and announcement topics will always stay at the top).  But you can instead sort topics by *any* of the column headers:

Subject
Started by
Replies
Views
Last post

Just click on the header name to sort by that variable.  And you can toggle between ascending/descending order by clicking on the triangle that appears next to the column header you're sorting on.  Not really a big deal with the number of topics we have now, but it will be useful later!

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Your User Info console is that block up at the top of the forum, where your avatar is displayed (if you have one), along with the current date/time, info about your private messages, etc.

First, you *can* toggle the forum header OFF -- use the little arrow icon that's to the left of the "Home" button, right under the search box.  However, the User Info console is pretty useful, especially for tracking unread posts in a spoiler safe way.  When you click on the "show unread posts since last visit" or "show new replies to your posts" links, you'll get a list of threads that meet your criteria.  The good part is that it doesn't display the posts themselves, so you won't get spoiled by surprise like you might with the Recent Posts feature at the bottom of the board (with that one, if you click on the little post icon to the left of the list of 5 recent posts, it will pull up a page with the full text of the last 10 posts on the board).  You can also use the User Info console to go directly to your private message mailbox (link in the first line of the console), rather than navigating there via your profile.

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Yeah, so there's a mod I could install that would do a javascript "hide/show" toggle thingie for spoilers...but involves two mods and I saw it installed at another forum and then it required troubleshooting because it didn't work for everyone.  So this is the lazy way around it

Using "quote" tags and matching text to the quote area color

The quote boxes have one set background color:

#C3B8D0

So, you would use the "color" BBcode between the "quote" tags...like so:

OMG!Ponies!LOL!  But don't tell anyone!!!!