Now that you've registered, you might not be sure what to do next. You can jump right into posting wherever you want to, or you can start a thread to introduce yourself in the Welcome Center.  You can also read quietly until you're ready to post later, that's OK too!

This post is designed to help you get settled in and find your way around the board while making the most of the features we have installed.


Useful resources

Be sure you are familiar with our Community Guidelines. They will help answer a lot of your questions about how things work around here.

BBC (Bulletin Board Code) is the language used for formatting things like posts and signatures. This page is a useful reference: BBC Reference

There's a ton of acronyms that you will run across while posting. We made a list here:  Acronym list

Also, on the menu at the top of the forum you'll see a link for Help - it has a very nicely written outline of how to use the features in the forum.


How to contact a staff member

There will be times you need to contact a staff member, whether you have a question or problem.  Please don't ever hesitate to ask about anything you need help with.  You can PM any staff member by clicking on their name to access their profile, and then choosing to send a private message (link is toward the bottom of the page).  Some also have their email visible in their profile.

If you have concerns about a particular thread or post, you can click "Report to Moderator" within that thread, and then leave a note with the report with details.

How to customize your profile

There are lots of fun ways to customize your profile on Full Time Moms.

Go to your profile (link in the menu at the top of the page) and choose Forum Profile Information.

Here you can add an avatar - that's a small (up to 100x100) picture that appears under your name in each post. You can choose from our pre-loaded collections, upload one, or point to a location on the web, such as photobucket. The software will resize any picture over 100x100, and could skew the image in the process (if it's not square) so keep that in mind when choosing an image.

Personal text will appear under your avatar.

You can add information such as instant messenger accounts and birthday (your birthday will then appear on the calendar).

Custom title appears beneath your name and above any membergroup titles. It's just another way to have some fun with your profile.

To make a signature, you will need to know a few helpful things if you want to make it more than plain text:

You'll need BBC (link above) to format the text with centering, colors, sizes, etc.

If you want to add any forum smileys, you'll need the shorthand for the smileys you want - that's the :whatever: that appears when you click to put a smiley in your post.

If you want to add an image, it needs to be hosted somewhere like Photobucket or another sharing site.  Whatever site you use, be sure to grab the BB code, not the html or other language.

To add a ticker from somewhere like lilypie, use the BB code.

Typing a space between the various parts of your signature will put a line break. To center it, put at the very beginning and at the very end.

More useful settings in your profile

Under Account Related Settings in your profile, you can change your display name. Your login will remain the same.

You can tweak a number of things under Look and Layout Preferences.  You can change the way time displays, and what time zone to use.  You can hide avatars and signatures (useful for those on dial-up or slow connections) and change some forum functionality such as Quick Reply and certain display options for forums and posts.

Notifications and Email and Personal Message Options are useful if you prefer to get email notices of new posts or personal messages.


Gallery

Members can create albums in the Gallery to share photos.  Once you have created an album and uploaded photo or video, you can share them in posts by using the BBC Embed Code shown in the Item Info for each image.  

You can also use the html code and direct link if desired.

NOTE:  We do not recommend using Gallery for signatures or avatars, it will not look right.  Please use a host such as photobucket or similar for those images.


Ways to support Full Time Moms

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This was a great post!

  very well put!