How to Post to the Forums

Who may post.

Any registered user may post to any of the public forums. Simply navigate your browser to the forum you would like to post to, and click "Post new forum topic." If you want to comment or reply to an existing post, just click "add new comment" at the bottom of the post.

You can also send a private message to the author (if the author permits it) and subscribe to a particular thread.

To subscribe to an entire forum, click "my subscriptions" on the left navigation bar. Then select which forum(s) you want to subscribe to.

Formatting your post.

Astrographica uses a popular, simple mark-up language called "bbcode." It allows for simple formatting of text, such as making text bold and posting links to other web pages. Click here to learn more about making your posts more snazzy with bbcode.

Of course the forums would not be complete without being able to display photos from the Gallery. You can add thumbnails of photos in the Astrographica Gallery using a special bbcode-style tag:

The Horse Head Nebula and NGC 2023 Russell Croman

Most likely you will simply want to show a thumbnail for a single, specific photo from the Gallery. To do this, you will need the "item ID" of the photo. If you look in your browser's address bar while viewing a photo, the very last number in the address is the item ID. To display a thumbnail (and link) to that photo, simply include the following tag in your post:

[G2:itemId] (where itemId is the numerical ID of the photo you want to display)

For example, the Horse Head nebula photo above has a Gallery item ID of 287. The thumbnail was displayed with the following mark-up tags:

[G2:287]

For more detailed information, scroll down to the end of the bbcode help page.