Newbie needs help navigating

[lilmomma]

I am new here and am having trouble following the posts. I only visit one other site so I am used to a different format. On that other site, the posts are in chronological order and if you want to reply to something posted earlier, you just "qoute" the post and it will be reprinted in your reply. On Chow, their is no quoting so your post comes after the post you are replying to, which is great but makes it hard to know which posts are the new ones because they are all mixed together. Also, sometimes the posts are expanded and you can read all the text and sometimes I just see the posters name and time posted. I don't know why it goes back and forth. Please help because I love reading all the stuff on this site but I cannot for the life of me figure out how to do it easily. How do you navigate through here? TIA

[small h]

You're right that Chowhound doesn't include the quoted text in your reply, which is pretty annoying. I just cut & paste the relevant section and put <...> around it. You'll see other methods as well.

[lilmomma]

I have definitely read posts and they still come back expanded the next time I visit that thread. ANd you are saying that they should come back NOT expanded after I read them?

Also, what is "permalink"? And if I wnat a thread to be on "MY CHOW", do I have to post in that thread or is there another way to subscribe to that thread?

[Jacquilynne]

If a post has a mix of things you've read and things you haven't read, then there should be some posts open and some closed if you open it again. But if there's no mix -- if all the posts were already there the last time you opened the thread, or the thread is one you've never opened before -- then everything will appear open.

A permalink is a link to a specific reply within a thread. You can copy it and use it to direct other people to a specific point within a thread.

If you want to save a thread but not participate in it, you can click the ticky box next to favorite at the top of the thread, and it'll appear in myCHOW in the 'favorites' section.

[lilmomma]

How does it know if I have read some posts or not?

So if everything is open then I know that I have read everything in that thread?

I still don't understand the permalink?

[Jacquilynne]

The site keeps a note of when you last looked at a thread -- it assumes you read all the posts that were in it at the time, and considers anything added since then to be new.

If everything is open, you know you've read either everything or nothing.

Permalinks are used to direct people to a specific spot in a thread. Say you wanted someone to read your reply, above, the one that I'm replying to. You could send them a link to the thread, which looks like this:
http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/610206

But that would just get them to this general thread, and you'd have to describe which reply you wanted them to read. Instead, if you click on permalink on that reply, it updates the address in your browser to be a link to the right spot in the thread, like this:
http://chowhound.chow. com/topics/610206#4581606

The stuff that looks like #4581606 is added to direct them to the right spot. I deliberately messed that link up a little so that you could see the difference (otherwise, our software would have automatically made it clickable and shortened it), but here's a working version:

http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/6102...

[lilmomma]

I get it! Thanks! Now what is the email notificaqtion for? I see that on the list under my chow.

[lilmomma]

Also what is the best way to navigate? I usually first go to Chicago area and see if there arre new things I want to read and then check out General chowhounding topics and not about food. Ehat do you do?

[Bobfrmia]

When you log in, on the upper right, where it says, " hey, lilmomma", if you click on your name, it will show all your recent post, and tell you if there is a new response.

[MMRuth]

That's what I do too, though I have a direct link to my "My Chow" page in my browser. Then I go to Home Cooking and Manhattan.

[Jacquilynne]

On CHOW stories, you can choose to be notified of new comments when you leave a comment, and you'll get an email letting you know.

There isn't email notification on the message boards at this time.

How you navigate's pretty personal, but I like to start on my myCHOW page, because that lets me see if there are any replies in threads I've participated in. Then, I click through to Ontario, which is my local board, and Site Talk, Technical Help and CHOW Feedback, because I need to read those three. After that, I bounce around a lot, looking at different boards.

[danhole]

Another thing to point out is that if you are looking at a thread and see that a reply is closed, as in that all you can see is the posters name and the date they posted, but you can't remember what they said, you can hover over that box until you see a finger and a note that says 'Click to expand." Once you click, it will open so you can read it.

[MMRuth]

Hi - Welcome!

Usually, the when some posts are expanded and others not, the ones that are expanded are the ones you haven't yet read. If you have read all of the posts in a thread, and go back to look at that thread, all the posts will be expanded. You can use the "Expand All" button in the former situation (the link is to the right of "X Replies so Far").

In terms of following the threads - if someone is replying to the original poster of the thread, that new post will show up at the very bottom. If someone is reply to another poster, it will be indented from that post. That post will also say "re: [username] in the upper right corner of the post, so that you can tell at whom the response is directed.

It gets a bit tricky when there are lots of replies to one another on a thread, as, after a certain number of replies, they are no longer nested, so to speak.

If you haven't yet discovered it, the "MY CHOW" link is very helpful - it will lists threads in which you have participated, and if there is a new post on that thread since you last looked at it, there will be a red "new" tag to the left of the title of the post. Also, you can add threads in which you are interested to to your favorite topics list, by clicking in the box to the upper right of a thread's title "Favorite Topic!".

Hope that helps to get you started - feel free to post back if you have other questions.

[danhole]

Very good answer Ruth, but to try and help lilmomma out a bit I thought I would add this reply to you, so she could see what you meant by adding a reply. Notice how it indents, as Ruth said. Sometimes when there are a lot of posts it help if you visualize a ruler on the left side of the page so you can see which post they are replying to. Although sometimes that doesn't work, because people just post and don't pay attention to who they are replying to! You'll get the hang of it!

Dani

[The Dairy Queen]

Like danhole, I'm also replying to MMRuth. So, you can see, danhole and I appear at the same level of indentation, because we are both replying to MMRuth. Also, in the upper right hand corner of both my post and danhole's post, you can see

re: MMRuth

which, again, indicates we are both replying to her post.

Welcome lilmomma. Don't worry--you'll get used to the navigation here and pretty soon none of those other sites will make sense to you.

~TDQ