The Cape Dory Board

Not everyone who's good at boats is good at computers too. So we wrote this page to try to give you some simple help to get started on our message board.

Anyone can visit the board as a guest, read the messages, and search them for specific information.

If you want to post a message, or reply to a message, you'll have to register as a user. It's free, and we don't use your email address or any other personal information. It's just that spammers were coming in and posting nasty stuff, and this requirement keeps them out.

How You Read Messages:

From the main page, click on the forum title:

Cape Dorys

Then click on a subject:

Goofer Stories Please!

Why?

We have three discussion areas - the main Cape Dory one, "About this Board" to discuss the board, and "Buy/Sell CD Boats and Gear" for "for sale" notices.

You start out on the main page where you can choose which discussion to look at.

There's also a "Sandbox" where you can try out posting messages, just to test.

Clicking on the subject of the first message shows you that message, and all the replies, all on one page.

(Messages with a lot of replies might extend over several pages, so to see them all, click on "Go to Page 1, 2,.., Next".)

Or you can click on the subject of one of the replies. You'll still be viewing all the messages on one page, but you will start off looking at the reply you clicked.

In the message index, the posts with the most recent replies are first in the list, so you can see at a glance what's new.

How You Search All the Messages:

At the top of any page, click

Then, in the first box, enter the word or words you are looking for.

Need more help? Watch the tutorial!*

The search program looks for one or more words. So for example, if you search for "Cape Dory" it will also match "dory behind the cape".

If you check

it will also match posts containing either Cape or Dory.

There are other Search options to help you find what you need. When you're ready, start by reading the notes on the Search page.

Now you should be able to read messages and search. Go ahead - give it a try!

There are more resources below, and you can use the "About this Board" forum to ask questions.

If you want to reply to messages, or post messages of your own, you'll have to register first. Being a registered user hat will give you other, optional features - automatically displaying your name and boat with your posts, letting you edit your posts, and a lot more.

To register, click the "Register" link at the top of any page, and follow the directions on the next two pages.

When you finish the registration form, you will be sent an email. You'll have to reply to the email before your registration is complete. That way, we know you gave us a real email address. It's not that we don't trust you, but this keeps the spammers out.

Need more help? Watch the tutorial!*

Once you're registered, you can reply to a message and post new messages of your own. Here's how:

How You Reply to a Message:

Click on . fill out the form, and click

Need more help? Watch the tutorial!*

Since all replies go at the end of the thread, you're replying to the whole discussion, or maybe the last message. So it's usually not necessary to include the text of other messages.

If you do want to reply to a specific message, click on at the top of that message, and you'll get the message quoted in your reply form. Then proceed as above.

Your reply will appear right after the most recent message posted. So people usually don't quote a message unless they're responding to a specific point or an earlier post.

There are a lot of other buttons on the form, but you can ignore them. For the moment, you can get by just fine with two buttons:

This board has a lot of optional formatting features, and you can also use some HTML formatting. Fool around with them on the Sandbox forum, if you like.

How You Post a New Message:

Click on at the top or bottom of any page of messages or message titles.

Then fill out the form, and click

Need more help? Watch the tutorial!*

There are a lot of other buttons on the form, but you can ignore them. For the moment, you can get by just fine with two buttons:

This board has a lot of optional formatting features, and you can also use some HTML formatting. Fool around with them on the Sandbox forum, if you like.

Ignore them. For the moment, you can get by just fine with two buttons:

The board has a lot of optional formatting features, and you can also use some HTML formatting.

How You Include Photos Within Posts:

In a nutshell, copy/paste the URL of your online photo(s) in the message body of your post. Select/highlight the entire URL, then click on the [Img] button. CLICK HERE for indepth instructions using BBCode then CLICK HERE for instructions using HTML.

* - Note: The tutorial movies show a board that is similar to ours, but won't look exactly the same. Some of the features shown will only be available to registered users.