How to keep up to date with the site

[Gavin]

Once you've logged into the site, any topics (or "threads") which have contributions you've not yet read are indicated by having a green lit chrome button next to them.

In order to keep up to date with the site, you can click the orange RSS button at the top and be notified of updates via Google Reader or another RSS reader.

Alternatively, you can click "Subscribe forum" at the bottom of any particular forum and you will be notified by e-mail of any updates to any topics. Also, when you make a post, you can tick "Notify me when a reply is posted" to be informed of any replies to that particular post. Without posting at all, you can also click "Subscribe topic" under a particular topic to be notified of updates.

So, there are lots of ways to keep up with the site.

[Gavin]

Please note that you don't need to receive e-mails for every post made, not even follow-ups for threads you started, if you prefer just to see what is "green-lit".

You can change these things in your User Control Panel:

[Jonathan]

I just use the 'view new posts' link every now and then.

[Gavin]

The "view new posts" and "view active topics" links, on the left there, are both indeed very handy ones.

Users can see I have also added a new "view random topic" link - a kind of lucky dip which might rejuvenate your interest in some previous threads! This appears I think on every page except the "posting" one, for now.

Finally I want to make sure all visitors are aware of the icon that appears on the right beside the name of the latest person to contribute to a topic. For example:

Screen Shot 2013-10-25 at 01.53.08.png (10.18 KiB) Viewed 5054 times

The small square icon with the downward arrow. You click this to jump straight through to the latest/last/most recent post on the given topic. Experienced users probably know this, new ones may not. I use this method a lot.