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Jump to the Message
Board here 
Using the Message Board:
You can get to the Swetland Family Association
Message Board by following this link: http://swetland.proboards51.com/index.cgi
.
When you go to the Swetland Family Association
Message Board site you will need to “Log In” to
start posting messages. You do not
have to be a member to read the messages posted. If you are not already a member you can
be by creating an account with a username and password. You can create one fairly easily.
You will see a place on the message board home page
to enter your ‘username’ and ‘password’. Enter them here to log in and start
posting messages. If you do not have
an account can create one by clicking on the blue text written as
‘Create New Account’.
Don’t worry you are not opening any bank or financial
institutional account for monetary usage.
You are merely creating a way for the message board to know who you
are and maintain a means of consistency of users.
Creating a New Account:
When you click on the link to create a new account
you will be brought to a web page that asks for some basic
information.
The first
block is a ‘username’.
For this you can enter whatever name you want people on the message
board to know you as. It is most
easy and nice, on a website dealing with family and family history, to use
your own name here, but it can be anything, even “SpongeBob” or
“Blue Moon”.
The second
block will be a password. It is
required to be at least 6 characters long but could be 8 or 7 or 10. You choose. The site suggest you use a mix of number
and letters as this is a means of creating a password that is more
difficult for other people to figure out and use your ID. But, really, this is just a message board
and not a bank account so if you want to use “ScoobyDoo” for
you password, that would be fine. A
mixed password may be something more like “Swe123tland” or
“Dodge06Magnum” or “ABC123”. So be creative, but be sure it is
something that you will remember easily.
The third
block will be to enter your password again. Most sites do this to make sure you typed
in your password correctly.
It’s a means of validating that you entered what you meant to
enter.
The fourth
block will be your e-mail address. The site will send an e-mail to you
confirming that you are setting up an account to this message board and you
will have to respond to this email to complete your account setup. So be sure you enter an e-mail account
you use regularly and not a rarely used one or something you just made
up.
The fifth
block again will be your e-mail address. Again, this is a means of validating
that you entered what you meant to enter.
The sixth
block is a selection to hide your e-mail address from others or let it be
visible. This is totally up to
you. The benefit is that someone may
be able to e-mail you directly with questions when they see it on the site. The down side is that you may get more
e-mails than you want, it removes those discussions from the message board
that may benefit others as well, and it leaves your e-mail address out
there on the World Wide Web for all to see (that happen to cross this web
page) and you may get unwanted e-mail.
I have gotten some of this, but it is small and I do not consider it
a high risk.
The seventh
block will be to ask for your date of birth. This is a requirement for many websites
that involve message boards or ‘chat’ to ensure the safety of
minors.
The eighth
block is a select to hide or show your age on the message board. This is totally up to you.
The final
block is a security check. It
will show some characters (letters or numbers) in a picture box and it asks
you to type in the characters you see into the box below it. The characters may be at odd angles or have
intersecting lines in them. This may
seem strange to you but it is a way to ensure that automated pieces of
computer code are not randomly setting up accounts and performing tasks
that we really want a human to do.
This picture box is something that is not normally picked up by a
piece of automated computer code and the odd angles and intersecting lines
make it even more difficult for automated computer programs to read or
decipher the characters. I call it
the “Are You Human Test.’
Finally on the account setup page, you will need to
agree to some basic terms and conditions on how to use the message board
and be a good online citizen. If you
agree, then check the “I Agree” button and click on the “Create
Account” button. There will be
a slight pause as the website stores your information, then you will be
presented with a screen indicating that the account was created
successfully.
Here is a screen Capture of
a “test” user I created:
Here is the acknowledgement
screen that my account was created successfully and a confirmation e-mail
has been sent to the e-mail address I provided on the first screen:
Completing Your New
Account Signup:
You are almost there.
Just one more thing to do.
Sign-in to your e-mail account and look for an e-mail from the
message board. This will be your
validation e-mail. Follow the
instructions and click on the links as described in the e-mail. This will authenticate you as a user to
the site and complete your registration.
Now you are ready to log in and use the site. Be sure to remember your
‘username’ and ‘password’ for the site, as you will
need it to log in and post message.
Voila!! You
are now an official member of the Swetland Family Association
Message Board.
Congratulations and I hope you enjoy this forum. Be sure to send along any ideas,
concerns, or questions to me by using my e-mail address at the bottom of www.swetland.org web pages.
Here is a screen capture of
an e-mail I received from the website.
All I needed to do was click the first link shown and the account
registration was completed:
Posting Messages
How to Reply to Message
Once you have signed
in, go to a forum topic (like SFA Events and Questions) and then a topic in
the forum (in message boards they are called threads) that you would like
to respond to.
Then you should see a button labeled “Reply”. Once you click
that you should get a new screen with a Subject line, Message Icon, Tags
(formatting options), Add Smilies (lets you put little faces into your
message to add emphasis), Message for typing your text, and then some check
boxes for Bookmarking the message for future reference or disabling the
smiley faces.
Now you can type your response in the ‘Message’ box. You can
also click on the smiley faces and add them into your message as “.Jyou type. So you could say something like “This
is a great idea!!! By clicking on
the smiley face I wanted, it pops it right into my text.
There is a full range of button above the smiley faces for changing the
format of your text, like bold, italic, underline, and more. Even
formatting of the text so it is all left justified, centered, right justified,
width justified, adjust the font size, and adjust font color. I
wouldn’t worry too much about those buttons or the ones right below
it. You can play with these and experiment with them as you wish.
After you have your text written in the message box, there are some check
boxes. The first is to bookmark the thread. This will give you a way to
jump right to this portion of the “thread” or topic in the
future – I wouldn’t bother with it. The next checkbox is to
disable smileys. So if you added any smileys, they will be turned off when
you post your message – again, I wouldn’t worry about this one
either. Finally, you can hit the ‘Post Reply’ button to post it
or submit it. You can hit the ‘Preview’ button which will show
you what your post will look like before you submit it. This is nice as it
allows you a chance to double check yourself. And the last button is to
‘Reset’. Caution!! This one will clear all text and formatting
and smileys you may have entered. It is like wiping the slate clean,
shaking the “Etch-a-Sketch”, deleting all that you have done so
you can start over again. Be sure this is what you want to do before you
hit it.
How to Post a New Message
You also
don’t have to just reply to a thread or topic; you can start a new
one.
To start a new one, go to one of the Forum Topics (like SFA Events and
Questions). Once into this forum area, you will see a button for “New
Thread”, click on this. You will get a new screen with a very similar
input area as when you reply to a message; however this time you get to
name the Subject of the thread.
How
to Post a Poll
You can also
start a “Poll”. This allows you to type a question with several
answer choices for people to respond to. To start a new poll, go to one of
the Forum Topics (like SFA Events and Questions). Once into this forum
area, you will see a button for “New Poll”, click on this. You
will get a new screen with a very similar input area as when you reply to a
message; however this time you get to enter a question and put in a series
of answers you would like people to select from. This option is neat in
that when people see this message, they can select the answer of their
choice and the message board will keep track of the responses and tabulate
them into a chart and percentages.
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