It's official - Blotanical now has forums! Yay!!! My apologies for taking so long in making these available to you and I'm sincerely grateful for those who have persevered even when I knew you were hanging out for these. Hopefully this feature will surpass your expectations and help you in your online gardening exploits.

While there are still many tweaks and bugs to fix, the feature is working adequately to handle most of your needs in its present state. The Guru's have had quite a bit of time to explore and make suggestions and I've even allowed it to function for others without officially declaring it open - in other words, those that have found it have also had a look behind the curtain.

Like most features on Blotanical it will evolve predominantly from your feedback, suggestions and ongoing discussion so I'm keen to hear from you. You can be as candid as you like as I'm as keen as you to see this area of the site move forward and become a helpful addition.

For those of you who may be unfamiliar with forums I will explain the ins and outs in a moment but first let me take the opportunity to list some of the key features of Blotanical's forums as opposed to others;

1. As your security is a high priority of ours we have closed off any commenting by Members who have not yet reached the Patron Blotanist level (500+ points). This should dissuade those who enjoy signing up to forums and then spamming or abusing other members. While it can't stop it, we can certainly make it hard for those who partake in these activities.

   Therefore, these boards should be a relatively safe place to frequent.

   PS. For those who haven't yet earned 500+ points then all I can suggest is to get out and mingle. It shouldn't take you too long to rack them up.
   



2. Our boards, apart from a few "House-Boards" are created by Guru Blotanists. Therefore, if you want a specific board created you have two options available to you - (1) become a Guru (10,000+ points) and create it yourself, or (2) you could ask a Guru to create one for you.
3. Boards can be hidden completely. If you find certain boards that just have no interest at all for you these can be hidden and retrieved later if desired.
4. Boards move up the ranking order in relation to the amount of activity that occurs within them. This ranking system is based on multiple people so one person can't 'game' the rankings and send their board to the top of the list.

These are the key features and there are more in the pipelines, so stick around and enjoy your time here.

How do Forums work?

Great question and I'm glad you asked. If you've never participated in online forums before they can seem a bit daunting but once you get the terminology right they seem to make sense and using them becomes a little less bewildering. So let's start with the glossary - we'll use this image as our example;

Board: A board is a collection of forums, threads and posts around a particular category. In this example the board's name is SEEDS and so it offers discussions about anything to do with seeds.

Forum: A forum is a topic that encapsulates a more specific discussion point than the board's title. In this case there are 3 forums; (a) Seed Swap, (b) Seed Saving and (c) When to Plant. You can click on any of the forum titles to view any threads that have been started within them.

Thread: A thread is a discussion that someone has started and others have contributed to. Basically it could be termed "the discussion" and then everyone talks about and the discussion becomes bigger. Most discussions have a finite life and end when they drop off the first page. But others may continue infinitely based on how lively the discussion is and whether it can be easily resolved or not.

Sometimes threads are questions where members are seeking out others for suggestions, advice or even identification. Threads can also be statements or opinions and these usually have longevity if they capture the imagination of members.

Post: A post is your response to a thread. If you want to participate within the discussion then you respond via a post. The post shows the person who made the response, when they made it and what the response was.

Navigating your way around the forums?

Click the image to enlarge



Select Board List: This offers you a list of boards that are available plus the <- Show All -> and <- Hide all Non-Sticky Boards -> options. The <- Hide all Non-Sticky Boards -> option allows you to hide all the boards except the sticky information ones that you may need to refer to from time to time. If you click this button you can instantly hide all the other boards and then add them back one by one until you're happy with your selection. The <- Show All -> option does the complete opposite making all boards unhidden and as they were when you first entered forums.

Board Buttons: The Sun button hides the current board while the Tree button is a quick method of adding a new forum to the board.

Last Post: This will depend where you are viewing this zone. If you are within the forum boards it will display the most recent post that has been published within that board, who wrote it and when it was written. Clicking on the click-able title will take you directly to that post.

If you view the last post from within the Threads page it will be more specific to the thread than for the board overall.

Backwards Direction:

As you move through the forums you will notice some click-able links and buttons towards the top of the page. These are to help you navigate back to the board you started with or even the forum and possibly even the thread (depending on where you are). Clicking these links takes you directly back to those positions.

The buttons underneath that zone are for starting a new thread or adding a new post to the discussion.

Conclusion

This is probably a good start for now and I shall post more as it evolves and adapts with the community.