Registration & Login
You will need to have an account in order to take advantage of all the features offered by the DealMaven community such as setting your own avatar, tracking post counts, emailing users, private messages, participating in the forums and blogs, and more. It only takes a few seconds to register, and is completely FREE.
To create an account you will need to visit the Registration page and complete the form for creating a new account. Here you will specify details such as your login name, email address, and password.
After successfully registering you should have a username and password. You can then visit the login page and enter your username and password to login.
When logging in if you do not check the ‘Remember Me’ option you will be automatically logged off after an administrator-defined length of inactivity. If you would like the site to always log you in automatically, please check the ‘Remember Me’ checkbox.
If you forgot your username and/or password you can visit the Forget Your Password page and have both your username and a new password emailed to you by entering the username you're registered with. You will be sent a link to the email address you registered with where you can change your password.
If you’ve registered and can’t login, check to ensure you have a valid username and password. If you are sure the username and password are valid, but still can’t login your account may be on hold. In this case it is best to contact the board administrator(s) or moderator(s).
First check to ensure your username and password are correct. If you still can’t login your account has either been put on hold or deleted due to inactivity. Please contact the board administrator(s) or moderator(s).
User Profile & Settings
A profile is information about your account that controls how you view information within the DealMaven community. This includes details about posts you’ve contributed to, personal information you wish to share such as your web address or weblog address, as well as settings that control how you interact with the DealMaven community site such as: time zone, and many other settings.
Setting your timezone will enable the DealMaven community to display all dates and time relative to your time zone.
A signature is a message that is appended to the end of any posts you make in the forums. You can edit your signature from the profile page. This signature will then appear at the bottom of any messages posted by you.
An avatar is a feature of the forums which allows for an image to be displayed along with your posts.
You can set your avatar by entering your profile's settings (click on your username). From here you can select the avatar you wish to use by either choosing or uploading one. You will also need to enable your avatar for it to be displayed with your posts.
The date format used to display any date information can be configured from your profile.
Email tracking is a feature which will send emails to you when messages that you are subscribed to change. You can turn off all email tracking globally from your profile.
There are many different icons that can show up under usernames in the forums. These icons depict "proficiencies" in different areas of the forum, and depict a number in the lower-right corner of the image to show your current level of proficiency. These levels are directly proportional to the amount of points you receive from that forum.
This is primarily to protect the privacy of users who have shared their information or to prevent unwanted/unsolicited emails.
Privacy & Security
Once logged in you can change your password from your Profile page.
Usernames cannot be changed.
Once logged in, you can change your private email address from your Profile page.
The only profile setting that is required is your private email address. This is the email address that is used when you subscribe to the forums, when a forgotten username/password is emailed. The private email address is never shared or displayed publicly. If you wish to share an email address publicly, use the public email address field. The remainder of the profile settings is optional.
You can set the option in your profile and your name will not appear in any member listings, including the listing of who is online.
Navigation
A Forum Group is a top level grouping of related forums. A forum group contains 1 or more forums.
A Forum is a grouping of related threads of discussion. A Forum contains 0 or more threads and 0 or more sub-forums.
A Thread is a grouping of related posts. A Thread contains 1 or more Posts. The first post becomes the Thread and replies to the original post increment details on the Thread, such as the reply count or last post.
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Thread Icon Legend
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Topic with posts you have not read.
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Topic with posts you have read.
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Popular topic with posts you have not read. A topic
becomes popular after a certain number of views and posts (administrator
defined).
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Popular topic with posts you have read. A topic becomes
popular after a certain number of views and posts (administrator
defined).
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Announcement you have not read
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Announcement you have read
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A pinned topic with posts you have not read. Pinned topics are
displayed before other topics until they become unpinned.
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A pinned topic with posts you have read. Pinned topics are displayed
before other topics until they become unpinned.
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A pinned popular topic with posts you have not read. A pinned topic
with enough views or replies to become popular.
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A pinned popular topic with posts you have read. A pinned topic with
enough views or replies to become popular.
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A locked topic with posts you have not read. Locked topics do not
allow replies.
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A locked topic with posts you have read. Locked topics do not allow
replies.
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A forum may not display any threads if there are no threads in the forum or if filters on the forms have been applied and no threads match the filter. An example of a filter is filtering to display threads newer than a certain date, such as threads new in the past 2 weeks.
A forum may or may not be moderated depending upon how the forum has been configured. After posting a message in a moderated forum you may receive a message stating that the post is awaiting moderation. Once the moderator(s) approve your post you post will become visible. The moderators may choose to move, edit, or delete your post to ensure that the post is topical to the current forum.
The icons next to threads when viewing a forum indicate different status. You can move your mouse cursor over these icons to see what the different status / types of threads are.
An announcement is a special post type that is always displayed at the top of a forum for a configured amount of time. The purpose of an announcement is to increase the visibility of certain topics.
A sticky topic is a special post that causes a post to sort to the top of a forum for a specified amount of time. A sticky topic is similar to an announcement, whereas an announcement is displayed separate from other threads and usually does not allow replies.
A locked thread is a special post that does not allow replies. Once a user locks a post or an administrator/moderator locks a thread no more posts are allowed.
Yes, you can sort threads when viewing a forum by Author, Replies, Views, and Last Post. The default sort for a forum is to display the newest threads first (Last Post descending). To sort simply click on the options button at the bottom of the screen and select your desired sort order and click 'Apply'.
The XML icon is linked to the RSS feed for the forum. RSS is used to allow other applications to subscribe to a forum's posts.
If you are attempting to access a forum that you have visited before, but now receive an ‘unknown forum’ error there are two likely causes. The first cause is that the forum you are attempting to access is private and you are not signed in. The second cause is that the forum has been removed.
Posting
Yes and no. You cannot type HTML directly into the editor. If you are using Internet Explorer the default editor for creating new posts will be a Rich Text Editor that will automatically format posts using HTML. If you post with a browser other than Internet Explorer a standard HTML textbox is used and BBCode can be used to mark-up posts.
BBCode is a special syntax for formatting plaintext posts.
Yes, however, this requires the moderator(s) or administrator(s) to enable this permission for user’s on a forum-by-forum basis.
Emoticons are graphical elements that can be added within the body of a post to add emotions to the post. Common examples are the use of smilies within the contents of a post. The DealMaven community comes with a pre-defined set of emoticons, however the administrator can add additional ones.
You can post a new message to a forum in several ways depending upon how the administrator has configured the site. When viewing a forum you should see an image button reading New Topic. Clicking on this image button will take you to a form for posting a message or ask you to login first. If you do not see the New Topic image button you may not have enough permissions to post a message to the forum even though you are allowed to view the forum.
You can reply to an existing post using either the Reply or Quote image buttons displayed with the post. If you do not see the Reply or Quote image buttons when viewing a post you either do not have permissions to reply or the post may not allow replies.
If the administrator or moderator has configured the forum or your role to allow editing of posts you will see an Edit image button next to posts you have made. Clicking on this image button will allow you to edit your post.
If the administrator or moderator has configured the forum or your role to allow deleting posts you will see a Delete image button next to new posts you have made. If a post you have made has one or more replies you will no longer be able to delete the post.
Certain words that are deemed to be offensive are filtered and replaced with the ‘*’ character.
See
How do I add Signature to my Post in the User Profile and Settings section.
See
What is an avatar and
How do I Set my Avatar in the User Profile and Settings section.
Private Messages
A private message is like email within the DealMaven community. You can send a private message to other users within the DealMaven community site that is visible only to them. No private information, such as the user's email address, is ever disclosed.
Member Points
Participation in the DealMaven community is tracked using a points system. Members accrue points for taking actions that improve the quality of the community and its content (writing forum posts, rating blog or forum posts, etc.). DealMaven reserves the right to award or penalize points for any reason. DealMaven also reserves the right to change its scoring system at any time.
There are three measures of member standing based on points accumulated in the DealMaven Finance Community:
- Community User Level: Based on the total number of points a member has accumulated in all areas of the Community. Member ascends a level for every 200 points earned (0-199 points = Level 1, 200-399 points = Level 2, etc.).
- User Rank: A member’s position relative to other members based on total points.
- Proficiency Levels: Based on the number of points a member has accumulated in specific forums. Member ascends a level for every 75 points earned (e.g., a member who’s accumulated 263 points in DealMaven’s “FastTrack for Excel” product forum has attained a FastTrack for Excel Level 3 Proficiency). Members may accumulate as many proficiencies as there are forum topics.
Members accrue points for Community participation as specified below. Points awarded in a particular forum count toward both proficiency in that specific area as well as toward overall point totals.
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| Points: 3 (+ rating bonus) |
| Actions: |
- Make a forum post that starts a new thread
- Submit an article, news item, or suggestion that leads to a blog post
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| Details: |
- Members may rate posts, resulting in bonus points awarded (or lost) for each rating.
- Bonus points are awarded based on the rating a post receives (see below) multiplied by the Community User Level of the member rating the post. Thus ratings made by “decorated” members of the Community count more than those made by less experienced members.
| Rating (stars) | Point Multiplier | | ***** | 3 | | **** | 2 | | *** | 1 | | ** | 0 | | * | -1 |
- Note: Members may not rate their own posts.
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| Points: 2 |
| Actions: |
- Continue a forum thread by making a forum post
- Comment on a blog post
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| Points: 1 |
| Actions: |
- Rate a forum post
- Rate a blog post
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Members may be docked points for “bad-faith” Community activities such as spamming, attempting to “game” the system, harassing other members, etc. Members may also be temporarily or permanently barred from part or all of the DealMaven Finance Community for such actions.