Forum - The forum is the whole installation, and usually contains multiple boards.

Board - A board contains topics, which in turn contain the posts. Boards can be private, so they are only visible to admins and members. Boards can be read-only, so they only allow posts by admins and members. Another option for boards is approval moderation. If this option is activated, new posts will be invisible to normal users until an admin approves them. Users can subscribe to a board, which means they will get all new posts in that board in one daily email.

= Normal board
= Board with new posts

Topic - A topic, otherwise known as thread, contains all the posts on a specific subtopic, that should be named in the topic's subject. Boards have an expiration value that determines after how many days its topics will expire after their last post has been made. An important topic can be set to 'protected', so that it never expires. Admins can lock a topic, so that no new posts can me made to it.

= Normal topic
= Topic with new posts
= Locked topic
= Topic is invisible for normal users

Post - A post is a single public message by a user. It can be either a first post, which starts a new topic, or a reply to an existing topic. Posts can be edited and deleted after posting.

= Normal post
= New post
= Post is invisible for normal users

User - A user is anyone who registers an account in the forum. Everyone needs to register to write in the forum, anonymous posting is not possible. However, there is no need for an account just for reading. Users can be granted membership status to selected boards, enabling them to see private boards and post in read-only boards.

Forum Administrator - A forum admin can control and edit everything in the forum. A forum can have multiple forum admins.

Board Administrator - A board admin is what most other forum applications call the board moderator. A board admin's powers are limited to the boards he is admin of. A board admin can edit, delete and approve posts by normal users, mark topics as protected or locked, and delete topics. A board can have multiple board admins.

Score Moderation - If the score moderation system is active for a board, every post in that board has a score. Users with votes can moderate a post up or down, adding or substracting a point to/of the post's score. All users can set a score threshold in their profile. If a post's score is lower than that threshold, the post will be invisible to the user (except for a small hidden-post-indicator). Using the 'Reveal'-button on the hidden-post-indicator, users can temporarily reveal all hidden posts on that page. Forum admins can set the default number of daily votes new users get, change this value for individual users, and set the starting score individual user's posts get.

Markup Tags - There are two types of markup tags that can be used in posts: HTML tags and mwForum's own markup tags. Both can be enabled/disabled for each board, though HTML tags will be typically disabled for security reasons. http:// and ftp:// URLs are linked automatically. Available markup tags:

[b]text[/b] = renders text bold
[i]text[/i] = renders text italic
[tt]text[/tt] = renders text nonproportional

Smileys - The following emoticons are displayed as images: :) ;) :( :o

Why doesn't logging in work?
You browser must have cookies enabled. mwForum stores your user ID and password via cookies on your computer, so that you only have to type them in once.

Do I have to use the logout feature?
You only need to logout if you are using a computer that is also used by other non-trusted persons. mwForum stores your user ID and password via cookies on your computer, and these are removed on logout. You can also use the 'Limit login duration to browser session duration' feature in your options to automatically logout when your browser's session ends.

Why are my font face and size settings not used?
You browser must support CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) and have them enabled, otherwise these and some other non-critical display preferences won't be visible. Note: in Netscape 4, Javascript must be active for CSS to work.

Why this complicated registration via password email?
This forum has several features that can send you emails, e.g. reply notifications, password requests and board subscriptions. The forum will require you to specify a valid email address and only send the required password to that address to verify its validity. This is neccessary since otherwise a lot of people would type in bogus or broken addresses and try to use the email features anyway, which would result in hundreds of bounced emails/error messages for the forum administrator.

Which link should I bookmark?
You should enter the forum via the address https://www.myparkinsons.org/cgi-bin/forum/forum.pl. This way, all the old posts will be marked as read automatically on entering the forum.