Welcome, Sysop, to TIPS: Get the most out of After Hours R ... Read messages W ... Write a message F ... Find messages T ... Teleconference S ... Select a new Forum ? ... Description of this Forum M ... Modify a message E ... Erase a message A ... Approve files (0 waiting) O ... Operations menu Select a letter from this list, or X to exit: Each Forum consists of a message database with attached files. There are eight basic levels of user access: Zero, Read, Download, Write, Upload, Co-Op, Forum-Op, and Sysop. "Read" access means that you can read messages only; "Download" access means you can also download files; "Write" access allows you to write (or post) messages; "Upload" access means that you can also upload attachments, but that the Forum-Op must approve them for download; "Co-Op" uploads are "pre-approved". You have "Sysop" access to this Forum. Your Forum-Op is "Sysop". Please note: your account is charged 60 credits for each minute you spend in this Forum. In addition, you are given 300 credits each time you write a message, given 300 credits for each file uploaded, and not charged for each file downloaded. If a file you upload is approved for download, the Forum-Op might arrange for you to receive a bonus. All messages posted to this Forum are preserved indefinitely, until erased by the Forum-Op. (N)onstop, (Q)uit, or (C)ontinue?  Welcome, Sysop, to TIPS: Get the most out of After Hours R ... Read messages W ... Write a message F ... Find messages T ... Teleconference S ... Select a new Forum ? ... Description of this Forum M ... Modify a message E ... Erase a message A ... Approve files (0 waiting) O ... Operations menu Select a letter from this list, or X to exit: flfff Date: Monday, April 29, 1996 10:11pm Forum: TIPS From: Sysop Msg#: 699452 To: ** ALL ** Re: Hints and tips We've created this forum to so that we can give hints and tips that will help everyone get around easier while connected. You won't be able to post messages here, we want to keep the forum clear. We'll be giving basic tips as well as more advanced tricks, so have a look in here regularly for new things. Date: Monday, April 29, 1996 10:13pm Forum: TIPS From: Sysop Msg#: 699456 To: ** ALL ** Re: Who's online? If you want to find out who is online right now, just type: /# at any prompt. You'll be able to see who is connected right now, and where they are on the bbs. Date: Monday, April 29, 1996 10:13pm Forum: TIPS From: Sysop Msg#: 699459 To: ** ALL ** Re: Who has been on recently? You can find out who has been on in the last few hours by typing: /recent at any prompt. Date: Monday, April 29, 1996 10:30pm Forum: TIPS From: Sysop Msg#: 699473 To: ** ALL ** Re: Want to know more about someone? You can find out more about another user by looking up their registry entry. The shortcut for doing this is: /r username For example: /r john doe This will work from any prompt on the bbs. Date: Tuesday, April 30, 1996 8:30pm Forum: TIPS From: Sysop Msg#: 699695 To: ** ALL ** Re: Paging another user You don't have to be in teleconference to page other users. You can page a user who is online by typing: /p username message For example: To page a user named john doe and tell him "Hi! How's it going?", you would type: /p john doe Hi! How's it going? The user john doe would receive your message instantly. You can page another user from anywhere on the bbs. Date: Tuesday, April 30, 1996 8:35pm Forum: TIPS From: Sysop Msg#: 699697 To: ** ALL ** Re: Paging shortcut When you are paging someone, you don't have to type their entire user name! When you type /p username to page someone, Calvin knows that you're trying to page someone who is on right now. SO YOU DON'T HAVE TO TYPE THE WHOLE NAME. You only have to type enough letters for Calvin to figure out which user you are trying to page For example, if there is one user online named john doe, you can page him like this: /p j message The "J" is enough information for Calvin. Now, it may be possible that there is more than one user online with the same first letter, or couple of letters, in their username. In that case you would have to type enough letters for Calvin to figure it out. Date: Tuesday, April 30, 1996 8:41pm Forum: TIPS From: Sysop Msg#: 699701 To: ** ALL ** Re: The GO command It is not necessary to use the menu selections to get around on After Hours. You can use the /GO command to move directly from one section of the bbs to another. For instance, let's say you are in the forums and suddenly decide that you want to play Hangman. Instead of hitting "X" a few times to get back to the main menu, then selecting !Entertainment, then selecting Hangman, you could just type: /go secretcove and you'll go right there. Some of the menus have the page name right on them, at the bottom. You can find out what the other page names are by using the FIND command. See the next message for more info about the FIND command. Date: Tuesday, April 30, 1996 8:44pm Forum: TIPS From: Sysop Msg#: 699702 To: ** ALL ** Re: the FIND command This command has some limitations. You can only use this one from the main menu. There is no easy way to list all of the page names unless you are using Worldgroup. The find command is used like this: find searchstring where searchstring is a letter or word you are looking for. You can see most of the pages by typing: find a or find e What this does is finds any page name or description with the letters A or E. Date: Tuesday, April 30, 1996 9:00pm Forum: TIPS From: Sysop Msg#: 699706 To: ** ALL ** Re: Putting menu choices together You can get around the board quicker by putting menu choices together. Let's say that you are at the main menu and you want to read your new email. Normally you would type E for email, then R for read messages, then RETURN for the default of messages. Instead, you could just type: er. then press enter. The period takes the place of the RETURN and you'll immediately see your new mail. An interesting side note: There are still users who are typing ERT to read their new mail, even though an error message appears each time! If you are getting any error messages when you put commands together, check them by trying them one at a time. Over the years, some of the menus have changed! Here are a few interesting command concatenations (from the main menu}: MFLQB This will show a one line summary of all of your unread quickscan messages. Doing this will not mess up your pointers. MQS There's no reason to use this, you can do the same thing by just typing "S" from the main menu. LFDA Lists all of the files in all libraries, starting with the newest additions. AA Lists your account information. Date: Friday, May 3, 1996 6:47pm Forum: TIPS From: Lythande Msg#: 700516 To: ** ALL ** Re: More shortcuts from the Main Menu If you're at the Main Menu and want to go to a specific Message Forum and read new messages, type: ms/forumname r. Like: ms/hello r. To do the same thing when you're in one forum and want to switch to another just type: s/forumname r. Like: s/hello r. (a space can be used instead of the /) To find out what Message Forums there are, you can type ms? from the Main Menu. Date: Friday, May 3, 1996 6:51pm Forum: TIPS From: Lythande Msg#: 700517 To: ** ALL ** Re: To see a list of unread messages in a Forum To see a list of unread messages in a Forum, at the prompt for that Forum type: flfb . That will list a one liner on each unread message (the . stands for start at the first unread message). Date: Tuesday, May 7, 1996 11:11am Forum: TIPS From: Sysop Msg#: 701372 To: ** ALL ** Re: Parent Messages When you are reading a message and want to see what message the person was replying to, you can just type: TP for (T)hread, (P)arent Once you have read the "parent" message, you can just type: L to get back to where you were. NOTE: We used to suggest that people type PN or NP to get back, but the "L" now takes the place of that. Date: Tuesday, May 7, 1996 3:17pm Forum: TIPS From: Lythande Msg#: 701420 To: ** ALL ** Re: Parent messages, continued When you TP (Thread Parent) it brings you back to the *exact* message that the message you're reading was answering. If you type TB (Thread Back) that will bring you back in reverse chronological order through the series of messages with that same Topic which can be confusing and also take a while if the message went back a month or so! TF (Thread Forward) brings you forward chronologically. You can continue hitting TP as many times as you like to follow *that* thread of the messages until you see what's going on. No matter how many times you hit TP, hitting L will get you right back to where you started. Date: Monday, December 30, 1991 8:13am Forum: TIPS From: Vibrantm Msg#: 704224 To: ** ALL ** Re: KEYGLYPH.TXT File: KEYGLYPH.TXT (Copy by Lythande, Copy by Lythande) This 12K file is a noble attempt (not my work; got it from another BBS) to enrich the vocabulary of emoticons. I left it unarchived so everyone could get their hands on it easily. Date: Thursday, November 28, 1991 4:04am Forum: TIPS From: Phoenix Msg#: 704225 To: ** ALL ** Re: SMILIES.TXT File: SMILIES.TXT (Copy by Lythande, Copy by Lythande) HERE IT IS! The definitive SMILIE Dictionary! This was passed on to me courtesy of Sarah Dye, of Elgin IL who found it on UNIX net. Enjoy! ___ ====}/)hoenix ==}/ Date: Saturday, November 30, 1991 5:57pm Forum: TIPS From: Phoenix Msg#: 704226 To: ** ALL ** Re: ABBREVS.TXT File: ABBREVS.TXT (Copy by Lythande, Copy by Lythande) This is supplemental to the Smilies Dictionary. Here are some common BBS abbreviations: Date: Saturday, June 1, 1996 7:02am Forum: TIPS From: Lythande Msg#: 705975 To: ** ALL ** Re: What are EXEMPT Messages? Every Forum has messages going back to 1990 that we liked enough to make *EXEMPT* from deletion due to time. If you like what's in a particular Forum, but haven't read it from the beginning, you might want to go to the Forum Menu and type RF for Read First and then read as many or few of those messages as you like. Though After Hours has been online continuously since 1986, we only have messages going back to October, 1990 when Ed installed the Galacticomm Software. The complete backup of one of the last versions of the "old" After Hours is at the Main Menu under "After Hours" Classic. Date: Tuesday, May 14, 1996 12:36pm Forum: TIPS From: Sysop Msg#: 710185 To: ** ALL ** Re: forums (Fw by Sysop) The main focus of After Hours is the message forums. This is where you will find most of the activity on this bbs. Getting around in the forums can be somewhat confusing for new users due to the large number of forums and the large number of messages in each forum. To get started, we recommend you check out the /HELLO forum. This forum is used mainly for new users to say hello to everyone. Generally, when a new user signs up, they write a message in /HELLO saying....uh, hi! When you press "M" from the main menu for the first time, you will automatically be placed in the /HELLO forum. You will see a menu that gives several choices. In the next few messages, we'll discuss the various options available from this menu. Date: Tuesday, May 14, 1996 12:57pm Forum: TIPS From: Sysop Msg#: 710186 To: ** ALL ** Re: Reading Forum Messages (Fw by Sysop) The first menu option at the message forum menu is: R Read Messages When you press R, you will then be asked if you want to read: New Messages the First Message the Last Message a specific message number If you have never read any messages in the forum, selecting either New or First will do the same thing. If you select one of these choices, you will start reading at the beginning of the forum. Many of the forums contain thousands of messages, so you could end up reading a ton of messages like this. We recommend that you start at the beginning of the forum, especially in /HELLO, since there are several important messages at the beginning. You will find many messages at the beginning of each forum that have been made *EXEMPT*, This means that the message will never be deleted. We do this when a message is especially interesting or important. Whenever you stop reading messages in a forum, Calvin will remember where you stopped. Next time you select Read Messages, you can just press enter for NEW messages, and Calvin will start you off right where you left off previously. Since there are thousands of messages in some forums, you may not want to read all of them. One way to get to the end of the forum is to select Last Message after choosing Read Messages. This will take you to the last (most recent) message in a forum. Once you read it, Calvin will update your account to show that you have read everything prior to that message in the forum. Next time you select Read Messages, then press Enter for NEW messages, you will only see what has been posted since you were there last. Date: Tuesday, May 14, 1996 1:13pm Forum: TIPS From: Sysop Msg#: 710187 To: ** ALL ** Re: Writing a message (Fw by Sysop) Writing a message is very easy. Just select "W" from the forum menu to begin writing a message. The first thing you will be asked is who to send the message to. You can address the message to a specific user by typing their name, or you can address it to **ALL** by just pressing Enter. Regardless of how you address the message, it will appear in public in the forum. After you have addressed the message, you will be asked to enter the topic of your message. Just type in the topic and press Enter. Once you have entered a topic, you will then be placed in the editor, where you can type your message. When you are done typing your message, you need to Save it. From the FULL SCREEN EDITOR, you save by pressing CONTROL G. From the LINE EDITOR, you save by type /S on a blank line, then press enter. From Worldgroup or RIPterm, just click the SAVE BUTTON. From there, you may be asked if you want to attach a file to your message. If you just press enter your message will be saved. Your message is now online for others to read and respond to. End of list! Select a Sysop option (R,W,F,T,S,M,E,A,O,X to exit or ? for menu):