The new UGS looks and functions very differently from most other online forums. The purpose of this guide is to explain how the new UGS works, why it was designed like such and how you can best use this site to participate in UGS's community.
Thread View
Most bulletin board websites hide conversations behind a screenful of forums and subforums. Not so with Undergroundsquare. The new UGS is built around discussion threads, so you'll be able to participate right from the front page. Log in to immediately post new topics, or browse through existing discussions before signing up to reply.
Posting A New Topic
The new UGS tries as much as possible to make posting new topics a breeze. It does this by keeping the post-topic screen simple, and by placing these screens at the most relevant places. When posting a topic, remember to add tags. Tags help users find your topic through UGS's robust search function, especially when the topic is later pushed down by newer ones.
Constantly Create New Topics
In the old UGS, most members stuck to the same threads and refused to create new ones. This didn't work out, because there are only so many posts a topic can take before it is exhausted. The new UGS places an emphasis on constantly creating new topics. Have a question? Post a new thread! Want to show us your photos of the last gathering? Start a new discussion! Keep threads tight and focused on a single topic at least 90% of the time. Most importantly - don't be afraid to let old threads die. Old threads will be pushed down by newer ones, but you can still find them by searching for it, anytime you wish to look back to answers/links you got from those discussions.
Changing Your Display Picture
The new UGS uses Gravatar, a 3rd party avatar service, to host and display your profile pictures. Gravatar is excellent for DP creation, because they're able to crop and resize however large a picture you upload to them. Using Gravatar also enables UGS to run quicker, because Gravatar-hosted images are piped straight from their servers. To change your UGS display picture, sign into Gravatar with the email you used when you registered for UGS, upload a picture, and wait a bit for your changes to show up.
Earning And Giving Reputation Points
You may notice little green bars and plus icons under every member's display picture. These are reputation points. Members earn 1 reputation point by posting a new reply, and 2 points when they post a new topic. You can also reward other members with your points, like when they've helped you out or said something particularly funny in a thread you like. These points don't do much, at the moment, but may be used to purchase badges/user features in upcoming site upgrades.
Subscribing to UGS
UGS produces several fully-fledged RSS feeds to allow you to keep track of the latest forum discussions. To subscribe, visit this page and add it to your feedreader of choice. Each topic also has a feed attached - if you want to follow a specific topic, for instance - subscribe to it by clicking on the feed icon in the sidebar on your right, and adding that page to your feedreader.
Using Your Favourites
Favourites are another way of following the topics you love. Add your most loved topics to your favourites by clicking on the 'Add this topic to your favourites' option in the sidebar when viewing a thread. Then go to your profile to view the latest updates to those favourited topics. UGS also allows you to subscribe to your favourites, so you can have the latest updates on those topics delivered straight to your feedreader/browser.
Posting Pictures In The Forum
The new UGS has a photography section, so it's likely that you'll want to post up pictures that you've taken and share them with us (we've also got a few people who're into photography ... most of them DSLR geeks =.=). UGS accepts html, so copying and pasting directly from Flickr, for instance, should work perfectly well. Remember, though: the optimal width for pictures in UGS is 500 pixels.
Posting Videos In The Forum
The new UGS allows you to embed videos directly in your forum posts. How you do this is a little different, however: you'll have to insert JUST the url of the video-page concerned. UGS will then turn your link into a video for display in the forum. For example: typing http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g_txF7iETX0 will display the following video:
Displaying Twitter
If you have a Twitter account, the new UGS allows you to display your latest tweets in your profile page. Sign up for a Twitter account, then enter your username in your edit profile page.
Incremental Upgrades
UGS does not go by site revisions - new features and incremental upgrades happen quietly, and all year round. So expect this user guide to change over time, and look out for cool little buttons that pop up without any fanfare all over the forum. When one such feature is done, expect an announcement on the front page. In the meantime, however, enjoy your time here in UGS.
I hope you found this guide useful.