We've gotten quite a few new international members recently, so I thought a recap of tips and some of the ECN board's features might not go amiss.

First, don't be afraid to look back over earlier threads and add comments. It's always good to bring up certain topics again and get some fresh ideas. If you look up toward the top right of the page when displaying the list of meesages in any forum, you'll see a bar from which you can select how far back you want to go.

If you change this to "Show all topics" you'll then see many pages worth of topics to browse. You can set the software to always show older topics on every visit to ECN by clicking on the Preferences link and setting the required time as your default (your browser must have cookies enabled for this to work).

If you post a message and then realize you made a mistake (or two, or three ), you can edit it by clicking on the icon at the top of your message.

Don't forget that you can also see another member's profile by clicking on the icon on one of his posts.

You can include UBB code in your message to emphasize text, e.g. bold, italic.

If you want to include a link to another webpage, then typing the URL with a space either side of it will cause the software to automatically insert this as a hyperlink in your post. For example: www.iee.org.uk

You can also include a link with your opwn descriptive text:

This site is interesting if you have the time!

If you want to include an image in your post, you can also do that with the appropriate tags.

Read the Guide to UBB Code for more details on these features.

Note that you can also see how somebody else did something by clicking on the icon on his message. (Only moderators can edit somebody else's post, but anyone can bring up the edit screen to see what exactly was typed.)

If you have photos you want to share, but don't have them already on your own webspace, then you're welcome to e-mail them to any of the moderators and we'll put them on ECN's server for you, and either post them with your message or just let you have the URLs so that you can include the links in your own post.

You can e-mail moderators (or any other member who has included his e-mail address) by clicking on the icon at the top of a message.

And just for the record for anyone who hasn't yet realized, the ECN server is located in Long Island, New York, which also happens to be the home of our webmaster Bill Addiss.

Bumped to the top of list for the benefit of our latest members.

While we're at it, if anyone wants to add a little background information on themselves -- electrical or other interests -- feel free to do so here.