Important Forum Features to Know and Use
#1) "New Posts" - Found in the top bar just below the title banner with Ron's picture. Selecting this will show all the new posts in all subforums since your last visit.
From there you can select the "Go to first new post" button (looks like this) for each thread that interests you, this will take you to the first unread post.
#2) Report post - The icon is found on the timestamp bar of each post (looks like this) This allows you to report posts the violate the forum guidelines.
A Note on "Infractions": If your post gets justifiably reported you may receive a private message notification of an "infraction" sent by a moderator. The infraction has no coloration to the severity of the violation, it is merely a system that allows the moderation team to know the issues has already been addressed to prevent multiple moderators addressing the same issue.
#3) Search for already submitted stories or videos - Search is important tool to prevent duplicate threads from being posted by searching for a news story or video before you start a new thread. Seaching isn't always 100% but by searching for vital key words in the body or the URL itself it is effective. A youtube example can be to search for the video identify such as IWfIhFhelm8. Search has a four character minimum.
#4) Forum collapse and expand buttons. (looks like this) These can be used to save screen space on the main forum index page (such as for this "Start Here" section).
#5) Include / exclude sub-forums in "New Posts" searches - You can tailor the behavior of a "New Post" search by creating your own custom bookmark to the forum to either exclude certain sub-forums or to only include certain sub-forums.
To exclude a subforum use the following format:
http://www.ronpaulforums.com/search.php?do=getnew&exclude=A,B,C
Where A, B and C are sub-forum numbers. An example to exclude posts in the "Hot Topics" is as follows:
http://www.ronpaulforums.com/search.php?do=getnew&exclude=54
An inclusive only search is similar, an example is as follows:
http://www.ronpaulforums.com/search.php?do=getnew&include=2,3
