Forum Tips

The following guidelines should help to make the forum easier for everyone to use.

Thread Titles

Please use short, but meaningful, titles that explain the thread within a few keywords. For example, rather than making a thread title 'Where to go?' when you want ideas on travelling around Scotland to take photographs, please add a title like 'Places to Photograph in Scotland'

External Links

Wild About Britain allows occasional links to external websites, but we don't allow spam.

We're keen to help promote non-profit wildlife and environment websites around the UK, but we also want to control the type and amount of links posted on the site.
With a few conditions attached (see below) we allow quite a lot links on the site via our link pages, forum signatures, directory, forum profile, news etc., but we don't want links to start filling up the forum threads because:

Why has my forum thread title changed?

To help create a more usable site that's easier to navigate, and better for search engines to search and place us high in the rankings, please help by adding good titles to your threads.
Hopefully, the recent addition of the graphic on the 'new thread' and reply pages will help produce better titles...

Why Can't I Post External Images in the Forum?

Wild About Britain has a stunning gallery and a pretty good image library that lets members post images and include them in their forum posts. This is great because it means we don't have to use external websites to host images, which means:
No More Dead Links

What are Private Messages?

Registered members can send each other Private Messages. Private Messages (PMs) are similar to email, and enable members to have conversations without publishing the content in the main forum.
To send a private message to another member on the forum...

Click on the member's name to view their profile page
Clink on the 'Send Message' link to view a drop-down menu with messaging options
Choose 'Send a Private Message to...'

How Do I Start a New Thread?

In the forums, click on the title of the relevant category (British Birds, Insects and Invertebrates, UK Weather etc.), then click on the 'New Thread' button

Note: Please use a short but descriptive title for you thread, so that visitors know what the thread is about and will be able to easily find it again in the future.

How do I add images to forum posts?

For lots of really good reasons, images in the forum can only be linked from the Wild About Britain Gallery or the Wild About Britain Image Library and not external websites.
To add an image to your forum post:
1. Find the image in the Gallery or Image Library. and make sure you are viewing at full-size, rather than the small thumbnail image.
2. Right-click inside the 'Forum Code' box under the image and choose 'select all' from the drop-down menu - the code should turn blue:

Can I edit my own posts?

Members can edit their posts for 30 minutes after the initial posting, but they cannot delete their posts.
To edit your posts, click the button by the post you want to edit. After you have made your modifications, a note will appear, which notifies other users that you have edited your post. Administrators and moderators can also edit your messages.