When you enter the Forum page, you'll notice that it consists of four panels or "frames," each of which has a simple purpose.

TOP PANEL

The TOP panel is the Toolbar. It contains five green-and-white "buttons" and a pulldown menu.

The button at far left, "TICKER," activates an optional feature. Click it and a small popup window will appear on your screen. From time to time, if a new message has been posted in the WLDG, the ticker will let you know.

The second button, "REFRESH TOPICS," is used to update the list of current "threads" or message topics in the LEFT CENTER panel. If you've been in the forum for some time, it's a good idea to hit REFRESH periodically to see if other participants have started new topics since you last looked.

The center button, "POST MESSAGE," is the one to click if you want to start a new topic. When you click here, a message form will appear in the forum's BOTTOM panel, which you can fill in and submit if you want start a discussion on a new subject. If you click the box for "Please notify me by email when someone replies to my post," this will prompt the software to send you an automated note immediately upon a reply, so you'll know it's time to come back to the Forum and read the responses.

The "TASTING NOTES" button is reserved for future use. The "WHO ARE WE" button is for you to use if you'd like to enter a mini-biography to introduce yourself to the other WLDG participants.

The pulldown menu at the right makes it easy for you to navigate our Forums and The Wine Lovers' Page. Click the arrow at the right-hand side of the white rectangle, choose your target, and click the GO button to go there.

LEFT CENTER PANEL

The LEFT CENTER panel shows all the current topics of discussion in the entire forum. We call topics "threads" because the messages are "threaded" together, with each reply to a message attached to its predecessor and "threaded" in turn to its further replies so readers can follow an entire discussion from top to bottom before going on to the next.

The newest threads are listed first, with older threads following in the order they were posted. If you have not read any messages in a thread at all, it will show in RED. Threads that you have read will be in BLACK. Threads in which new messages have been posted since your last visit will bear the message *NEW*. To search for new entries, use your browser's FIND feature (usually Ctrl-F) to search down the list.

A small number in square brackets following each topic indicates how many replies have been posted in that thread. If the number is BLUE, this also indicates that there are one or more new replies since you last checked. If it is BLACK, there are no new replies in that thread.

If you click on any thread listed in this panel, two things will happen: First, the entire "tree" showing all individual messages in that thread will appear in the right center panel. Also, the text of the initial message in the thread will appear in the BOTTOM panel.

RIGHT CENTER PANEL

As mentioned above, this RIGHT CENTER panel shows all the messages posted in the specific thread you have chosen for reading. This panel works pretty much the same as the LEFT CENTER panel: Messages that you haven't read yet are RED; messages you've seen are BLACK.

Click the title of any message you'd like to read, and its text will appear in the BOTTOM panel, ready for reading and, if you wish, a reply. A new feature, "VIEW THE THREAD," displays the text of all messages in the thread in a separate popup window, especially handy if you'd like to save to disk or print out the full contents of the thread.

BOTTOM PANEL

The BOTTOM panel is where individual messages appear for reading.

If the author's name appears as a hotlink, he or she chose to include his E-mail address, and you can click on this link to send him a private E-mail message. Or, after reading the post, if you would like to respond with a public reply in the thread, click the "RESPOND TO THIS MESSAGE" button at the end of the post, and a reply box will appear for you to use. As with new posts, you may also tick the "Please notify me by email when someone replies to my post" if you want this automatic notification to occur.

If you want to create a new "headline," in other words change the TOPIC line to something more appropriate, simply delete the existing contents of that line and type in the new subject. Type your reply in the MESSAGE area, then click either POST MESSAGE to put the message online; or PREVIEW HTML if you'd like to examine your work before posting (this is a particularly good idea if you have included HTML coding in your reply); or RESET if you want to clear the message area and start over.

When you post a wine tasting note, please start your subject line with "TN:" (for "Tasting Note") and your comments will be automatically added to our searchable archive. If you have a technical question or bug report about the board software, preface your subject line with "TECH:" as this will quickly draw the attention of the board managers.

COOKIES: If you would like the software to save your name and E-mail address and other options so you don't have to fill them in every time you post a new message or a reply, click SET FORUM COOKIES in the TOOLBAR's pulldown menu and fill in the blanks as you'd like them. One caution, however: This procedure is not recommended if you're using Version 3 of Netscape, which has a known problem with these cookies. Netsape 4 (Communicator) and Internet Explorer work fine.

We hope this tutorial helps you fully enjoy the forum, but if you find anything in it that isn't clear or if you have further questions, please let us know!