Using the NSTA Bulletin Board

To Register:

    1.      The provider of our website insists that all of our forum users set their browsers to accept cookies.  These are markers that identify the computer IP addresses of people who register to use our forum.  Using cookies, we can effectively block people from posting inappropriate materials.  (This whole new registration system is due to a group in Italy that has persisted in posting porn on our forum despite all our efforts to block them.  Requiring people to register and to have their computers set to accept cookies is the only way we can ensure blocking such people from posting inappropriate messages on our forum.)  Before you can register to use the site, then, you may need to reset your browser settings to a lower security setting.  We hate asking you to do this, but the forum provider is giving us no choice—either people register to use the forum and give us a way to know who they are by allowing cookies, or they’ll shut down our forum permanently.  Therefore, if you’d like to use the NSTA forum, before registering, please change your browser settings so that your browser will “accept all cookies.” Click on “Message Forum”

    2.      Click on “Register”

    3.      Remembering that capital letters make a difference, enter:

        a.       A user name

        b.      Your e-mail address

        c.       A password

        d.      Enter the password again to verify that it was typed as you intended

    4.      Scroll down to the bottom of the page.

    5.      Click on “I Agree”

    6.      Click on “Register”

Please note: The system appears to allow only one person from any given e-mail address to register. If you share an e-mail address with someone who also participates in the forum, you may need to share a screen name and password.  If you have a problem registering, e-mail the NSTA staff at NSTAmail@aol.com.  Tell us the screen name you’re trying to register under and we’ll see if we can figure out what’s going wrong.

To Log On:  Remembering that capital letters matter:

    1.      Enter your user name

    2.      Enter your password

    3.      Click on “Login”

To Read Messages:

    1.      Hold your cursor over the title of the subject you’d like to read. (Nothing happens if you click on the icons for a folder or notepad to the left of the title.)

    2.      Single click on the title to open the topic

    3.      Scroll down to read the topic

To Reply to a Message:

    1.      Click on the “Reply” icon and follow the instructions

To Begin a New Topic:  You can only do this from inside the “general discussion” folder. 

    1.      Click on “General Discussion” to open the folder

    2.      You should now see an icon with the title “Start New Topic.”  Click on that and follow the instructions.

TIPS:

1. If you are new to the message board, please understand that this is different from a chat room. Chat rooms allow for real time correspondence between the participants who are online at the same time. The dialogue in chat rooms is not saved and can only be seen by those currently in the chat room itself. Once a person leaves a chat room, they cannot go back and see what others discussed while they were gone.  Our forum is different--it's like an interactive bulletin board. Yo can post a message for all to see. Anyone interested in replying can do so at any time. Although message boards lack the instantaneous responses that chat rooms allow, they have the advantage of letting users discuss issues with one another at their own time and leisure, and responses are lined up in an orderly manner, making it easier to follow a specific topic than generally happens in chat rooms.  

2. When naming your message, be as detailed as possible in describing your post. If you’re starting a thread about hints for Botox usage, a good subject line would be “Botox Hints”, instead of the more vague “Botox” subject line.