TechRepublic Community FAQ

The same as it is anywhere else! But, seriously... A Question is a request for technical information, generally a fix. So, for example, if you were having trouble tracking down the cause of a particular error, you might post a Question.
A Discussion is a conversation between TechRepublic members. Topics of discussions range from the highly technical to more general trends and forecasting in the IT industry.
Before submitting a post on TechRepublic, take a moment to figure out which type you should choose.

From the Forums page, click Start a Discussion. Enter a title and the text of your post. Choose the Primary tags that relate to your topic and add any additional tags that may apply, being sure to put a comma between each. If you want to be notified by e-mail of any responses, click the box next to that option. Next, click Submit Post. Voila!

From the Forums page, click Ask a Question. Enter a title and the body of your question. (Be sure to include as much detail as possible to increase the likelihood of receiving a valid answer.) Choose the Primary tags that relate to your topic and add any additional tags that may apply, being sure to put a comma between each. If you want to be notified by e-mail of any answers posted, click the box next to that option. Next, click Submit Post.
Be sure to rate any good answers as "Helpful!" Your fellow members will appreciate it.

You may not delete a post. You may edit a post. If you've accidentally created a duplicate, click on the post and use the "Edit Post" button to change the duplicate to read "duplicate."

Click on the answer. Click the Mark "Helpful" button displayed below the post. You may mark more than one answer as "Helpful."

Click on the post you'd like to respond to. Click "Post a Reply." Type a title and body. Check the appropriate box if you'd like to get thread updates via e-mail. Click Submit Post.

From any point in the thread, click the "Subscribe to this Thread" link beneath "Previous | Next."

To unsubscribe, you can click the "Unsubscribe" link located below any post in the thread. You may also unsubscribe by going to My Forum Posts, filter by Discussions or Questions subscribed to and click the checkboxes of the threads you'd like to Unsubscribe from, then click "Unsubscribe" at the bottom of the list.

Click on your member name to get to your profile. Click "Edit profile" on the right just under the My Workspace logo. Make any changes you'd like. Click the Update My Profile button at the bottom of the page.

A contact is a TechRepublic member whose posts you'd like to track. To create a contact, click on the member's username to get to their profile. Click the "Add to my Contacts" link below the TechRepublic People logo. Now all their posts will show up under the "Posts from my Contacts" tab on the main Forums page.
To see a list of all your Contacts, go to My Workspace and click the My Contacts tab.

To delete a Contact, simply click the "remove" link next to their avatar on your Contacts page. You may also click on the contact's username to get to their profile. Once there, click the "Remove as Contact" link to the right of their avatar. Their posts will no longer show up under Posts from my Contacts.

You can find out who's interested in following your posts by viewing the Who Counts Me as a Contact? section located below your list of Contacts. To get there, go to My Workspace and click the My Contacts tab.
There is no way for you to delete or block yourself from another member's contact list. However, marking you as a Contact provides them no power beyond more easily viewing the items you post publicly on the site.

If you find a TechRepublic member that's providing great information or interesting commentary, you may wish to make them a Contact so you can track their site activity. Simply click their member name to get to their profile. Then, click "Add to my Contacts" to the right of their avatar. Voila! You've made them a contact. Now all of their posts will show up under the "Posts from my Contact" tab on the Forums page.

You will know immediately if you're acting inappropriately in the TechRepublic Forums because other members will let you know. However, if you behave professionally--or at least politely--you should be fine. We're all adults here, so let's act accordingly.
If you discover that someone is behaving inappropriately in the forums, post a message onsite about the behavior or send an e-mail via the "Send us your Feedback" link at the bottom of nearly every page. Please include a link to the offending post and the issue you have with it.

If you contributed or subscribed to the post, you can find it listed under the "My Forum Posts" link located above your avatar on the right of all Forums pages. Your listing of Forum posts can be filtered by clicking the options in the upper right hand corner: Discussions Posted To; Discussions Started; Discussions Subscribed To; Questions Posted To; Questions Started; and Questions Subscribed To.
If you find a Discussion or Question that you're interested in revisiting but you do not post to, it's best to subscribe to the discussion so it will show up in your My Forum Posts list. You'll also receive updates via e-mail when new posts are added.

To find the latest forum posts, click the Forums link, at the top of the home page, and check the Discussions tab. You may choose to show All Discussions, just the Hot Discussions, or only the New Discussions by using the filters located under the tab. You may find Questions in the same manner under the Questions tab.
If you're looking for items related to a specific topic, you may use tags (linked keywords). You can find tags everywhere! Tags related to each post are listed below its title. You may also browse by tag under the Browse Tab on the Forums page.

While our forums do allow a few HTML tags, you'll always have success using these custom tags for basic text features like bold, italic, underline, and verbatim text:

• Bold use [b] Bold [/b]
• Italic use [i] Italic [/i]
• Underline use [u] Underline [/u]
• Verbatim use [pre] Verbatim [/pre]

The verbatim text custom tags are equivalent to the "pre" tag in HTML. This tag is intended for programming code and other texts that are best displayed "as is" without being modified to conform to page style. For example, this XML code snippet can now be included in a discussion post without losing the indents and other formatting:

<?xml version='1.0'?>
<object colour="red" type="polygon">
   <height units="cm">23</height>
   <width units="cm">5</width>
</object>

Sometimes you need a little more than mere text to express your point with the passion it demands. For that reason, we have created a system of emoticons. But you'll find more than just happy faces in our emoticon converter. In fact, type ]:) in a forum post and you'll see what we mean. Here are the current emoticons we have implemented.

Emotion	ASCII	Image
Happy	:) or :-)
Sad	:( or :-(
Grin	:D
Love	:x
Mischief	;\
Cool	B-)
Devil	]:)
Silly	:p
Angry	X-(
Laugh	:^O
Wink	;) or ;-)
Blush	:8}
Cry	:_|
Confused	?:|
Shocked	:O
Plain	:|

You can use the search feature to find posts on a particular topic. Our search hasn't been great for quite some time, but we're working hard to improve it here at TR HQ. We're as eager as you to provide a much better experience in this arena, trust me!

TechRepublic Pro is a premium online resource that provides access to extensive, up-to-date, original IT content and resources. Find out more about the benefits of subscribing to TechRepublic Pro here.

Your Workspace has four key components: Updates, Suggestions, Links, and Projects.

Updates are a part of your Workspace and provide you with links to items personal to you. For example, if you've started or subscribed to a thread, Updates will provide a glimpse at the number of posts added within the last 4-hour period.

Suggestions are a part of your Workspace and provide a mix of TechRepublic content collected for you based on the keywords (tags) in your TechRepublic Profile.

Links are a part of Workspace and house your collected favorites. You can save TechRepublic content to your Links by using the Save button. You may also save Links from anywhere around the Web by using the Add to TR Links browser shortcut located under the Tools heading on the Links page. You may tag your saved links to help you organize and find them again.

Projects are a part of your Workspace and provide a narrowly focused set of content based on tags you specify. For example, if you would like suggested content that relates only to VPN and security, rather than your entire list of Profile interests, set it up as a Project and view only those results.

Some of our tags are added by members and some are automatically generated. In either case, a piece of content may be tagged with a person's name because it has to do with them; for example, Bill Gates. George Ou's blog post discussions are similarly tagged.

You can always post your thoughts as a discussion using the Feedback category. You may also send your thoughts via the "Send us your Feedback" link that appears at the bottom of nearly every page. Just click the "Submit a Question" tab and fill in the blanks.

The "recommended" list is generated based on the popularity of our content. We're still tinkering with the logic, so please be patient while we adjust the variables to find the right pace for the list to refresh.

TechPoints, as a virtual currency for our Forums, were discontinued and replaced with the concept of "Helpful answers," in order to level the playing field for Forum participants. Under the TechPoints system, Member A could have 1,000 points for answering one 1,000 point question and Member B could have 1,000 TechPoints answering one thousand 1 point questions. We wanted to recognize members for their overall number of helpful contributions, so we counted helpful answers. So in the aforementioned example, Member A will now have a score of 1 while Member B will have a score of 1,000.

This scoring system is much more informative for members who are trying to determine the value of an answer received or when looking for a peer to help with a technical question. Anyone who had TechPoints for answering questions prior to this switch was credited for each of their past helpful answers.

You can verify your Helpful answers score by visiting your Profile page.

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