6 Cool Things You Can Do on the Forums

2017, May 06

6 Cool Things You Can Do on the Forums

Did you know there are lots of cool things you can do with our forums? This only applies to registered users, but if you're a registered user, try this stuff out. It may enhance your experience.

Upload an Avatar

To upload an avatar, click your username at the top-right of the forum page, and in the drop-down menu, click Personal Details. In the middle of the page, the second editable field from the top lets you set your avatar image. It can be whatever you want, so long as it is legal and doesn't contain any depictions of minors in any capacity whatsoever. If you're skilled at photo manipulation, you could come up with something truly unique and fun. This avatar image doubles as your forum avatar and your chat avatar. You can change it at any time, but you might have to refresh chat to see the update.

Members Online Now

On the front page of the Forum, on the right side, there is a panel marked "Members Online Now." It shows a quick list of people who are online, as well as some totals.

First, it shows thumbnails of the avatar images of people you follow who are online. You can treat this like an indication of whether people you think are noteworthy or interesting are online, indicating that it's especially worthwhile to join chat.

After that, the forum shows as many usernames as it can fit, sorted by how recently active they were. This is the list of users in general, whether or not you follow them, who are logged in, followed by the totals: How many members are online, and how many guests are browsing. The latter are either users in the process of logging in or are unregistered guests just having a look.

If you click on "Members Online Now", you can see a full, detailed list that also describes each user's last known public activity.

Follow Other Users

If you see a funny, entertaining, or insightful post on the forum, you can click on a user's name, such as mine, to go to their profile. You can see a bigger version of their avatar, their recent status posts, and who they follow, but you can also follow them yourself. Toward the top right of the profile itself, there is a "Follow" link. Click that, and you become one of that person's followers. The forum will notify you of their public activity, and the chat will automatically add them to your friends list.

Credit Balance and History

On any page of the forum, if you are logged in, at the top right is a display showing you how many credits you have. The "Money" display is also a link that takes you to a detailed account of where the credits came from or went.

Currently, aside from tipping other users in the chat, credits can't be spent, but we do have plans in motion to create fun things to spend your chat credits on and ways to get more chat credits.

Private Messages

Have you ever wanted to send someone a message, but they were not online in chat at that time? If you're a registered user, and they are too, then you can send a private message through the forum for them to read at their leisure.

In any forum post, you can click a person's username for a popup box that has some options. Alongside the ability to visit their profile or ignore them, you have a "start a conversation" link. This takes you to a page where you can type a message to that user, or add more participants if you want to.

If you know someone's username, you can also click the "Inbox" link at the top right of any forum page, which takes you to all your past private messages ("conversations"), and has a button toward the top right to Start a New Conversation. From here, you can type in the names of as many participants as you want, or just one if you would prefer.

Official Announcements

Finally, one of the coolest things you can do with the forum is stay up to date with what's happening at FreeChatNow.com with our Official Announcements forum. We'll keep you updated on new developments with the Chat Changelog and answer your questions in the New Chat FAQ.