Registering an account
First you will need to create an account by using the "sign in" button on the top right of the website and then picking "Create One" on the bottom left corner of the window that will appear.
This will bring you to the account creation page. You will need to input a valid email, username, and password. You can also optionally link to a website, which will be shown on your profile. Note: you must answer the security question (hint - it's a game engine name :wink: )
With the account created, you should be signed in automatically. If you are not signed in, just hit the "sign in" button and enter in your username and password. Before you make your first post you'll want to confirm your email or the post will go into moderation. You should receive an email from godotdevelopersforum@RandomMomentania.com, which is the forum email. Please check your spam folder as well, as sometimes the email gets misidentified as spam.
How to create a topic
Once you have an account, you can make a new topic by either clicking the "New Discussion" button on the top right of the window, or by clicking the drop down arrow right next to "New Discussion" and selecting either "New Discussion" or "Ask a question".
On the forums, we have two types of topics: Discussions and Questions. Functionally they are very similar, but questions can have replies marked as an answer, making it easier for people with similar problems/questions to find the solution quickly. In general, if you are posting something that can have a solution, you should pick Question or if you simply want to discuss something then you'll probably want to make a Discussion.
If you ever accidentally choose the wrong one, like make a discussion instead of a question - don't panic or re-post! Just let the forum staff know using the built-in flag system (click flag on the topic/post), through private message with one of the forum staff, or simply by posting and asking for a change.
Once you click the button for either a discussion or question, you will be brought to the topic creation page.
Topic Creation Page
Each topic, whether it's a discussion or a question, needs a title and a body. The title is a general summary of what you want to post, while the body is the content of the post itself. In general, try to choose short, descriptive titles to help users find and understand your topic quickly.
For the body, you can input whatever you feel is relevant to the topic, while still adhering to forum rules. See more below in the "Posting Itself" section.
Categories
When you post either a discussion or a question, you will need to choose what category it goes into. Please take a look through the categories and their descriptions to tell where your post may need to go. Most of the categories are pretty broad and generic, so please choose which you think works best for your topic.
How you select the category for your topic depends on where in the forums you are:
If you are not in a specific category already, like you are in the "recent discussions" or "categories" page, then there will be a drop down called "Categories" where you can select the category where you want your post to be.
If you are in a specific category, like reading a discussion or question, then there will not be a drop down and your post will go into the same category as the one you were in. You can check which category your post will go to by looking at the breadcrumbs found towards the top in the format of Home / Category Name / New Discussion or New Question.
Good categorization helps users find topics quickly and efficiently, as well as makes it easier for others in the future to find topics. Please read through the category descriptions and try to place your topics in categories that you think makes sense based on the category title and description.
For example, if you are posting to show what you have made then you probably want to use the "Projects" category. If you are posting to talk about an aspect of game design, then "General Chat" is probably where you want to post. Finally, if you are having issues with audio in your game, asking a question in the "Audio" category is appropriate.
Just like with discussion vs. question, if you accidentally post a topic in the wrong category, do not worry or re-post! Just let one of us on forum staff know and we'll move it to the correct spot.
Tags
Along with categories, the forums also supports tags. Tags are for narrowing in on the specifics of what you're topic involves, making it easier for users to tell more about the specifics at a glance. You can see all the tags by clicking "Show popular tags" right under the "tags" section in the topic creation page.
For example, if you are releasing a game on Windows, Mac, and it's free, then you would want to add the Windows, OSX, Free and Released tags. That way, people can look at the tags and learn more about it without needing to click into the topic. You can click a tag to see all topics with that same tag.
Formatting the message
In the body you can put any text you want, within reason. The forum uses Markdown to render text to HTML, so you will want to format your text in Markdown for the best results.
The editor itself has some helpful buttons on the top row:
The first five buttons on the top row of the post editor are: Bold, Italic, Strike-through, numbered list and bullet list respectfully
The ¶ drop down presents additional formatting options. These options will be inserted wherever the text caret is within body of the text editor or to all lines highlighted therein
The smile button shows a subset of the emoji you can add into your posts, more can be discovered by typing a : symbol followed by twitter emoji name and another : to complete the tag
The chain button is for inserting a URL link
The file button is for uploading a file. While files can be uploaded to the forums directly, it is preferred to use an external hosting website (Google Docs, Dropbox, Box, etc) to keep bandwidth on the forums low
The picture button is for uploading an image to the forums and inserting it into your post
There are also some buttons on the bottom right:
The "Preview" button will render your text to give you an idea on how the Markdown will be rendered once posted
The "Save draft" button will keep a draft of whatever is written in the editor for later
The "Add Images" button will open a dialog box that will allow you to upload images to Imgur easily and will insert it into your post
The "Post" button will commit the comment/discussion/question to the forums
* The "Cancel" button will return you to the previous page without committing anything
The order of these buttons varies slightly depending on if you are posting a discussion/question or posting a comment, but the functionality is the same.
There is also some embedding support on the forums. Links to GitHub Gists, YouTube videos, Twitter tweets, Imgur images/videos, and SoundCloud urls are all supported. You can just post a URL link to one of these resources on a new line and it should embed itself automatically.
For manually formatting, below is a helpful guide for the Markdown on the forums that you can refer to. When posting feel free to include any information you think is relevant or contributes to the discussion. Please remember when posting to keep forum rules in mind, as all posts must adhere to forum rules!
If you have more questions you are welcome to create a topic in the forum chat category. Thanks for reading and happy posting!
