I see people struggling to find their way around this message board as many of you are new to using a message board so I am posting this to help those. Ok first to find your post..AFTER you log in if you look up towards the left of the screen you see a box that says "Browse Oprah.com"...next to that you see the word new, your stuff, History, Browse. To find a post you did...a 'new discussion' or a reply you did to someone else's post, click on history. It will bring up the most recent posts you looked at. You might have to select 'see entire history' to find what you are looking for. Lets say you read this post today..you will see the title of this listed on your history. The bolded titled of other posts you read AND replied too will be bolded like this: "How do find your posts on here, do post and check your private messages." If you just read this post but didn't reply to it, it won't be bolded. To post a message...a 'reply' to this post or any others you have to click on the 'reply' on this post...this is quite different then how most message boards have it laid out. Most have reply at the bottom of each post and you don't have to reply to a certain post..on here you do. You click reply and get a box to type in. When you are done at the very bottom you click on 'submit message'.

To get paragraphs when you type; if you look at thetop left hand side of this box you are typing in you will see 'rich text' 'plain text' and 'preview'. Click on "rich text'...then you are able to get paragraphs so what you type isn't all run together...clicking on the "B" will bold what you type..bold means making it blacker and bigger like this... The "I" stands for italics which cause the words to slant sideways like this.. To get it to stop bolding or slanting sideways click on it again before typing more. The "U" with the underline under it will underline what you type like this...

I don't mess with the X's with the tiny 2's by them...or that other stuff...lol. The basic stuff is good enough for me! The large "A" will change the color of your text (text means words). like this...

Clicking on the smilie face will make a little window come up where you can pick different types of smilie faces.. <--mad. <---- cool. <-- crying <--- happy and so forth. The 'abc' with the check mark by it is a spell checker...so you can have your spelling checked before submitting your post.

Oh almost forgot...to check your private messages (which means someone can send you a message that only you can see) click on "Your Stuff". A drop down window will come on with several selections...private messages is listed at the bottom.

When you click on someone's post (message on here like this one) its called a "post"...when people reply to it with several replies its called a 'thread'...image if you were putting a puzzle together and started with the top border...as you ADD to it, it gets bigger...its no longer just a boarder. The idea is the same with 'posts'...as they get added too they are more then just a 'post' but grow into a 'thread'...its just message board talk is all.

When you go to other message boards where people hang out for years you will see abbreviation...common ones are DW which means Dear Wife. Or DH...Dear Husband, DD means Dear Daughter and so forth (or they can mean darn husband, wife, daughter, son...lol...depending on what is being talked about)..they usually have a post in the introduction forum that lists what these things mean. A 'forums' on a message board is like this one is for stop smoking...there are other 'forums on Oprah's site dealing with other topics like her shows, books and so on. On a regular message board the forums are broken up in groups. If you are on a parenting message board for instance, you will see one area for parents of babies...one area for parents of toddlers and so forth...those are called forums. Anyway that is probably more then you wanted to know! lol. I am sure others can add some helpful tips on here and of course post questions. I hate to see anyone not getting the support they need simply because they can't figure out what to do on here. Hope this helps!

Julie