Getting Started with the NCA Forum

Our discussion forum is reserved for NCA members who have registered to participate in the forum. If you're not an NCA member, membership information can be found Here. If you're alreay a member but haven't registered for the discussion forum, Click Here.

The NCA Carousel Discussion Forum has many features that are often overwhelming to new users. This short introduction is intended to present a set of survival level instructions to help new users get started in our forum.

Logging In for the First Time

You can enter our forum from the Enter Our Forum link on our forum menu or by clicking Here. The first time that you access the forum, you will be required to enter your username and password.

Enter your username and password and click the Login button. Your username and password are case sensitive, so be sure to use the same upper and lower case letters that were sent to you when you registered.

Your user name and password will be remembered on your computer, so the next time you access our forum from the same computer, you won't have to re-enter these values.

Reading Messages

After you've successfully logged in, you'll see a forum named NCA Member Forum, and a category named General Discussion. (NCA board members will see additional forums on this display.) Click on General Discussion and you'll see the subjects (also called topics) that are available in the General Discussion category.

From this point, click on a subject that you'd like to read, and you'll be presented with the messages that have been posted in the chosen subject. Messages will be displayed 15 to a page. When more than 15 messages are in a subject, a link such as Pages 1 2 3 will show up above the first message and below the last message. You can click on a page number to jump to another page of messages in the same subject.

Posting New Messages

When messages are displayed, a series of buttons will be displayed before the first message and after the last message. The button is used to add a message to the displayed subject.

When you click the button, a screen will be presented with a text area for you to enter your message. You can compose a message by typing it into the text area, or you can copy text from another document on your computer and paste it into the text area.

While entering your message, the most recent 15 messages will be displayed under the text entry area. These can be referenced by scrolling down in the window while you are entering your new message.

To see a preview of your message, click on the Live Preview link, which is to the left and above the text entry area.

Turning on Email Notification

Our forum includes a feature that will send you email notification whenever new messages are posted. Look for the button to turn this feature on and off. This is a very useful feature for keeping you in touch with the activity on our forum.

Notification can be activated in a number of places, but for our purposes it works best if you click the notification button after you've selected the General Discussion message board. This will allow you to turn notification on and off for all new messages posted in the General Discussion board. If you'd prefer to get notification for only certain topics, use the notification button that's displayed when you're viewing the topic for which you'd like to receive notification.

Changing Your Password

The password that is sent to you should be changed to a password of your own choosing. To do so, click on the button after logging in to the forum. Click on the button, and you'll be prompted to enter your current password before continuing.

After entering your current password, enter your new password in the Choose New Password field, enter it again in the Verify New Password field, and press the Change Profile button.

If you forget your password, click the button from the login screen. Enter your username or email address in the next screen and press Send. You'll receive an email message that will tell you how to reset your password.

Additional Features

Our forum uses a software package called Yet Another Bulletin Board, often abbreviated to YaBB. YaBB provides a help button on every screen in our forum. You can get to the help button even if you're not logged in. The help screen that is presented when this button is clicked provides help on a wide variety of the most common YaBB topics.