New User Features

[hotcouponmama]

I am going to start this thread for an explanation of new user features. We'll later convert this into the FAQ.

USER CP BLOCK


Your UserCP you'll notice is now on the right side. If you click UserCP it takes you to the page that you used to get when you clicked the UserCP when it was in the left hand corner.

In the new Block UserCP, you can get to your private messages and notifications if you have them. You can check New Posts. You can see your reputation power (which is how many 'points' you give when you leave reputation for someone), and you can Log out. You can click on your Avatar in the UserCP block and it takes you to the page where you edit your avatar.

You can also see your private mail capacity.

[hotcouponmama]

Buddy List

If you have friends here on the site and you are have all opted into each other's friendship requests, you can use the buddy list to see which oif your friends are online.

If you click on "buddy list" in the box, it will open you to a page where all your buddies appear. But then you can also see which of your buddies are online and PM them directly from the buddy list instead of going through the PM systems and initiating a PM that way.

[hotcouponmama]

Popular Tags

If you click on the Popular Tag box, you'll get a page where you can search the tags on the site. Tags are just another way to search for the information you're looking for. The "tag cloud" on the right side has the top tags that our members have referenced. They are all hyperlinked so you can click on them and see the most recent posts where those words have been tagged.

[hotcouponmama]

Who's Chatting

That's pretty self-explanatory - that box lets you know whose in the chat room.

[hotcouponmama]

Board Stats

The board stats box is simply the information that used to be at the bottom of the page before in the old design.

Calendar Box

The calendar box is a public calendar. At this time, there is no private calendar for users (although that will be cool and something to work towards).

Today's Birthdays

Shows the birthdays of anyone who has a birthday today.


So that's all the right side user boxes.

I'll keep adding about other new user features.

[hotcouponmama]

Top Orange Navigation Bar

Online Coupon Codes links to Retailmenot.com - our online coupon code partner.

The coupon database, although it's still in Coupon Resources, also got an additional link in the orange menu bar so you can access it quickly.

New posts is new posts.


The drop-down search on the orange menu bar lets you seach through tags and blogs in addition to searching the site. (Note the search bar at the top of the page is for quick searches).


The quick links takes you to all the social networking stuff, in addition to the "who's online", flash chat, and today's posts.

Then you can logout from the menu bar or from your User CP box.

[hotcouponmama]

The gray menu tabs at the top right of your screen do exactly what they say they are. Blogs gets you to blogs.
Forums will pull you to the forum home page.
The newsletter tab lets you sign up for the Hot Flash newsletters.
Coupon Resources has what the old coupon resource tab had before including the Coupon generator, the database, the printable pages, etc.
FAQ gets you to the newly updated FAQ pages.

[hotcouponmama]

At the bottom of each and every page there are links to what we thought was the most important topics for new people coming to the site (and old timers who need refresher courses).

You'll find the following:

A link to helpful newbie links
How to join the trader group
Forum rules
Abbreviations and couponing lingo
How to use the coupon database
See who the mods are for all the forums
And the HCW terms of service.

There's also links to the member list, the calendar, the FAQ and more. Plus you can read about HCW, and join the newsletter.

So I think that's about it for what some of the new links are.

I haven't even figured out what all the social networking stuff is yet myself, but we'll be creating a FAQ for that here soon.

[hotcouponmama]

The HCW logos at the top and bottom of the page are clickable links - they bring you back to the forum home page.

[JANE4girls]

awesome!

[YouPdWhat]

Thanks for such a detailed explanation it should be very helpful to everyone trying to navigate the site.

[timbectwo]

Woo hooooooooooo!!!! Sweet!!!!!!! I am lovin' it!!!! Thanks for this thread to help us understand all the fun new goodies!!!!! :BigHand: