Subscribing by Email

It is possible to interact fully with the forum entirely via email. The range of options is considerable and need some explanation.

See also the FAQs at the bottom of this post.

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SUBSCRIPTIONS

Unlike the YahooGroups site which operates as a single mail list, on the forum there are many levels to which you can subscribe:

# Subscribe at the top "SeaHawk Forum" level (The link to the top left of the forum display shows the current level) and you get a choice of everything from the entire forum or just the initial post in new topics.

# Subscribe at the sub-forum level (e.g. "SeaHawk Forum › Cruise Logs") and you get a choice of everything from the chosen sub-forum or just the initial post in new topics in that sub-forum.
 
# Subscribe at the topic level and you get a choice of either receiving every new post within the topic or direct replies to the original post only.

To subscribe, simply open the [OPTIONS] menu at your chosen level and select the "Subscribe via email" option. You are then taken to a dialogue where you can select your subscription choices. These include the option to receive a daily digest of your subscribed mail.

NOTES:
Having subscribed at the forum or sub-forum level, it does not switch on subscription at a lower level and you'll still appear unsubscribed if you check the [Option] menu at the lower level. Nevertheless you will be receiving messages posted at that level, because of your higher level subscription.

The digest is a true digest, showing only a few lines from a post. It is not a full aggregation of the day's postings into a single message.

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REPLIES

Posting a reply is simple. Simply use the facility in your email program. However, it will be VERY ANNOYING to forum users if you leave the entire body of the original post appended to your message. The original text will be there for them to read already. Delete your copy from your reply.

NOTE: Replies are not possible from a mail digest.

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NEW TOPICS

Posting a new topic requires some preparation.

To prevent spam, forum addresses are unique for each user, so you can't get a forum address and send it to your friends. To find your personal address for new topics in any forum/sub-forum, go to that forum, click on the [Options] menu and then "Post by email...". Copy the address shown into your address book for future use.

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FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

Q: I have a GMail address and Nabble doesn't recognise me as a user.
A: If you have told Nabble that your address ends in gmail.com then you may have problems. Once your mail has passed through Google's servers it emerges with an @googlemail.com address. You then find that Nabble will not recognise you when you attempt to post a message. To cure this, click your Username link to the top right of the Forum display, choose "My Personal Settings" and then "Edit Personal Information" and change your email address to end with @googlemail.com at the page then displayed.

Q: If I subscribe to the forum will my mailbox be inundated with large image files?
A: No! Emails sent from Nabble contain no images, so they are compact and suitable for downloading on connections as slow as 9.6kbps. However, they do include an HTML part with links to any images contained in the original forum post. Depending on the options available in your email program, it should be possible for you to display only the plain text part or stop the links in the HTML part becoming "live" and thus keep download times for individual messages entirely acceptable, even on the slowest connection.

Q: I see the terms "Topics" and "Threads" used here. What is the difference?
A: "Topic" is Forum jargon for an original post, i.e. a new topic, and the replies made to it.
"Thread" is Mail List and Newsgroup jargon for the same thing.
So you may find either term used here depending on the method used by the author to read and post messages.