Examine The Message Page

You won't do much on this page of the guide except look at a message to learn what the different parts are. If you're comfortable with all parts of a message, just skip to the next page.

As you saw when you submitted your new message (at the end of the previous section), a message page has a lot more in it than just the text you enter. This section will help you understand everything else on the page.

If you don't have your new message open, do it now or just click here to open a message in a new window.

There's a column on the left side of the page, sitting on a light blue-green background. That's part of the design of the guidepractice site, and isn't part of the message itself. Ignore it for now (or if you're really interested you can go read more about it in the |Templates| portion of this guide).

Most everything else on the message page is related specifically to the message, and is divided into the following parts: header, navigation, message body, navigation (again), enclosures, and replies. We've labelled these sections for you on the guidepractice site, so you know exactly which sections we're talking about.

Header

There are six pieces to the message header, which are probably self-explanatory.

1. Subject is the subject of the message, as it was entered when the message was created.
2. Posted is the date (and possibly time) that the message was created, and also contains the name (and/or email address) of whoever created the message. If you've set up your time zone prefs, the date and time will be displayed in your local time. Otherwise, it displays it in Greenwich Mean Time
3. Last Modified is identical to Posted, except that it shows the info for the last time this message was edited, rather than when it was created.
4. In Response To shows you the number and subject of the message that this message is responding to. If it isn't a response to another message, then it will just say "top of thread", meaning that it's the first message in this discussion thread.
5. Reads is the number of times the message has been read in a browser (by anyone, not just you).
6. Label simply tells you how this message has been labelled. "None." means it hasn't been labelled. We'll look some more at labels, later.

Navigation

There are six pieces to the message's navigation bar, just above and below the message body.

1. <<PREVIOUS links to the message created just before this one. If you're looking at message 2, then it will link to message 1 (assuming message 1 hasn't been deleted).
2. NEXT>> links to the message created after this one. If you're looking at message 2, then it will link to message 3. If there are no messages after the current message, then it won't be a link.
3. TOP links to the first message in the current discussion thread. If this message isn't replying to another message, then it is the top of the thread and therefore TOP will not be a link.
4. THREAD links to a page listing every message in the current discussion thread.
5. EDIT links to the form for editing this message, but only if you have the right to edit it. You have the right to edit the message if: you are the site's administrator; you wrote the message; the message was assigned to you by a site administrator. If you don't have 'editing privileges' on this message, then EDIT will not be a link.
6. REPLY links to the form for replying to this message.

Message Body

The message body is the usually the most important part of the message, since it's the actual text of the message. Thankfully, it's also the simplest!

Whatever text you entered in the large text field in the __NewThread__ form appears in the Message Body.

Enclosures

This area lists any files that have been attached to the message, which work exactly like attachments to email messages.

We'll look at Enclosures a bit more later in the guide.

Replies

As mentioned earlier, Conversant messages can be written in reply to other messages, just like email. (That's why this is called a "discussion system", or "discussion forum".) Any messages that have been written in response to the current message will be listed here.

If there aren't any replies to the message you're looking at now, and you'd like to see how this works, then follow these steps:

1. Click on the Reply link
2. Enter some text in the message body text field.
3. Submit the message by clicking on Submit Changes, and wait for the new message page to be displayed.
4. Return to the original message (with two clicks on the Back button in your browser)
5. Click on Reload in your browser.

Your new message should now be listed in the REPLIES area of the message page.