Are you new to the world of blogs and forums? I hope these instructions will help you participate in this web site.

How To Post

You can post at two different locations: You can add a comment to an article posted on RiverTown News, our blog, or you can join in conversation with other readers in the Coffee Shop, our forum. Usually, the Coffee Shop is where you want to be. RiverTown News comments are more like letters to the editor – specific disagreements with an article, for example. The Coffee Shop is for chatting with other readers about the ideas in Grow With the Flow. Many articles in the News will have a link to a “table” at the Coffee Shop where readers can talk about the article.

You can also get to the Coffee Shop by clicking on RiverTown Coffee Shop at the top of this page. You’ll see a list of “Forums” – general topic areas. Click on one of interest. That will bring you to a page of “Topics.”

If you don’t fancy any of the topics there, you can click on “New Topic” and add one.

If a topic looks interesting, click on it. You may find only my starter message, or you may find a whole series of messages – conversations about the topic. They may be closely linked to each other, or they may be loosely gathered around the topic. At the end of them, you’ll come to a screen that has buttons to either “post reply” or open a “new topic.” (The buttons are also at the top, but it usually makes more sense to read what’s already been posted.)

“Post reply” and “new topic” work almost the same. The only difference between the two is that you need to give a new topic a title. Type your thoughts in the box. If you’re responding to someone, you may want to put their name at the start, as you would in a letter.

RiverTown News has a series of articles, “posts.” You’re reading one of them right now. Click on RiverTown News at the top of the page to see all the posts. The most recent is always at the top of the page; you can scroll down to earlier ones, and then go to previous pages with older and older articles. (Why comment on an older article? Because Google is still reading it, and will lead others to it.)

Every article has a “Comments” button at the end. Find an article where you have something to say, and click on that button. Scroll down through the article; if there are already comments, they now follow it. Read down through them. After the last, there’s a place for you to add yours. Fill in the name you want to use for the post, and your email if you want to, and then just type your message in the blank box. Preview your comment and post it.

Some Suggestions About Posts

• When your comment can tie into Grow With the Flow, great, but if it’s about kids, even if you aren’t sure about the direct tie to the book, go for it!
• Just go ahead and post – you won’t break anything. If something goes funny, drop me a note and I’ll either fix it or call Paul!
• The norm is for short, informal comments, but feel free to make a post of any length, in whatever style is comfortable. People often sign with a first name.
• Whether you’re looking ahead to having kids, commenting on friends’ experience, in the thick of child rearing now, or looking back with accumulated wisdom, you have a contribution to make.
• At first, just type bare-bones messages and post them. If you get into this, you can learn to do all sorts of fancy things with HTML commands, and with all those mysterious buttons on the screen.
• Positive or negative, support or disagreement, mellow or contentious – All that matters is that you post!
• Keep on coming back! And Thanks!