How to use the new St. Patrick website.

The new St. Patrick website is built using PHPBB in a message forum style layout. PHPBB message forums have been extremely popular in web site building since the year 1999 or so. Most of you reading this post have most likely been to and used a PHPBB website without even knowing it.

We went with this style of website to help make it easier for staff, students and parents at St. Patrick to make information available to the rest of the St. Patrick community. In the past the St. Patrick website was updated by one person, and teachers and students have not had an effective means of communication via the web outside of email. With the new St. Patrick website, all involved with St. Patrick can post information that they would like the rest of the St. Patrick community to view.

While it may seem daunting and confusing at first, the new St. Patrick website is strictly organized in a manner that will soon become familiar and make sense.

98% of the new website is done in PHPBB. Only the home page has been created in standard HTML code (normal basic web formatting). All links from the home page of the website take you to a message in the forums. The messages in the forums are the main content of the new site.

The first thing you need to know is that you have to register with the new site in order to gain access to specific pages you are authorized to view. After completing registration, you will be added to a specific user group (this process can take some time, so it's best to email rkeitchen@stpatrickkc.com to let him know you have registered and tell him your affiliation with St. Patrick so you can be added to the right group). User groups are broken down into various categories like Student, Staff, PTO etc... The user group that you belong to will determine exactly what you can see and do on the site. For example, a member of the Student or Parent user group will not have access to the Staff section of the site.

Once you have registered and have been placed into the right user group, you will be able to browse through all the pages and posts that you are authorized to view. For example, if you are currently on this page reading this post, and you want to move off of this post and look at something else, you can do that by scrolling to the top of this page and clicking on the Board Index link near the top left of the page. That will take you to the main board index. From there you can browse through the various message forums and posts in those forums. If you just want to get back to the home page of the site, click on the main St. Patrick logo at the very top left of the page.

In each separate forum we have what are called message threads. A thread begins when somebody creates a message and posts it to the forum. Usually in a thread, people can reply to the original post, or to other replies for that thread. When viewing the main body of a forum, you can also post a new article to which others may reply.

When posting a new thread, you have many options available to you. You can change the size of your font, the color, put it in bold, you can add smilies to your post and other images from the web.

To explain anything further would repeat what has already been posted in the FAQ. The FAQ for the new St. Patrick message forum appears near the top of every page. If you need to know how to use anything on the site, or how to configure a post to look exactly as you want it to, just take a look at the FAQ. If your question is not answered there, then email rkeitchen@stpatrickkc.com with your question and I will try to get it answered for you as soon as possible.