User Guide

User Guide

Everything a forum member (or guest) can do on an eveBB board. Board administrators can switch most of these features on or off, so a given board may not show everything described here.

Registering

Click Register in the board menu. Depending on the board's settings you may see:

• Forum rules — read them and click Agree to continue.
• A CAPTCHA — type the 5 characters from the image (letters and digits; case doesn't matter; ambiguous characters like 0/O and 1/I are never used). The image expires after 10 minutes — reload the page if you take longer.
• Profile details — some boards require your real name, date of birth (you must be at least 13), and country at registration.

Your username must be 2–25 characters and may not look like an IP address or contain BBCode. Passwords must be at least 9 characters.

Two registration modes exist:

• Instant — you choose your own password and are logged in immediately.
• Email verification — you enter your email twice, and the board emails you a generated password. You're placed in an "unverified" state until your first login, and can change the password afterwards in your profile. If the email doesn't arrive, check your spam folder.

Only one registration per IP address is accepted per hour.

Logging in and out

Use Login in the board menu. Ticking Remember me keeps you logged in for 14 days; otherwise the session ends after the board's idle timeout.

Boards protect accounts with a login throttle: after too many failed attempts from your IP (5 by default) you're locked out for a while (15 minutes by default) — the message tells you how long to wait.

Forgotten your password? Click the Forgotten password link on the login page and enter your email address. You'll get an email with a new password and an activation link — the new password only takes effect when you click the link, so an unrequested email can be safely ignored. Only one such email is sent per hour per account.

Reading the board

• The index lists categories and forums, with unread indicators.
• Inside a forum, topics are listed with reply/view counts and the last post. Sticky topics stay at the top. A New posts link appears on topics with posts you haven't read — it jumps straight to the first unread post. A dot (●) in front of a topic means you've posted in it.
• Inside a topic, use the pagination links, or the quick-jump dropdown (if enabled) to switch forums.
• Mark forum read / Mark all topics as read links let you clear unread state per forum or board-wide.

Posting

Click Post new topic in a forum, or Post reply (or use the quick-reply box at the bottom) in a topic. You can Preview before submitting. Subjects are limited to 70 characters. Boards enforce a short flood interval between posts.

While writing you can tick:

• Hide smilies — don't turn :) and friends into images in this post.
• Subscribe to this topic — get an email when someone replies.

If your group allows it, you can edit or delete your own posts. Deleting the first post of a topic deletes the whole topic. Edited posts get an "edited by" stamp (moderators can edit silently).

Some boards allow guest posting — you'll be asked for a name and (sometimes) an email address.

The visual editor

On most boards the message box is a visual (WYSIWYG) editor with a toolbar: bold, italic, underline, strikethrough, colour, lists, links, images, email links, quote, code, smilies. Behind the scenes it reads and writes ordinary BBCode — click the Source button (</>) to edit the BBCode directly. If the editor doesn't load, the plain text box works as always.

BBCode reference

BBCode may be switched off board-wide; your board's help page (linked from the "BBCode" / "Smilies" legend next to the posting form) always reflects its exact configuration.

Code	Result
[b]text[/b]	bold
[i]text[/i]	italic
[u]text[/u]	underline
[s]text[/s]	strike-through
[del]text[/del], [ins]text[/ins], [em]text[/em]	deleted / inserted / emphasized
[color=red]text[/color] (also [colour=...])	coloured text (CSS colour name or #RGB/#RRGGBB)
[h]Heading[/h]	a heading line
[url]https://example.com[/url], [url=https://example.com]label[/url]	link
[email]a@b.c[/email], [email=a@b.c]label[/email]	email link
[img]https://example.com/pic.png[/img], [img=alt text]...[/img]	inline image (if the board allows it)
[quote]text[/quote], [quote=Alice]text[/quote]	quote box, optionally attributed
[code]...[/code]	code box (contents not parsed)
[c]...[/c]	inline code
[list] [*]item[/*] [/list]	bullet list; [list=1] numbered, [list=a] alphabetical
[topic=ID]label[/topic], [post=ID]..., [forum=ID]..., [user=ID]...	internal links to a topic / post / forum / profile by number

Bare URLs are auto-linked on most boards. Posting links at all requires the "post links" group permission.

Smilies

:) =) :| :( :D :o ;) :/ :P :lol: :mad: :rolleyes: :cool: — rendered with Google's Noto emoji set. The board help page shows the full table.

Quoting and reporting

Under each post: Quote starts a reply pre-filled with that post in a [quote] block; Report sends the post to the moderators with your reason (use it for spam and rule violations — reports are flood-limited).

Search

The Search page supports:

• Keyword search — words of 3–20 characters are indexed; combine terms with and, or, not; wildcard * is supported. Choose to search message bodies, subjects, or both; limit to specific forums; sort by post time, author, subject, or forum; show results as topics or as posts.
• Author search — with wildcards.

Quick links (also in the board header) run predefined searches: new posts since your last visit, recent posts (last 24 hours), your posts (topics you've posted in), your topics, your subscriptions, unanswered topics, and — from any profile — a user's posts or topics.

Subscriptions and feeds

• Topic subscriptions — email when someone replies. Subscribe via the checkbox when posting or the Subscribe link in the topic. Your profile lets you auto-subscribe to every topic you post in, and choose whether notification emails include the full post text.
• Forum subscriptions — email when a new topic is started in a forum (link at the top of the forum page).
• Feeds — every board, forum, and topic exposes RSS/Atom via extern.php, e.g. extern.php?action=feed&type=atom (whole board), ...&fid=1 (one forum), ...&tid=42 (one topic). type may be rss, atom, xml, or html; show limits the item count (1–50, default 15).

Your profile

Click your username in the board header. Sections:

• Essentials — username (rename is admin/mod-only), email, language, timezone and DST.
• Personal — real name, birthday, country, title (if your group may set one), location, website.
• Messaging — public contact handles (Jabber, ICQ, MSN, Yahoo). Note: eveBB has no private-message inbox; to contact a user, use the E-mail link on their profile (a form email — your address is shown to them).
• Personality — your avatar (GIF/JPEG/PNG upload; the board enforces a max file size and scales images down to its limits, typically 90×90; images over 1024×1024 are rejected) and your signature (length/line limits set by the board; [quote], [code], [list], and [h] are not allowed in signatures).
• Display — your style (theme), whether to show smilies, signatures, avatars, and images, and your personal topics/posts-per-page counts (3–75; blank = board default).
• Privacy — email visibility (shown / hidden but form-contactable / hidden completely) and subscription notification options.

The user list

User list in the board menu shows registered members, searchable by username (wildcards allowed) and filterable by group, 50 per page.

For moderators

Moderators (of a given forum) see extra controls:

• In topics: edit/delete anyone's post (except administrators'), see poster IPs, and a Moderate topic view for bulk-selecting posts.
• Topic tools: open/close (closed topics accept no replies), stick/unstick, move to another forum (optionally leaving a redirect link), delete.
• Multi-topic tools from the forum view: move, merge, open/close, delete several topics at once.
• Split posts — move selected posts out into a new topic; merge topics — combine topics into one.
• Depending on group flags: edit user profiles, rename users, change passwords, promote users, ban users. The admin console's Users/Bans/Reports pages are shared with administrators — see the Admin Guide.