How to register and post a message
 

The most common question I get emailed about is how to post, so I thought I would have a go at explaining it here...

Register
Before you can post you need to register. It is quick & free to do. You will need to verify your email address as part of the process, but be assured that your email address is kept private at all times (it does not get posted with your message).

You can read all the threads on the forum without registering, but if you wish to participate and post messages then you will need to register.

Search first...
Before posting a new thread (i.e. asking a question) please use the search function. There are nearly seventy thousand threads on this site. It's just possible your problem has happened to someone else and the answer is already here...

Log-in
From the home page, log-in (if you haven't already) near the top right corner. (If your username is already shown here then you are logged in).

Select which forum is right for your post
From the home page (here) select which forum to post in, and click it e.g. 'bamboo' if it is bamboo related. If yours is a more general query I would recommend 'general gardening'.

There are gardening forums for United Kingdom, General Gardening, Edible Gardening, Roses, Orchids, Bamboo, Lawns, Water gardening discussions, Permaculture and plant science discussions, Freshwater Aquaria Plants, Plant Science and Plant Biology.

Start a new thread
When you click the forum title you will see a list of recent threads for that forum. Near the top left you will see a button marked 'New Thread'. Click this to start a new thread (ask a new question) or to respond to an existing thread. Provided you logged in correctly earlier you will be taken to the posting page.

Choose a relevant title
Fill in the title and the main text of your message. (Please use titles that are specific to your query i.e. NOT please help!, urgent, it won't work, as these generally get less response than those with specific query in the title.)

Include as much information as you can about your query. The more specific you are, the more chance there is of someone knowing the solution. Please remember, no one is paid to respond to your message. People give their own time to try to help others.

Get notified when you have a response
At the bottom of the page there are some additional options. You can leave them all unchanged, however you might want to consider changing the 'notification type' to 'instant email' or 'daily email' whereby you will get an email when someone submits a reply. (Instant email will send you an email as soon as you get a reply. In a popular thread this could amount to 30 or 40 emails, although most threads only get 2 or 3 replys. Daily emails will just send one email giving you a summary of the replys).

Submit your post
Click 'Submit New Thread' and you will be taken to your message. That is it, the only thing left to do is wait. Typically it takes 24-48 hours to get a response (bearing in mind people do take time out to do their own thing!). Normally the threads die off after about 5-7 days, so if you haven't had a response by then it could be because nobody knows the answer, or the person that does know is away for a few days so you might want to consider re-posting your question.

You can find more details on using this forum at the FAQ's

Good luck.

Hi Kevin,
I just posted my first post, but then decided I wanted to add to it. Can we edit our posts after posting? I couldn't see a way to do that.

Thanks in advance, Pete.

Thanks for all that Sticky.

Two small things if you don't mind.

I posted a thread with photos linked onto the Trackback feature and they came up nice on the post. But when i tried the same thing on the Photos forum, it did not work so I've cluttered the photo site with two posts but without the promised pictures. Any pointers on that please?

Then , i tried deleting the 'wasted' posts on the gallery site but cannot see how to do that despite following your instructions and FAQs relating to editing(which I also can't seem to do) It says on my rules of posting icon that I can't edit posts but tells me elsewhere that, as a registered user I can do this, so I'm a little confused.

Thanks for any assistance you can offer me!

Terry Deans