Registration & Login
To take advantage of all the features offered by RGNS.com, such as private forums, private messages, private blogs, private photo galleries, and many others you will need to have an account. It only takes a few seconds to register, and it is recommended that all Rabun Gap-Nacoochee School alumni do so. Once your registration has been approved, you will be granted access to additional areas of the site (usually within 24 hours). If you are an RGNS faculty/staff member, RGNS parent, RGNS student, or other friend of the school, you may be eligible for an "Hornorary Alumni" membership. Honorary Alumni memberships are considered on an individual basis.
We restrict access to certain parts of this site to protect the interests of the Rabun Gap-Nacoochee School and to protect the personal interests of the RGNS alumni, RGNS faculty/staff members, RGNS parents, and RGNS students who participate on this site. RGNS alumni, RGNS faculty/staff, RGNS parents, and RGNS students share varying opinions of Rabun Gap-Nacoochee School so we keep their group forums, blogs, photo galleries, etc. hidden from the general public.
All RGNS alumni are eligible for membership and access to private areas of the site. RGNS faculty/staff members, RGNS parents, RGNS students, and other friends of the school, may be eligible for an "Hornorary Alumni" membership. Honorary Alumni memberships are considered on an individual basis. Everyone's identity must be verified before access to private areas of the site is granted (usually within 24 hours).
Registered memebrs have access to numerous discussion boards, photo galleries, blogs, and other features.
To create an account you will need to visit the Registration page by clicking "Join" in the upper right-hand corner of the RGNS.com homepage and completing the form for creating a new account. Please be sure to read the
"Services Agreement" thoroughly before accepting it. Once your registration has been approved, you will be granted access to additional areas of the site (usually within 24 hours). You MUST register with your legal given name for verification purposes; however, you are permitted to change your display name to a nickname or other alias once your account is active.
After your account has been approved, you can login page by clicking "Sign In" in the upper right hand corner of the homepage and entering your username and password.
This is usually because your identity could not be verified. Please contact a site administrator.
When logging in if you do not check the "Next time automatically sign me in" option you will be automatically logged off after a period of inactivity. If you would like the site to always log you in automatically, please check the "Next time automatically sign me in" checkbox.
If you forgot your password click "I forgot my password" on the sign-in page to have both your username and a new password emailed to you by entering the email account you're registered with. You will be sent a new password since we store your password encrypted and have no way of retrieving the original characters. Once you receive your username and new password you can login and change your password.
If you’ve registered and can’t login, check to ensure you have a valid username and password. If you are sure the username and password are valid, but still can’t login your account may be on hold. Please contact a site administrator.
First check to ensure your username and password are correct. If you still can’t login your account has either been put on hold or deleted due to inactivity. Please contact a site administrator.
Permissions, Access, & Administrators
Permissions control what you are and are not allowed to do while browsing RGNS.com. The permissions you are granted control all aspects of your view within this site.
No, there are thousands of posts and photos on the site. Your permissions control what posts and photos you have access to.
Click the "Photos" tab at the top of the page and then click "All Galleries" at the bottom left-hand corner of the page. This will bring up a list of all photo galleries that your permissions allow you to access.
Posts in private forums and blogs, and images in private galleries, cannot be found using "Search." These items do not index because they are located in private areas of the site. ONLY posts in public forums and blogs, and images in public galleries, can be found using "Search."
Only the new posts in forums that your permissions allow you to access will be displayed.
There are two likely causes. The first cause is that the area you are attempting to access is private and you are not signed in. The second cause is that you are trying to access an area that is not accessibe with your member permissions. There are many links within this site that go to private areas of the site and your permissions dictate your ability to access those links. Likewise, many images reside in private photo galleries so they cannot be enlarged unless your permissions allow you to access the photo gallery where that photo resides.
If you are attempting to access a forum that you know exisits, but receive an ‘unknown forum’ error there are two likely causes. The first cause is that the forum you are attempting to access is private and you are not signed in or do not have permissions to access that forum. The second cause is that the forum has been removed.
An administrator is the highest permission level within RGNS.com. By default, an administrator has full permissions to perform any action, e.g. moderating posts, approving users, and so on.
A site Administrator can be contacted via email at
admin@rgns.com.
User Profile & Settings
A profile is information about your account that controls how you view information within the site. This includes details about posts you’ve contributed, personal information you wish to share such as your web address or weblog address, as well as settings that control how you interact with this site such as: themes, time zone, and many other settings.
To access your profile, click "Edit Profile" in the upper right-hand corner of the RGNS.com homepage.
Setting your timezone will enable RGNS.com to display all dates and times relative to your time zone.
A signature is a message that is appended to the end of any posts you make in the forums. You can edit your signature from the profile page. This signature will then appear at the bottom of any messages posted by you.
An avatar is a feature of the forums which allows for an image to be displayed along with your posts.
Avatars are set on your profile page under the "Avatar" tab. You can upload an avatar or specify a URL where your avatar resides. You will also need to enable your avatar for it to be displayed with your posts.
The date format used to display any date information can be configured from your profile.
There are many different icons and information that can show up next to usernames in the forums. Some are determined by profile settings and some are automatically entered by the site. Common examples are gender icons, member location, and member points. Member badges may also be displayed showing groups the user belongs to.
Points are automatically awarded based on the individual member's participation on this site.
Member badges indicate the group(s) that individual members belong to on RGNS.com. Those members that fall into more than one group (such as being both RGNS Alumni and RGNS Faculty/Staff) will have a badge for each group. Some members will have additional badges indicating any special group they fall into or indicating any administrative roles they have on the site.
You are required to be logged in before viewing/using these features to protect the privacy of users who have shared their information and to prevent unwanted/unsolicited emails.
Privacy & Security
Once logged in you can change your password from your Profile page.
You cannot change you username. You can, however, change your display name under the "About" tab on your Profile page.
Once logged in, you can change your email address from your Profile page.
The only profile setting that is required is your private email address. This is the email address that is used when you subscribe to the forums and when a forgotten username/password is emailed. The private email address is never shared or displayed publicly. If you wish to share an email address publicly, use the public email address field. The remainder of the profile settings are optional.
At the top of the right column on the "Forums" page under "Shortcuts" there is a link that says "View all users." That link takes you to a page where you can search members. You can only search by display name only and not by proper name. Some members may have opted not to be included in the member list. You must be a registered member to access the member list.
You can set the option in your profile and your name will not appear in any member listings.
Navigation
A Forum Group is a top level grouping of related forums. A forum group contains 1 or more forums.
A Forum is a grouping of related threads of discussion. A Forum contains 0 or more threads and 0 or more sub-forums.
A Thread is a grouping of related posts. A Thread contains 1 or more Posts. The first post becomes the Thread and replies to the original post increment details on the Thread, such as the reply count or last post.
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Thread Icon Legend
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Topic with posts you have not read.
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Topic with posts you have read.
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Popular topic with posts you have not read. A topic
becomes popular after a certain number of views and posts (administrator
defined).
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Popular topic with posts you have read. A topic becomes
popular after a certain number of views and posts (administrator
defined).
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Announcement you have not read
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Announcement you have read
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A pinned topic with posts you have not read. Pinned topics are
displayed before other topics until they become unpinned.
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A pinned topic with posts you have read. Pinned topics are displayed
before other topics until they become unpinned.
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A pinned popular topic with posts you have not read. A pinned topic
with enough views or replies to become popular.
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A pinned popular topic with posts you have read. A pinned topic with
enough views or replies to become popular.
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A locked topic with posts you have not read. Locked topics do not
allow replies.
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A locked topic with posts you have read. Locked topics do not allow
replies.
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A forum may not display any threads if there are no threads in the forum or if filters on the forums have been applied and no threads match the filter. An example of a filter is filtering to display threads newer than a certain date, such as threads new in the past 2 weeks.
When a message is first posted, it may take several minute for it to propogate. The moderators and administrators may choose to move, edit, or delete your post to ensure that the post is topical to the current forum.
The icons next to threads when viewing a forum indicate different status. You can move your mouse cursor over these icons to see what the different status / types of threads are.
An announcement is a special post type that is always displayed at the top of a forum for a configured amount of time. The purpose of an announcement is to increase the visibility of certain topics.
A sticky topic is a special post that causes a post to sort to the top of a forum for a specified amount of time. A sticky topic is similar to an announcement, whereas an announcement is displayed separate from other threads and usually does not allow replies.
A locked thread is a special post that does not allow replies. Once a user locks a post or an administrator/moderator locks a thread no more posts are allowed.
Yes, you can sort threads when viewing a forum by Author, Replies, Views, and Last Post. The default sort for a forum is to display the newest threads first (Last Post descending). To sort simply click on the options button at the bottom of the screen and select your desired sort order and click 'Apply'.
The XML icon is linked to the RSS feed for the forum. RSS is used to allow other applications to subscribe to a forum's posts.
This icon indicates the user is online. You can hover your mouse over this icon to see details about the user’s past activity. If no icon is present, the user is not currently online.
Posting
Not usually. Moderators and administrators may occasionally move posts within the forums and blogs if they are off-topic, but they are rarely edited or deleted. Words that are deemed to be offensive are automatically filtered and replaced with the "*" (asterisk) character.
Yes and no. You cannot type HTML directly into the editor. If you are using Internet Explorer the default editor for creating new posts will be a Rich Text Editor that will automatically format posts using HTML. If you post with a browser other than Internet Explorer a standard HTML textbox is used and BBCode can be used to mark-up posts.
BBCode is a special syntax for formatting plaintext posts.
Yes, the following files may be attached to a post: zip;cab;jpg;gif;png;mpg;mpeg;avi;wmv;wma;mp3;ra;rar;rm;sql;txt. The maximum file size is 64KB.
Yes, the following inline images may be attached to a post: jpg;gif;bmp;pcx;png;pic;swf;htm. The maximum image width is 550 pixels. Inline frames are not permitted.
Emoticons are graphical elements that can be added within the body of a post to add emotions to the post. Common examples are the use of smilies within the contents of a post. RGNS.com has a pre-defined set of emoticons, however, we can add more as requested.
When viewing a forum you should see an image button reading "Write a New Post." Clicking on this image button will take you to a form for posting a message.
You can reply to an existing post using either the Reply or Quote image buttons displayed with the post. If you do not see the Reply or Quote image buttons when viewing a post you either do not have permissions to reply or the post is locked and does not allow replies.
Yes, a post can be edited for one minute after it is posted.
Yes, a post can be deleted for one minute after it is posted.
Words that are deemed to be offensive are automatically filtered and replaced with the "*" (asterisk) character.
See "How do I add a Signature to my Post?" in the User Profile and Settings section.
See "What is an avatar?" and "How do I Set my Avatar?" in the User Profile and Settings section.
Private Messages
A private message is like email within this site. You can send a private message to another user within this site that is visible only to them. No private information, such as the user's email address, is ever disclosed.
When signed in, click the "Inbox" button in the upper right-hand corner of the homepage.
When viewing a user's profile, click "Private Message" under their contact information.
RGNS.com Weather Station
For information about the RGNS.com Weather Station, click
here to visit the Weather Station page.
RGNS.com GapCam™ Interactive Webcam
For questions about the RGNS.com GapCam™ Interactive Webcam, click
here to visit the GapCam™ Help page.
Additional Help and Questions
Please contact an Administrator at
admin@rgns.com.