[Omkar]

If you're reading this, Team-BHP is most likely one of your top 10 most-visited websites. Given the amount of information that’s available on the forum, we spend a lot of time on the site. And the way we access & navigate that information isn’t the same for everyone. We have readers who’ve been a part of the forum since the inception of Team-BHP, some who’ve just become members, and some who just enjoy reading the content as a guest. So, while some might still be getting to grips with how to navigate the forum, some might have already explored all the options.

Listing out some of the lesser-known features that you may or may not know. Hopefully, these will help you navigate the forum better and some might just make the reading experience a tad bit better.

A big thanks to Rehaan for helping out with these features . I didn’t know some of these even existed!

Guests

It’s a new day and you open the Team-BHP website on your browser and head over to your usual section of the forum, let’s say ‘Indian Car Scene’. Some things are pretty obvious that the thread titles which are in bold are the ones where new replies have been posted since your last visit. If you click on the thread name, you will be led to the first page of the thread - Standard stuff. What some of you may not know is that there are 2 red arrows beside that bold thread title which have different functions -

First Unread Post – Clicking on the downward-pointing red arrow on the left of the thread title will lead you directly to the first New Post since your last visit. This way of jumping directly to your first "unread" post will save you a lot of scrolling around to find the place you left off. Think of it like a bookmark for each thread!
On the mobile version, the red icon is replaced with the link that says ‘Unread’.


Last Post Link – Similarly, the red arrow icon in the "Last Post" column next to each member’s name will lead you to the very last post of that thread.


View Thread Images - If you want to quickly see all the images within a thread, click on the paperclip icon next to the thread title and a photo gallery will pop-up.


Extra details on Mobile – With the restricted screen real estate on mobile, a few details on the forum index pages had to be hidden away. However, if you rotate your screen to landscape mode, you will see some of this additional information displayed in a new column; like the number of pages, replies and views. When on the forum homepage, rotating your phone will show you the most recently active thread per section.


Top Contributors, per thread – If you’re a regular reader of a particular thread and want to see which members have replied the most within that thread, you can do so by clicking the number in the ‘Replies’ column. This will open up a new window listing all the top contributors of that thread along with their reply counts. The list is sorted in descending order, and you can see all of a particular member's posts in that thread by clicking on their post count number.


Linking directly to a specific post – If you want to share a specific post with friends, all you have to do is click on the post number on the top right corner of the post ("#4" for example) and the URL box of your browser will have the direct link to that post. Now you can copy that URL and share it anywhere else.


Daily Newsletter – While most of you might know about this, not everyone is using it Getting the latest Hot Threads & Auto-industry News directly in your inbox each morning is a great way to connect with the forum on the regular. View our recent Newsletters.

Push Notifications - When Hot Threads or News articles are added to the Team-BHP Homepage, you have the option to receive a notification on your smartphone or computer - Related Thread

Members

Subscription system – One of the best ways to keep track of your favourite threads is to use the subscription system. When you subscribe to a thread on Team-BHP, you have the choice of getting an instant email, daily email, weekly email or subscription without any email. The latter method of "subscribing with no email notification" is actually the default for all threads you reply to. (And of course, you can also manually subscribe to threads using the option in the "Thread Tools" menu). The beauty of this is that all the threads you've posted in then automatically show up in the User CP > Subscribed Threads section.

In case you're not getting subscribed to threads you reply in by default, or you want to change your settings, click on User CP – Edit Options - Messaging & Notification - Default Thread Subscription Mode and choose the subscription method for future threads.


Extra Tip – You can even subscribe to an entire forum like ‘Indian Car Scene’ or ‘Road Safety’ or ‘Electric Cars’ by clicking on Forum tools – Subscribe to this Forum – Save Changes

Enhanced / Full WYSIWYG – This is a browser-dependant feature and usually works with Opera or Mozilla Firefox (sorry Chome users!). Clicking the top-right box that says A/A allows you to format your text as you want it and see the results immediately. Here’s an example -


View your attachments – Not something of a regularly used feature, but if you want to check all the images and PDFs you have uploaded to the forum, you can do so by clicking User CP – Control Panel – Miscellaneous – Attachments

If you want to check only the images that you’ve uploaded - Click Here

Member Lists – Not sure if many people use this feature as it may seem like a gimmick rather than a highly useful feature. 2 types of personal lists are found at User CP – Control Panel – Miscellaneous - Buddy / Ignore Lists

Buddy List – As the name suggests, you can create a list of all your buddies on the forum. If you want to PM them, you can do that by clicking on Quick Links – Miscellaneous – Open Buddy List. This will open a new tab and you can see who all are online and you can select one or multiple people to send a PM to.

Ignore List – Rather self-explanatory. If you don’t want to see posts from a certain member, you can add them to this list. You can still see if that person has posted something, but the content will be hidden. There is an option to view that post if you wish to.

Save Advanced Search Preferences – This is a ‘Desktop Only’ feature, and if you tend to repeat a particular search style or filter (eg. only show results from a week ago or newer), this might be useful for you. Once on the Advanced Search page, after configuring your preferences, scroll down to the ‘Save Search Preferences’ and click on the Go button next to it. This will save these selections and they'll be present the next time you open up the advanced search page. The same box has a drop-down option to ‘Clear Search Preferences’.



Do share some of the features that you find extremely useful or some that you think are lesser known to other BHPians.

[Omkar]

Thread moved out from the Assembly Line.

[ex-innova-guy]

Thanks for starting this thread Omkar.

I had come across TBHP on Instagram and never knew anything more than Hot Threads at the time, as I was a guest back then. I used to open Hot Threads daily around 9–11 a.m. to see them, and eventually, with time, I got a hang of the website.

I am sure most members know that there are more smilies, but still posting them for the benefit of others.


You need to click on the smilie icon.


Scroll to the bottom and click on ‘Show all Smilies’.


This window will open and you can choose some not so commonly used Smilies.

[arnieshwartz]

Very useful post, thanks Omkar and Rehaan! I myself stumbled upon the utility values of the little red arrow icons only very recently, and that too, by accident! But they are super nifty to have!

As a long-time Chrome user, I have never seen the 'Enhanced / Full WYSIWYG' feature, but I dont think it's something I would miss very much. I think the 'Preview Post' does deliver a similar experience.

That you, though, for taking the time to compile this handy list.

[ron178]

Awesome thread, a lot I didn't know.

My two cents: the super-useful [thread] and [post] tags.

A conventional link to a Team-BHP thread, like this:
[url="https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/indian-car-scene/279315-jeep-wrangler-facelift-india-launch-april-22-a.html#post5754702"]Click here![/url]
is rendered as:

Click here! (Jeep Wrangler facelift India launch on April 22) (which can look a little cluttered!)

A cleaner way to link to the thread is:
[thread=279315]Click here![/thread]
which renders as simply:

Click here!

Similarly, for the post, use:
[post=5754702]Click here![/post]
which shows up as:

Click here!

More such tips are at this page.

[Maky]

Is there a quick way to directly go to my profile?

Currently if I want to see my recent posts(Find all posts) or my Thanked posts, to quickly refer to an earlier conversation, I end up going to my PM Inbox then finding pm with the specific thread/post where I was quoted then clicking quoted message and finally on the left hand side clicking my avatar to view my profile to get to the above.

[arnieshwartz]

Originally Posted by Maky

Is there a quick way to directly go to my profile?

Currently if I want to see my recent posts(Find all posts) or my Thanked posts, to quickly refer to an earlier conversation, I end up going to my PM Inbox then finding pm with the specific thread/post where I was quoted then clicking quoted message and finally on the left hand side clicking my avatar to view my profile to get to the above.

DESKTOP
The Quick Links drop-down menu contains a direct link to your profile.



MOBILE
Look for the 'More' drop-down menu option at the far right.

[Fuldagap]

I did not know about the ignore feature. It will be quite helpful.

[anilsurya1985]

Thank you Omkar and Rehaan for putting these details together these are very helpful.

I think we need WYSIWYG feature for Chrome as well coz for many users Chrome is the default browser.

[Cresterk]

Is there a way to drag and drop images like in many other sites? Would be more convenient than the current, convert, upload, look at the pic name, insert it into the thread, make sure the correct pic is inserted, post. It can get very stressful when writing a large thread with multiple images.

[cooldip]

Thank you moderators for the wonderful poweruser ready reckoner.

Has there been a feature request to add a markdown editor?

It would further simplify the process of creating well formatted posts.

[anjan_c2007]

Thanks @Rehaan and @Omkar for such beautiful information about the teambhp forum. There were many hitherto unknown features which have all been unravelled.

I have been trying to familiarise myself with the usage of these features. There are many threads for which the "view thread images" feature is an eye candy.

View Thread Images - If you want to quickly see all the images within a thread, click on the paperclip icon next to the thread title and a photo gallery will pop-up.
Paperclip.gif

But to my dismay, I could find the hard way that this feature is not an eye candy for the thread "Accidents in India". There are 11,000 plus images that pop up instantly. I am a regular with this thread, but see maybe one, two or three accidents at a time during the day while opening the link. But 11,000 plus accident images including some gory ones in a single glance using the feature ! That's a deterrent here for us to view. Maybe in a very few similar threads like the one covering international accidents and so on the same principle applies.

Hence, let's view all other eye candy thread images unabatedly, but with such very few exceptions.

[Rehaan]

Originally Posted by arnieshwartz

I myself stumbled upon the utility values of the little red arrow icons only very recently

Hoping to expand this super useful yet tiny icon into something more obvious & accessible on the desktop skin soon (it's already been done on Mobile).

Originally Posted by ron178

My two cents: the super-useful [thread] and [post] tags.

Nice!

A quicker and perhaps more robust way to do it is to actually just remove 1 alphabet from the url, somewhere between the thread id # and the .html at the end.

For example from this url :
https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/modifying-car/17917-article-synthetic-oil-vs-mineral-oil-405.html

You could remove any single character from the segment:
article-synthetic-oil-vs-mineral-oil
Eg.
article-synthetic-oil-vs-mineral-il

...which would then prevent the title from automatically being appended to the hyperlink.

Originally Posted by anilsurya1985

I think we need WYSIWYG feature for Chrome as well coz for many users Chrome is the default browser.

Had looked into this once, but there were a lot of complications. Will revisit it again later.

Originally Posted by Cresterk

Is there a way to drag and drop images like in many other sites?

Unfortunately not :(

Originally Posted by cooldip

Has there been a feature request to add a markdown editor?

Hmm... that would be cool, but would require a whole new parser.

Right now you could just get a bit familiar with bbcode, which is quite simple / straightforward.

[Rehaan]

2 more features:

1) Sending PMs to Newbies is now possible for everyone . However, do note that Newbies cannot reply (or send PMs). It's a one-way street until they get BHPian status.
Thanks to Condor for this great suggestion.

2) Adding an Index for your thread. The advantage of this is that the browser will scroll directly to the post, rather than reloading the whole page.
Yes, there's a 6 year old announcement for it, but I bet quite a few members don't know about it! Link (How to add an 'index' to your thread)

[Prowler]

There is a small issue: If you want to post a new post in a thread and you are using a desktop browser, the forum keeps loading every time you scroll down. This can take quite a lot of time to scroll all the way down to see the Quick reply part. I tried to show my browser as a mobile browser, thinking that it would stop this behavior - but no luck.

Thanks for a wonderful job of maintaining such a large forum.