This page provides a brief introduction to our bulletin board for readers who may be unfamiliar with online bulletin board systems. If you'd like to go to the bulletin board now, click on the link below or the logo above. If you would like to go directly to the bulletin board in the future, just bookmark this address in your web browser: The Barn Board is the online equivalent of a cork board where you tack up notes for others to read. You can post questions to the bulletin board, or find similar questions that may have already been answered by other readers of The Barn Journal or the staff. We also encourage you to share your own knowledge and experiences with other readers. In this way, we hope that The Barn Board becomes the basis for a community of people interested in barns and farm architecture. Note that The Barn Board will eventually replace our Barn Guestbook, but you will still be able to read old guestbook entries at our guestbook archive. What subjects are covered? Like other online bulletin boards, The Barn Board is organized into a set of forums. Each forum covers a particular subject. These are our current forums:
Announcements A few things to note: The first forum, Announcements, is for official announcements by staff of The Barn Journal, and cannot be posted to by readers. If there is enough interest for a particular subject, we will add new forums. A good place to let us know you are interested in a new forum is the Feedback for The Barn Journal forum. How do I post messages? Within each forum, a reader can post a message which serves as the start of a thread of messages; this kind of message is called a topic. A reader can also post a reply to an existing topic, which adds to the existing list of replies for that topic. Messages can include special formatting, like italic, and links to other topics or web sites. Below are what the buttons for starting a new topic and posting a reply look like (these are just pictures of the buttons):
When you post topics or replies, we ask that you respect your fellow readers and adhere to the posting rules for each forum. The first topic in each forum usually indicates what is considered appropriate content for that forum, so we recommend reading that first topic before posting anything in that forum. Our most "free-form" forum is General Discussion, where any message relevant to barns, farm architecture, historical preservation, etc. can be posted. The staff of The Barn Journal reserves the right to remove topics or replies that are not appropriate for the forum in which they appear. If you see a message which you find inappropriate, please notify us at webmaster@thebarnjournal.org. Thanks for your assistance! Should I register as a member? Anybody can visit the bulletin board and post messages as unregistered users, technically referred as guests. However, we recommend that you register as a member of The Barn Board to enable certain features of the bulletin board. Registration is simple, and only takes a couple of minutes. Click the "Register" link at the top of the bulletin board to get started (see the image below for reference).
When you register as a member, you create an account with a username and password that you can use to log in and post messages. When you log in as a member, you can quickly see what new topics or replies were posted since your last visit to the bulletin board. Your account includes a profile: you can put optional information about yourself in your profile, such as your occupation and interests, which is then visible to other readers. You can also create a signature in your profile: a signature is some text which is appended to all of your topics and replies; this is similar to signatures in email systems such as AOL or Outlook. Conclusion The Barn Board has a number of other features which we encourage you to discover and explore yourself. For example, the bulletin board lets you search for keywords in messages to quickly locate topics or replies with information relevant to your interests. If you have any additional questions about using The Barn Board, there is an online list of FAQs (frequently asked questions) at the bulletin board. Note that some of these question refer to features of the bulletin board which may not be enabled. As always, you can also get in touch with the staff directly at webmaster@thebarnjournal.org if you need help. We hope you enjoy participating in our online community!
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