This site contains a lot of helpful functionality but it’s not always easy to discover. So I’ve created this guide to help you get to grips with some of it’s most useful features.
If you have any any questions or suggestions about other tips to add to this guide, please post them here.
Contents
Posting
Finding the menu bar on mobile
Quoting
Editing posts
Hyperlinking text
Previews for links
Inserting emoji
Inserting spoilers
Reduce the size of an image you posted- Edit a wiki
See what’s changed when a wiki’s been edited
How to get around the character limit
Customising your profile
Uploading a profile picture
Changing the title that’s displayed next to your nameOther functionality
Voting
How to use search
Subscribing to categories & topics
Muting topics that you’re not interested in
How to switch the site to dark mode
Starting the Discobot tutorials
Click the 
to the left of ‘guide’ to view each guide.
Posting
Finding the menu bar on mobile
The menu bar in your composer window contains quick access to lots of useful functionality. If you can’t see it, here’s how to display it.
guide
Tap the ‘hamburger menu’ in the top right hand corner of the composer window to display the menu bar 
Quoting
Using this site’s in built quoting functionality makes it easier for others to follow the conversation as each quote includes a link to the post which the text was quoted from. It’s also the fastest way to include a quote in your post.
guide
To quote a post, just highlight the text that you want to quote & click the button that appears in the grey box.
Or if you want to quote the entire post that you’re replying to, just click the speech bubble icon in the menu bar of the composer window. This will copy the entire post into the composer window.
You can write of your text a couple of lines below the bottom of the quote.
If you’re quoting from somewhere else e.g. a news story, just add a > at the start of each paragraph so:
>Tesla's stock decreased in value today.
>
>Elon Musk reinvented the meme with his latest tweet.
would look like:
Tesla’s stock decreased in value today.
Elon Musk reinvented the meme with his latest tweet.
Editing posts
Sometimes you’ll spot a typo or remember something else that you forgot to mention after we’ve posted. Rather than replying to a topic again (which makes the conversation hard to follow), you can edit your post.
guide
To edit a post, click the pencil icon at the bottom of your post.
Make your changes and then click save.
If you make an edit more than 5 minutes after you posted then others will be able to see your edit history, by clicking the pencil in the top right hand corner of your post, next time the time when it was created.
Hyperlinking text
Rather than having to share long links in full e.g. google.com you can turn some text into a link like Google.
guide
The easiest way to do this is to highlight the text that you want to turn into a link and then click the icon in the menu bar in your composer window.
Paste your link into the popup box that appears and then you’re good to go.
The fastest way to do this if you’re not on your phone is to highlight the text and then hit ctrl / cmd + k to open the popup box for you to paste your link into.
You can also just put square brackets around the text that you want to format as a link and then put the link in brackets afterwards, with no space in between e.g. [Google](google.com) will be formatted as Google.
Previews for links
guide
Some links will display a preview of their content if you paste them on a new line so https://twitter.com/freetrade/status/1126804606271524870?s=20 will display as:
https://twitter.com/freetrade/status/1126804606271524870?s=20
If you don’t want to display a preview of a link that you’re entering on a new line, just put a space before it.
Links to other posts on this site will display the post’s title if you do that or paste them after other text e.g. Stock additions 🤳
Inserting emoji
Probably the most popular feature of the site 
guide
You can insert emoji directly from your keyboard. But it’s best to use the site’s in-built emoji to make sure that everyone can see what you’ve entered & avoid any weird formatting. To do that, just type : and start typing a description of the emoji e.g. :smi will find 
for you.
If the emoji that you’re trying to insert doesn’t popup, just tap the 
icon in the menu bar & choose your emoji from the list that appears.
Inserting spoilers
Sometimes you’ll want to share something on the site without everyone else seeing the text as soon as they read the post. Spoilers blur the text or image until the viewer clicks on them. Spoilers are one example or you might use them like this…
guide
To insert a spoiler, click the 
icon in the menu bar while writing a post
Replace the text after [spoiler] with the text that you want to blur e.g. (don’t worry - this is not a real spoiler) Arya has been practicing her juggling
You can also use the spoiler ‘tags’ over several lines e.g.
[spoiler]
[/spoiler]
will look like this
Reduce the size of an image you posted
Full size images can be pretty big, especially if you’re viewing them on a screen that’s bigger than your phone. To save everyone else some scrolling, you can resize images when you upload them to your posts.
guide
You’ll need to have stuck around for a little while and got to trust level 1 before you can do this.
To do that just add a comma and then the % that you want to reduce the size of your image to just before the end of the square brackets at the start of the link to your uploaded image so
becomes
if you want to make the image half it’s original size.
If you’re uploading your image on a laptop / computer then you can adjust the image size using the buttons in the preview pane that displays the image, to the right of your composer window.
Edit a wiki
Wikis are posts that can be edited by anyone who’s reached trust level 1. They can be created by users who’ve got to trust level 3.
guide
To edit a wiki, just click the pencil icon at the bottom of the post, to the left of the reply button.
Make your changes & then hit save as usual.
See what's changed when a wiki's been edited
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When a wiki’s edited, it’ll usually appear at the top of the Latest list. To see what’s changed, click the pencil icon next to the timestamp in the top right hand corner of the post.
You can now choose to receive notifications by Watching a topic that contains a wiki.
How to get around the character limit
If you try to write a post that’s less than 20 characters then you’ll see an error message like this:
We know that can be annoying but it’s there to prompt new joiners to think again if they’re about to post something short e.g. +1. However there’s occasionally times when posting something that’s less than 20 characters makes sense.
guide
The easiest way to do that is to insert a blur spoiler [link to guide] and if you don’t write any text between the two ‘tags’ then the spoilers will be invisible. So enter [spoiler][/spoiler] once or twice in order to meet the character limit.
Customising your profile
Uploading a profile picture
guide
- Click your profile icon in the top right hand corner (the letter inside a coloured circle)
- Click the button which looks like:
[your username] (inside the blue box)
- Go to Preferences
- Click the next to your profile icon
- Click Upload Picture in the grey box
-
Choose a picture from your files
-
Click Save Changes
Changing the title that's displayed next to your name
You can’t change which badge is displayed on your profile picture (please send me a message if you’d like to do that) but you can change the text that appears next to your username.
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To do that, go to your profile by clicking your profile icon in the top right hand corner of the screen, then your username.
Click Preferences, then scroll down to the Title header and choose the title that you want to display from the drop down menu.
Other functionality
Voting
Some topics like the Stock Requests 
and Ideas 
categories allow you to vote for ideas from the community. These votes help us to decide which requests to prioritise.
guide
To vote for a request, tap the Vote button next to the topic title.
To see which topics have received the most votes in a particular category, tap the Votes button on the category page.
or select it from the drop down menu on mobile.
Here’s the links to the top votes for Stock Requestsand Ideas.
How to use search
Tap the icon next to your profile icon in the top right hand corner of the window to search.
You can also narrow down your search by category, group and person.
guide
If you want to search for ideas that’ve already been created, add #ideas to your search query.
Or to search posts from the Freetrade team only, add group:freetrade to your search query. Sorting the results by Latest Post is a great way to find the latest update from the team about a particular topic.
Or to search posts from a specific person, add @[their username] to you search query.
You can use all of these filters to search the posts in the thread of a particular topic too. Just tick the ‘Search this topic’ box when searching, while viewing the topic.
Subscribing to categories & topics
You can control what notifications you receive on this site in a number of ways. Watching a category or topic with email notifications enabled means you’ll never miss out on the updates you’re most interested in.
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To watch a category click your profile icon in the top right hand corner of the screen, then the icon, open the Preferences tab, then choose Categories.
If you enter a category in the Watched list, you’ll receive a notification every time there’s a post in that category. Unless you’re very keen on this site, I wouldn’t recommend doing this!
The Watching First Post option is much more useful. If you want to receive an email update every time a new Sneak Peeks is posted by one of the team, enter sneak peek in the list under that heading. You won’t receive notifications about replies to these posts.
If you want to receive alerts whenever someone posts in a particular topic, use the topic controls at the bottom of the thread to watch the topic.
To receive email notifications from watched categories or posts, make sure that this setting is set to ‘always’ or ‘only when away’.
Muting topics that you're not interested in
Muting a topic or category means that you won’t see updates in the Latest feed.
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To mute an entire category click your profile icon in the top right hand corner of the screen, then the icon, open the Preferences tab, then choose Categories.
& just enter the name of the category in the Muted list.
To mute a specific topic, use the topic controls at the bottom of the topic.
How to switch the site to dark mode
If you want to give your eyes a break, quickly switch to dark mode 
guide
Click the ‘hamburger menu’ next to your profile icon, in the top right hand corner of the screen and choose ‘Freetrade Dark’. To switch back, choose ‘Freetrade Light’ instead.
Starting the Discobot tutorials
This site has an in-built tutorial to help you get to grips with it’s functionality. The tutorial sets a number of challenges for you to complete.
guide
When you first create your account, you’ll be invited to take part in the tutorial, to kick it off just bookmark the first message that you received from Discobot.
If you can’t find that message, create a new message with Discobot as the participant. Make your first post whatever you like. Then reply with @discobot start new user this will prompt Discobot to reply with the first step of the tutorial and you can go from there.
There’s also an advanced tutorial which you can start with @discobot start advanced tutorial.