The Ultimate TSR Guide!

Welcome to The Student Room (TSR)!

:tsr:

What is The Student Room?
The Student Room (TSR) is an online student forum established in 2001. TSR helps to support users in their academic and non-academic areas of life. TSR offers a wide range of discussion sections from Universities, Relationships, to general Chat. To find out more about the history of TSR, please click here.

What are the rules on TSR? Why do we have them?
Like most websites, we have guidelines and rules which help to keep your experience of TSR the best that it can be. TSR is a website for all students of all ages, and there may be vulnerable users here. This is why it is important that we maintain a friendly and welcoming website for all students to be able to connect on. For more information about the Community Guidelines, please click here.

Terminology and Abbreviations on TSR:
Just like throughout the internet, there are lots of different terms and abbreviations used on TSR. As you use the website more, you will find you become more familiar with these. To look at the TSR Glossary for the common terms used on TSR, please click here.

Where do I post? Is it important to post in the correct section?
There are lots of different sections and sub-sections on TSR, which can get rather confusing. The main 7 sections are:

TSR Community - including sub-sections such as Chat and Forum Games.
Life and Style - including Health and Relationships.
Hobbies and Interests - including Technology and Sport
Debate and Current Affairs - including Society and Religion
Study Help - including GCSEs and A-Levels
University and University Courses - including UCAS Applications and University Life
Universities and HE colleges - including Distance Learning and International Study
Careers and Jobs - including Apprenticeships and Temporary Employment

Each of these sections have very specific sub-sections. It is important that you post your thread or posts in the correct section, so that they can receive appropriate replies. You may find that posting in the wrong section will result in no replies at all, which would be a huge shame because there's so many people with so much to offer here! You can find out more about posting in the correct section and getting the most from your posting your thread by clicking here.

Creating a Thread:
When you have chosen the most suitable section and subforum, it's time for you to post a thread! Go into the section which you wish to post in and select the orange button on the left hand side "start new discussion".

It should look like this:

Spoiler

When you press "start new discussion", it should direct you to a text box to write your content of the thread in:

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When you have created the content for your thread, you can preview it first, or post it straight away. This will now be visible by the public forum and they can reply to it. Congratulations, you've made your first thread!

Posting/Replying to a Post:
To post on a thread, simply scroll down to the bottom of the page, post in the text box, and press "submit reply", like this:

Spoiler

Rather than just posting underneath which may be missed, quoting a user will ensure that they get a notification that you have replied to their post. A notification will look like this:

Spoiler

Click the quotation mark button to directly reply to, or 'quote', a user (you can do this with more than one post in each reply to quote multiple users at once!):

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When you have done this, their post should appear to be quoted in the text box below the thread, and you can form your reply below it and post, like this:

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Under the current text editor, you can also notify a user by using @Mentions. This will give the user a notification as follows:

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To do this, you simply type @ into the text editor, and then start typing their username. This will bring up a dropdown list of users, from which you can click on the user you want. This should look as below:

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The final way of notifying a member of your post is to tag them in it. To do this, click the 'Tag Members' button in the editor, and start typing their user name into the 'Add Members...' box that appears. When the username shows up that you want, click on it, and they'll show up as tagged in the bottom of your post. If you decide you no longer want to tag that member, simply click the X next to their username in the tag. The process for tagging is shown below:

Spoiler

What is Reputation?
Reputation (Rep) is a way of users agreeing with your posts and ideas, and you can give rep to other users too - this is done by clicking the green thumb on a users post. When you've repped the post, the number next to the icon will go up by 1. If you have recently repped them, it may say you need to rep more users first before you rep them again. They will be notified when you give them rep, and you will be notified when you receive rep.

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For more information about reputation, please click here.

Sending Private Messages (PMs)
At the top of your screen you should see a blue tool bar, which has an envelope icon next to the notification bell icon. Hover over this and go down to select "send new PM". Here you can type the username of the person you wish to send it to, type your message, and press "submit message". You can see you inbox by clicking 'inbox' in that same menu. If you have an unread PM, this will show as an orange number on the icon.

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How do I report a thread or post?
Sometimes users break the rules, and we need your help to prevent and resolve this. If you see anything that does not follow the TSR guidelines, please report this. It will be dealt with as soon as possible by our wonderful Community Team. In the pop up that appears, use the drop down menus to select the appropriate reason for reporting and in the text box give as much information as you can.

Here's how to do it:

Spoiler

Formatting code on TSR:
Making text bold: Either select the B button in the text editor or type [noparse] before the test and after the text.[/noparse]

Making text italic: Either select the I button in the text editor or type [noparse] before the text and after the text.[/noparse]

Making text underlined: Either select the U button in the text editor or type [noparse] before the text and after the text.[/noparse]

You can use these alone or in combination with each other!

Spoilering text: Spoilers are used to hide text under a spoiler tag. This is often used if there is a large amount of text written or large images. You may have seen these above in this thread. To create these you simply type [noparse]

Spoiler

,[/noparse] inserting text or an image in between.

Expanding text: Similar to spoilers, using the expand text code will create a tag to hide long text or images until clicked on. It's a preference of which you prefer, or you can use both. To create an expand tab type [noparse]"

*insert title text*

" [/noparse]

Inserting images using IMG tags: If you have found a suitable image to post on a thread, copy and paste the image URL and insert it between [noparse][/noparse] tags, or click the image icon on the top row of the editor functions (third from the left) and upload it that way.

For more codes, please click here

Still can't find what you're looking for? Go to the Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) page.

Having other problems with TSR? Please post in News, Help, and Feedback.

Happy TSRing!

:party: