Simple Guide to Navigating the FPA's forums

[AsstModerator]

I hope you've already read about navigating the FPA's website. If not, CLICK HERE and enjoy the article.

Back when the forums started, there were maybe 10 or 15 folders, so everything was in a single column. Then, as the site grew, things got complicated. I talked about it with the guy who handles the backend, and he found a way to add tabs to the forums.

First, we divided the forums into Education and Community. The problem was that companies were desperate to be able to post about themselves. Because of this, I had the Commerce Zone tab created. This put all the "promotional" folders in one spot. Then as Scam Alerts and Scam Investigations grew into traders Court, splitting it away from the Community tab was the next logical step. Finally, an "About" tab was created.

So, this is what the top edge of the forums looks like - if you know how to get there...

If you keep scrolling down with the All tag selected, you can see all the folders you have access to. The problem is that it's a long list. So, to make it easier to get to the things you are looking for, here are the 5 tabs.

Education looks like All, but is shorter...

Community has folders for traders to chat. More details later...

Commerce is for anything commercial or promotional. See below for more info...

Court is where Traders Court, Scam Alerts, and related folders are...

And about tells details of the FPA itself...

But there are two small problems. It's possible to get to each section tab from the other menus without showing the tabs list. Here's Traders Court with no easy way to get to the Education, Community, Commerce, or About tabs...

And, if you navigate down to a folder or thread, you can also lose the view of the tabs. Here's a lesson from Forex Military School. Finding the Mess Hall from here could be hard...

Don't worry. Look towards the upper left in the two images above. The little house takes you to the FPA homepage. The word Forums next to the house takes you straight back to the Tabbed view of the forums with only one click...

There's one more trick I use to get back to Tabbed view of the forums. From the main menu...

Point to Community. Ignore the dropdown menu which opens and click. Or, quickly double-click on Community. Either way, you'll get back to the main Tabbed navigation of the forums.

 

[AsstModerator]

But wait! There's more. Now you know how to get to the tabbed view, but I've barely told you what each holds. This would get VERY long if I gave full details of all the folders, so I hope you don't mind if I only point out some of the important ones and a few of my favorites.

Let me save some people a quick death at the teeth and claws of Spam Cat. If you want to post on behalf of a company or recommend a company, there are very few places where this is permitted. Everywhere else, Spam Cat will catch you, cook you, and eat you. Check the rules before posting and you'll be fine. Spam Cat almost never gives warnings.

This is up to date as a post it. If something changes, I may not get the images updated right away.

Here's what's the Education Tab...

The first folder is for Forex Military School. It's a free forex trading course written by a banking professional.

Next, we have the Daily News Signals. These are for the FPA's news trading and after-spike trading signals. Please don't try try to post your own signals in that thread. There's another folder for that.

Then there are the Giants. Sive Morton, Andrew Mitchem, and Jarratt Davis all provide their insights into what the market is doing.

The FPA's most active member is Pharaoh. Forex Basics Bootcamp is a collection of some of his best articles, including How to Select a Forex Broker.

The FPA's Traders Glossary is a good place to finally find out what some of those forex terms mean.



Then there's the Community Tab...

Hello and Welcome is the folder you are in now. When you are done reading this, please take a moment to say "Hi" to everyone.

Beginners Bootcamp is the place to ask any new trader questions.

Forex Trading Arsenal is one of the newest folders. I'm very excited about it. We've got free software for FPA members. As I write this, there are only a few items, but the number is growing. I've got a list of some of what is coming, and it's going to be amazing.

General Forex talk is usually for more complex questions and discussions. Note that this is not in the Commerce Zone, so please don't post an ad there.

Market Predictions and reports is the one place under the community tab where companies can post and include links back to their sites. The rules are simple. Any prediction or report must be stand-alone. No "Big move coming on the Euro, click here to find out" type posts. Anyone else who wants to show off their predictive skills is welcome to open a thread.

Forex Trading Systems and Strategies is for personal, not commercial strategies.

The Mess Hall is for non-forex talk. Drop in and take a break from trading.

Spam Cat would be overweight, but he pukes up a lot of the spammers he eats in the Spammers Hall of Shame. If you are caught spamming, you and your spam could be placed on permanent public display. It's not pretty, but some of it is funny.


Looking to recommend a company? Want to tell people about your company? Want to discuss or debate companies? The Commerce Zone tab is the place to do it...

Please be aware that just because commercial posts are permitted in the Commerce Zone doesn't mean there are no rules. Company employees must identify themselves. If they pretend to be clients, they will be fed to Spam Cat. Hijacking another company's thread to brag about your company is also against the rules. Challenging another company to a debate in a thread you start is fine.

Performance Testing is reserved for announcing new FPA Performance Tests of EAs, Signals, and Managed Forex Accounts.

Every FPA review page ties to a forums discussion thread. With only a few exceptions, these are all in Forex Services Discussions.

Is there a company you want information on? Don't go to Scam Alerts and ask "Is Company X a scam?" What if you worked for Company X and you knew it wasn't a scam? How would you feel about this? Instead, open a thread in Has Anyone Heard Of? and ask if anyone has information about Company X.

Has Anyone Heard Of? is home to some of the longest threads in the FPA's Forums. When someone asks about a company which looks like a Ponzi scheme, the debate always gets heated.

Want to know people's opinions of Broker X vs. Broker Y? Want to know which company offers the best signals for trading Belize Dollars vs. Canadian Dollars? Forex Company comparisons is the place to ask.

Press releases is a place where companies can issue their press releases for free. The press release may have links, but cannot be something like "We've got an incredible new deal for you. Click here to find out what it is."

Companies may post complete articles in the Company Articles folder.

The Freebies and Discounts list is a special service of the FPA. If a company is willing to make a special offer exclusively for FPA members and other terms are agreeable (such as enough compensation to the FPA to make it worth running the offer), then a thread can be created and a mailing can be sent.

The FPA's classifieds allows anything legal to be sold. Pirated items are not legal. Jumping into someone's special IB offer for a broker you consider to be a scam is permitted. Jumping into someone's special IB offer thread to make a competing offer is considered to be thread hijacking and is not allowed.


Have a serious complaint with a forex company? Traders Court is the place to go...

Before even thinking of filing a Traders Court case, please read the instructions. One of the required items is opening a thread in the Scam Alerts folder. Over half of all cases used to ignore this. Then I had the programmers rig things so that if there was no thread in Scam Alerts, no case could be created.

So, start off with Scam Alerts. Don't just join other people's threads. Get your own thread open. You may be able to get your issue fixed without having to bother to file a case. If your issue is fixed, make sure to report it, so I can mark the thread and move it to the Resolved Issues folder. Only whole threads can be moved, so if you post in someone else's thread, it may move to Resolved Issues while your problem isn't solved. Or, your issue may be fixed, but the thread stays in Scam Alerts, because the issue which opened the thread wasn't fixed.

It's simple. If YOU have an issue with a company, then you need YOUR OWN thread in Scam Alerts. Please include the company's name in the subject line.

I like seeing issues resolved, which is why I created the Resolved Issues folder. It gets those threads out of Scam Alerts.

If someone files a case, it first goes to Case Preparation. If the person doesn't come back and answer questions, it gets dismissed. If the person answers questions and the FPA can't help get it resolved with the company, it goes to Open Cases for a vote.

After voting, the issue eventually ends up in Closed Cases.

Forex Insanity is hard to describe. Let me just say that there are people out there who really believe in giant evil forex supercomputers controlling the markets, and that's just one of the crazy ones.

Scoundrels is a special folder to deal with people and company's who commit actions which aren't scams, but which should be publicized.

People often open threads in Scam Alerts about items completely unrelated to forex. Instead of deleting those, I created the Non-Forex Scam Alerts folder.


And finally, the About tab...

The top folder has some FPA history in it.

If you check the executive team folder, you'll find out about the people who run the FPA, including me.

Andrew and Jarratt have their own description pages. I think someone misplaced Sive's page. I need to look for it.

Development and upgrades is where new items in the FPA are announced.

Last, and most important, is the Forex Peace Army FAQ and Knowledge Base. Contact Us now goes through this, since 90+ percent of the questions are easily answered by the FAQ. For items where you do need to contact the FPA, like a missing review or a change of your forums username, there's a contact form which will get your issue to the right person. This was fully implemented in September 2016. If it works, I may be able to take a day or two off in 2017.