After you register an account here at Tomato Talk, your user account is created with some default settings. These control how things are displayed to you, and also what kinds of notifications you receive, etc. To customize your experience, you can change these as well as your profile information - here's how.
First ensure you have logged into the forums. If you see the words "Login or Sign Up" in the top right of the forums, you are not logged. Click that to enter your credentials and log in.
Once logged in, you should now see your User Name in the top right. Click that and you will be presented with a small menu of items. Click "User Settings"
Profile
The first tab is for your general profile.
Date of Birth
Here you can set your birthdate as well as how (and if) that is displayed in the forums.
Contact Information
If you wish to let others contact you directly via various Instant Messaging services, you can enter your handle here and select the respective service.
Web
If you have a personal website, you can enter it here and it will display to users when they view your Profile.
Biography
Just some basic details about you. Don't get too specific here, and please don't include anything too personal.
Location
Where do you live? A general geographic location - I would recommend not getting any more specific than City or County level.
Hardiness Zone
What zone are you growing in? For North American users, this is likely going to be your USDA hardiness zone number. For other users, this number may be different and more localized for you. This is free form text, so you could type in something like, for example "USDA 7b"
Interests
Do you have hobbies outside gardening/tomatoes? You can enter those here, or if you prefer, scope down your gardening interests to be more specific here instead.
Account
On the account tab, you can edit some things pertaining directly to your account, such as change your email address or password, whether you want to show up in the "Who's Online" display or not, and whether or not you participate in the Private Message system, and several other settings.
A few key items I want to point out here:
Conversation Detail Options
This area lets you customize whether you see users' avatars (the little picture under their name on the forum threads) and whether you see their signatures (blurbs at the bottom of each post they make). This is also where you can set your own signature!
The "Display Mode" let's you change the default option of how you view a thread. In "Posts" mode, when you click on a thread to view it, you will start from the very first page. In "Latest Activity", you will instead be presented with a latest-post-first view of the thread. Once in the thread, you can toggle back and forth between the two modes for that thread.
Date and Time Options
By default, you will be set to GMT/UTC. This is the time zone in which the server keeps time. I highly recommend you take a moment to change the "Time Zone" to your local time zone, otherwise, the times shown for posts in the forums will not match your local time. I also recommend you set the "DST Corrections" option to "Automatically detect DST settings" unless you live in an area that always observes DST or never observes DST.
Ignore List
Unfortunately, there may come a time where you and another user here at Tomato Talk just don't see eye to eye or otherwise get along. We're all individuals here and we have our own distinct opinions on things. This feature gives you a way to "ignore" posts and other content (including Private Messages) from other users if you never wish to see or interact with them.
Privacy
On this tab, you can configure moderation to subscribers to your profile. The forum lets you "subscribe" to other users. This is akin to "following" them on popular social media sites. Here, you can moderate this action so you can approve/deny who subscribes to your profile.
You can also control who sees certain data about your profile. There are three options for each data element:
Privacy Consent Status and Export Data
With some of the new laws being enacted around the world which establishes a "right to be forgotten", you can now download, at any time, the data we are keeping on you. This does not include post/thread content.
You can also uncheck the checkbox for "Privacy Consent Status" to request your account be completely deleted. There is a "three day cooldown" before your account will be deleted. Once deleted, any posts you made will remain, but the user info associated will be changed to "Guest".
Notifications
This tab is where you manage what types of events will notify you of updates. You can also configure if the forum will email you when one of these notifications is triggered. If you are getting a lot of emails from the forum due to having a lot of subscribed threads and such, then you can come here to turn them off entirely.
Automatic Subscriptions
When this option is enabled, you will be auto-subscribed to ever topic/thread in which you participate (such as posting a reply, creating a new topic, commenting on a post in a topic, voting in a poll, etc). If you are a heavy poster, I highly recommend you DO NOT turn this option on, and selectively subscribe to only the posts for which you really want to receive notifications.
Email Notifications
If you wish to be notified via email when notifications are triggered, you elect to do so here. This feature is OFF by default. You can choose to receive an email for each notification, or have them batched so that you only receive a single email once per day or once per week with all the notifications for that time period.
First ensure you have logged into the forums. If you see the words "Login or Sign Up" in the top right of the forums, you are not logged. Click that to enter your credentials and log in.
Once logged in, you should now see your User Name in the top right. Click that and you will be presented with a small menu of items. Click "User Settings"
Profile
The first tab is for your general profile.
Date of Birth
Here you can set your birthdate as well as how (and if) that is displayed in the forums.
Contact Information
If you wish to let others contact you directly via various Instant Messaging services, you can enter your handle here and select the respective service.
Web
If you have a personal website, you can enter it here and it will display to users when they view your Profile.
Biography
Just some basic details about you. Don't get too specific here, and please don't include anything too personal.
Location
Where do you live? A general geographic location - I would recommend not getting any more specific than City or County level.
Hardiness Zone
What zone are you growing in? For North American users, this is likely going to be your USDA hardiness zone number. For other users, this number may be different and more localized for you. This is free form text, so you could type in something like, for example "USDA 7b"
Interests
Do you have hobbies outside gardening/tomatoes? You can enter those here, or if you prefer, scope down your gardening interests to be more specific here instead.
Account
On the account tab, you can edit some things pertaining directly to your account, such as change your email address or password, whether you want to show up in the "Who's Online" display or not, and whether or not you participate in the Private Message system, and several other settings.
A few key items I want to point out here:
Conversation Detail Options
This area lets you customize whether you see users' avatars (the little picture under their name on the forum threads) and whether you see their signatures (blurbs at the bottom of each post they make). This is also where you can set your own signature!
The "Display Mode" let's you change the default option of how you view a thread. In "Posts" mode, when you click on a thread to view it, you will start from the very first page. In "Latest Activity", you will instead be presented with a latest-post-first view of the thread. Once in the thread, you can toggle back and forth between the two modes for that thread.
Date and Time Options
By default, you will be set to GMT/UTC. This is the time zone in which the server keeps time. I highly recommend you take a moment to change the "Time Zone" to your local time zone, otherwise, the times shown for posts in the forums will not match your local time. I also recommend you set the "DST Corrections" option to "Automatically detect DST settings" unless you live in an area that always observes DST or never observes DST.
Ignore List
Unfortunately, there may come a time where you and another user here at Tomato Talk just don't see eye to eye or otherwise get along. We're all individuals here and we have our own distinct opinions on things. This feature gives you a way to "ignore" posts and other content (including Private Messages) from other users if you never wish to see or interact with them.
Privacy
On this tab, you can configure moderation to subscribers to your profile. The forum lets you "subscribe" to other users. This is akin to "following" them on popular social media sites. Here, you can moderate this action so you can approve/deny who subscribes to your profile.
You can also control who sees certain data about your profile. There are three options for each data element:
- Everyone - this is all users, even those who are not logged in
- Members - this is all registered users
- Subscribers - only people who have "subscribed" to your profile
Privacy Consent Status and Export Data
With some of the new laws being enacted around the world which establishes a "right to be forgotten", you can now download, at any time, the data we are keeping on you. This does not include post/thread content.
You can also uncheck the checkbox for "Privacy Consent Status" to request your account be completely deleted. There is a "three day cooldown" before your account will be deleted. Once deleted, any posts you made will remain, but the user info associated will be changed to "Guest".
Notifications
This tab is where you manage what types of events will notify you of updates. You can also configure if the forum will email you when one of these notifications is triggered. If you are getting a lot of emails from the forum due to having a lot of subscribed threads and such, then you can come here to turn them off entirely.
Automatic Subscriptions
When this option is enabled, you will be auto-subscribed to ever topic/thread in which you participate (such as posting a reply, creating a new topic, commenting on a post in a topic, voting in a poll, etc). If you are a heavy poster, I highly recommend you DO NOT turn this option on, and selectively subscribe to only the posts for which you really want to receive notifications.
Email Notifications
If you wish to be notified via email when notifications are triggered, you elect to do so here. This feature is OFF by default. You can choose to receive an email for each notification, or have them batched so that you only receive a single email once per day or once per week with all the notifications for that time period.