Instructions for navigating messages and posting new messages:

1. There are three topics of postings. There is a separate forum for each of these topics. In addition, there is a forum where messages from Nuestros Ranchos since February 1, 2006 get automatically posted. You can access these messages by clicking on the “Forums” menu item on the top of the page and then selecting the appropriate forum.
2. You can Get a listing of your own postings by clicking on “My forum discussions”
3. You can see the topics with the most recent posts by clicking on “Active forum discussions”
4. You can search through topics in the forums (and files and albums) by typing in keywords in the search box at the top right corner of the page and clicking the “search” button.
5. You can Post a new topic by clicking on “Post new forum topic” or post a reply to a new forum topic by clicking on the “add new comment” link at the bottom of a topic or “Reply” at the bottom of an existing comment.
6. If posting a new topic, you will be required to select a forum to which it will be posted. You should not post to the YahooGroups forum as any messages posted to this forum will not be distributed to the mailing lists. This forum exists solely to make existing messages from YahooGroups available on the new site.
7. To post via email simply send an email (once you have signed up for the appropriate mailing list) to one of the following addresses: general@nuestrosranchos.org, research@nuestrosranchos.org, or announce@nuestrosranchos.org. Your message will automatically be posted the corresponding forum and distributed to those signed up for that list, as well as get posted on the YahooGroups website and get distributed to those signed up for that list.
8. Messages from the YahooGroups ranchos website from 2003 through January 2006 are also archived on the site. These messages can be accessed by clicking on the “Archives” menu item at the top of the page. These archives have a separate search index and thus results from this content will not appear when searching as in Step 4 above.

To upload genealogy or reference files:

1. Click on create content from the sidebar menu and click on “file folder” or...
2. Click on the “Files” menu item at the top of the page and then click on the “click here” link in the paragraph below the file categories.
3. Choose a descriptive title for the file folder, e.g. “Cristobal Magallanes Genealogy” or “Jalisco and Zacatecas census index”
4. Choose the category of file, i.e. member’s genealogy, reference material, books and articles
5. Type a description for the file folder contents in the text box “body.” This is what will become searchable by the site’s search engine so it is important for the description to have as many keywords as possible that someone might search for.
6. Scroll to the bottom, click on the browse button and choose the file to upload.
7. Edit Title and Description Fields and click "Add"
8. Repeat previous two steps for every file that is to go into the folder.
9. When finished attaching files, click on “Submit”