Introduction to SMART Recovery® Online

Welcome!

This page will introduce you to the FOUR AREAS that make up SMART Recovery® Online. Our online community provides resources for learning, online meetings, and addiction recovery support.

1. SMART Messageboard | 2. Online Library | 3. Text Chat Meetings | 4. Voice Chat Meetings

1. SMART Recovery® Online Messageboard

The SMART Recovery Online Community is quite extensive, so don’t expect to grasp it all right away! Be patient and look your way around.

The main sections of the SMART Recovery Online Community are:

Welcome to SMART (Feel free to introduce yourself in this section)

Discussions and Tools (This area is for any recovery or tool-related discussion)

Specialized Group Forums and Peer Support Groups

Social Forums

Register here for the SMART Recovery Messageboard

Registration to the Messageboard also enables access to the on line meetings.

2. SMART Recovery® Online Library

The SMART Recovery Online Library is an excellent place to study SMART concepts, or Tools, which are the cornerstone of the SMART philosophy. Within this area of the site, Tools and Homework is a useful place to start.

The tools and concepts are discussed extensively in the online meetings, in chat, and on the message board, so feel free to dig in and get a head start, if you choose!

Many people who come to SMART start by doing a Cost-Benefit Analysis of their addiction.

3. Text Chat Room and Online Meetings

The SMART Chat Room is open 24 hours per day, seven days a week. Because our members are all over the world, there is almost always someone in the chat room. You may find a casual or joking atmosphere when you enter the room. However, if you have issues or want information, just tell us. SMART members and volunteers alike will be glad to help you.

Please Note: Registration on the Messageboard is required for access to the Chat Rooms!

Once you are registered and logged into the Message Board, you can easily find the entry to the chatroom just below the banner on the left, as shown below.

To enter a room click the Dropdown menu that says
SMART Recovery Chat & Meeting Rooms

Then go to the menu item SMART Meeting Rooms

Entering a Room

Log in first as an user from the message board and wait a moment until all rooms are loaded. Move your mouse over the rooms and you will see them be highlighted one by one. Stop at the desired room on the list and Click to enter.

Each room has user limit. If a room is full for the time being, you will be told to come back later.

Exiting a Room

When you finish chatting, or when you want to quit one room to enter another, you can click the top button “exit room” to quit the current room.

If you choose to close the browser directly, you will close the chat client. If you just click “quit”, you will return to the room list and you can enter another room.

Chatting General

Sending messages After selecting a room to enter, you can type a message in the chat input field near the bottom of the screen and hit “enter” on keyboard or the button “send” to send the message out. Your message appears on the chat screen followed your nickname.
Press ctrl+”enter” or clicking “Newline” button to start a new line. Multiple empty lines cannot be sent.

Idle status /typing status After a duration of time when a user remains silent both in public and in private window if any, his/her status will be automatically changed to “idle”. The time length is defined by the administrator. When idle user begin talks, the idle status disappear automatically.

When user begins to type, whether in public or in private window, the speaker and other people in the same chatroom will see a “typing” status after his or her name, hitting “send” button will make the “typing” status disappear automatically.

Interval between two utterances. Please wait a while before sending another message. This pause is for preventing flooding on screen. This value is defined by administrator and the default value is one second.

Ignore If there is any repulsive chatter in the room, simply select his username in the user-list and click “Ignore” from the popup menu. From then on, every message from this chatter, whether private or public, will not appear on your screen. The admin and moderator can’t be ignored.

When you changed your mind, you can re-select this user and “Cancel ignore” to give this user the second chance to talk to you.
If you continued to post message to someone but got no response, you are probably ignored by him or her.

ActionThe “/me” command is used to describe an action. Your nickname will automatically be inserted and the text will appear differently than normal channel messages. This command can be used in chat lobby or private messages.

For example: “/me waves goodbye.” then it will display on the screen:”<someone> waves goodbye.” The “/me” command has to be at the beginning of a sentence to be effective.

Cached messagesOnce a user enters a room, about 5 of the last messages will display in current chat window to give the newcomer a brief picture of the conversation which is going on, in gray color or other predefined color. The number of entries of messages is configured by admin.

Chat bot MessageWebmaster may define some canned messages to broadcast to specific room or all rooms at certain intervals, for site news or text advertisement.

Top buttons

Enable/Disable ScrollingNew messages come in from the bottom of the screen. As new messages come in, old messages will scroll off the top of the screen. And only a certain amount of lines can appear in your chat box, the previous history will be automatically cleared to ensure the chatting speed.

You may want to stop the fast scrolling and stick to one position, then click the “scroll” button and you can stay where you are. Click the button again to start scrolling all over again.

Enable/Disable SoundThe Administrator can enable or disable sounds in a room as default setting, and every regular user can change the setting to personal preference using the top buttons.

In a chatroom, if you want to be notified of any occurrence, like someone says something, someone enters or leaves the room etc., enable the “sound” button so that even if you left the chat window, you know what’s going on in this room. On the other hand, if you feel all the sounds are annoying, please click the speaker icon to disable sound and mute the whole room.

Your setting only affects your own chat. Once you logged out, this setting will restore to default. This “sound” button controls all the sound effects in a chatroom, if you just want to enable/disable one particular sound, you can configure in “option” panel instead.

History There are two methods to access conversation history panel. You can click the “history” button to open conversation history easily. or you can check chat history in option panel: options->Save message history on server-> view.

By default, you have 100kb space for chat logs, but surely you can set it larger or smaller in option panel, according to your hardware performance. Once this 100kb is filled up with chat logs, it will stop recording further messages. So please periodically backup chat logs.

Once logged out, your chat log will be cleared. So if the conversation is very important to you, please remember to save it before you leave.

Clear screenPress this button to clear all messages on your screen.

Exit RoomClick the “exit” button to exit current room.

Middle Toolbar

Change Avatar

There is a toolbar above the input area with many options. You can select an avatar to express your feeling or your style by clicking on the icon and choosing from the nail-up panel. One avatar for one message, you can’t have over 2 avatars at once.

The avatar you chose will appear in 3 places: before your words both in public and in private, and before your name in the user list.

Bold Font The “B” icon represents bold text. You don’t have to highlight any words in your message to change it bold, just click this “B” icon and the whole message becomes bold. Click it again to restore it back to normal text.

Italic Font The “I” icon represents italic text. You don’t have to choose any words in your message to change it to italic, just click this “I” icon and your message becomes italicized. Click it again to change it back to normal text.

Underline Font The “U” icon represents underlined text. You don’t have to choose any words in your message to change it to underlined, just click this “U” icon and your message becomes underlined.
Click it again to change it back to normal text.

Font Color The color block beside “U” icon is for selecting colors. Once a color is selected from the color-picker , the whole message will change to this color. Sorry you can’t have 2 or more colors in one message.

Smileys

Use this button to add an animated smiley face into your conversation. Smileys and text can mix together.

Tip: Smileys can also be inserted into the chat using a shortcut, like ““= smile. Check the smiley shortcut list.

Change Background
Backgrounds are available for you to choose. The skin is chosen by administrator while the background is up to you. Click the “change background” icon and you’ll see available backgrounds.

Predefined Message

Frequently greeting or answers can be predefined by clicking this button. The canned messages can be added or removed, use the arrow to change the pages. Double click to choose one sentence and put it to the input area.

Note: If any of the mentioned buttons disappear, it’s not your fault, it’s simply been disabled by your webmaster.

Room Password

Entering Room Administrators can create a password-protected room.
In the room list, you will see this kind of room start with a locked-room icon instead a normal room icon.
When chat members or guests click this room , a popup dialogue will ask for password.
Access to the room is available by supplying the proper password.

Changing Room When you change to a password-protected room, a popup dialogue will ask for password.
Enter the password and you are in.

Private Window

Chatters are able to open a private window to any other chatter in the same channel to talk one on one, unless admin disabled this feature.
Private Chat is monitored too and recorded in message log.

There is a user list at the right of the chat box.
Click any username you like, the background color of the chosen username will change and a mini menu popup with “private” button in it. (Click “All Users” at top to release the status to talk only to particular person.)
Click the “private” button, then a private window is activated between you and the recipient.
If you choose a user name but no such “private” option comes out, probably you’ve chosen your own ID
Or you can double click a username to activate a private window with him or her.
Click the “minimize” button at the top menu of private window to shrink it to a single bar, or click the “maximize” button to extend it to original size.
Click the top bar of the private window to activate a different private chat window.
Click the top bar of private window and drag, you can move it around.
Click the right-top “close” button to close this private chat window.

If the party you’re private chatting with exits the current room, your private chat will continue. If the other person disconnects, you’ll be notified that he has logged out, but the private window remains and you can still read your conversation.

User can change setting in the option panel to refuse to accept private window in case he or she want to be left alone.

Option Panel

Click the top button”option” and you’ll launch “option panel “.; Explore it and you’ll find a lot of interesting features: switch from multiple-line to single-line mode, enable/disable converting smiley symbols to graphic animation, remember username/ password in cache, personal sound settings, save history log in memory, etc.