Welcome!
We’re excited to share the new home for our forums! You’ll find the look, structure, and functionality is a bit different. We hope you settle in quickly and comfortably, aided with a few resources we are providing: this post, the Discobot tour guide, and our User Guides.
You can find more details further below, but some quick points for those in a hurry:
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To make a new topic enter a forum category or sub category such as Plex Media Server or, Plex Players or whichever you think most applies to the topic you want to discuss. You will see a new topic button at the top when inside the category. If you don’t know what category is most appropriate then post in General Discussions
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The forum username is now separate from your regular Plex account username and it may have changed. You can update your forum username in your Forum Account Preferences.
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A username can be used to ping other users by putting the
@in front of their username like @discobot -
Make sure you review our Forum Guidelines for rules, etiquette, etc.
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Discobot can help you get your bearings through a tour of the new forums. Start by sending a private message to Discobot.
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Tagging of topics will be very important in the new forums. Make sure you select appropriate tags (from the predefined list) when creating a topic.
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We’re starting with a clean slate for file attachments. Many investigations will require that client and/or server logs be provided. See our guide about Posting Log Files.
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The new forums bring many new features and functionality. More info below.
So, What’s up with the New Forum?
Forum Roles
There are different group roles a user on the forum might have. This section describes a few of those role titles and what the shield badge means.
Titles
- Plex Employee: Full time Plex employees.
- Team Member: Part time employee contractors
- Ninja: Very knowledgable Non-Employee User that can communicate with employees outside of forum.
Moderator Shield Badges
The shield badge next to a user name means that user is a forum moderator. That will enforce rules, reply to flags and such. You can view a list of moderators and admins on the About Page. Not all of the above Title roles will be a moderator.
New Forum Usernames
We’re separating your forum user identity from your regular Plex account, giving you the option of having a different username for the forums than what you use elsewhere in Plex. One notable difference with our new forum platform is that it has stricter guidelines for usernames—not allowing spaces, special characters, or email addresses. If your username contains any of those, our new forum will replace them with allowed characters (spaces become underscores), however you can change it without affecting your Plex username. You can review and change your forum username in your Forum Account Preferences.
Get to know Discobot & the guides
Discobot is your helpful forum tour guide. Since it’s a “bot”, you can get in touch at any time by sending a private message to Discobot. After several seconds, you’ll get a reply from with an introduction and a (not so) subtle hint at what your next action should be: bookmark the personal message. Next starts your hands-on tour of the basic functionalities in our forum. It’s a bit of a choose your own adventure in that you can start, pause, continue, or stop at any time. Just follow along with the prompts and remember you can always send @discobot display help in your private message thread.
In addition to Discobot, we’ve put together a collection of User Guides that go into more detail on certain core functions of our new forum platform. It’s meant to be a growing collection, so if there’s a topic you would like to see added, connect with us in Forum Feedback.
Tagging
We now use a combination of categories and tags to help broaden the context of topics without adding noise, spam, or details that would otherwise dilute their value. While a topic can only live inside of a single category, it can contain multiple tags that best describes its contents. Using standardized tags that are logically created based on all the different Plex Media Server platforms, player platforms, and features, users can mix and match tags to more precisely describe their topic while improving discoverability and searchability across the forums. The available tags are predefined by Plex staff, so you don’t need to worry about guessing, typos, incorrect tags, or spammy tags. To ensure usage of tags, it is required to use at least 1 tag in many categories. Tags are easy to use. You can search in any tag field and you’ll be given suggestions after only a few letters. For more info on how to use tags, check out our Tagging your Topics guide.
Logs & File Attachments
To give everyone a clean slate, we did not migrate file attachments in posts over to the new forum platform. All embedded content, such as screenshots shown in-line in posts, was migrated over. Posting log files in the forums can be vital in getting help and aiding others in troubleshooting your issue. To be clear, posting logs in the forums is optional and we want you to be aware of what kinds of information is shared when you provide your log files. That said, some issues cannot be investigated without logs to review. You can read more information in our Posting Log Files guide.
Forum Guidelines
The Plex community includes users from all corners of the globe and spans many cultures and languages, so it’s a good idea to ensure we’re all engaging in a kind, considerate, and respectful way. We’ve updated our Forum Guidelines to reflect our core values as a community and to include tips for how to make the forums a better place.
Some New Features
Our new forum platform is loaded with many new features, improved functionality, and snappier performance—some of which you’ll discover by PMing Discobot and reading the User Guides. Here’s a quick look at some of the features to get excited about:
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Posting, refined: Write using the new posting drawer. Its expandable and retractable, to let you control your screen space. No need to worry about losing data, it auto-saves as you type. Get a real-time preview of your post with formatting, or dismiss it to reclaim the space. You can reply to a topic while reading and quoting another thread—without losing your progress. See who is typing in real-time and load replies (and their edits) dynamically even as you write, without refreshing.
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Dynamic topics for improved reading & interactions: Replies load dynamically without needing page refreshes. Quickly jump to any point in time with the slider. See useful activity stats and get quick access to links referenced throughout the replies. Summarize longer topics with estimates of reading times provided. You can highlight to quote or respond to a specific reply and nested replies are expandable and collapsible.
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Fine-tuned control of notification subscriptions: Take control of how and where you are notified with easy, fine-grained tools. Subscribe to categories, tags, or topics. Simple options for watching, tracking, and muting exist. Use search to quickly look up topics based on your subscription option. Learn more in our Managing your Notification Subscriptions guide.
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Smart search for cutting out the noise: Smart search, made easy. Get more accurate suggestions, combine a category and tag, and use any of the helpful search options to refine your results to cut out the noise and get to what interests you the most. Get the details in our Using Advanced Search guide.
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Improved flagging to keep things clean and on-topic: Simple, clear, and actionable flagging options are available at your disposal to help keep the community clean and on-topic. No need to guess which flag to use and what will happen; the tool provides explanations for everything and our Flagging Posts guide is also here to help.
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Fresh Themes: Viewing comfort, readability over long periods of time, and a pleasant look were priorities in designing the new themes. Our new Plex Light theme is the default. It’s a cleaner, brighter look that shouldn’t appear blinding or cause eye strain. We know there are many users who prefer a dark theme, so we’re also including Plex Dark. It aims to provide a high contrast look that fits in well in dark environments. You can pick which theme you want to use and set it as your default in the Interface settings in your Forum Profile.
Let us Know
We’d like to know what you think of our new community forum. Connect with us over in Forum Feedback. Now, poke around and have some fun!
