If your box does not yet have any finds recorded on it, you can edit the listing and change the type of box directly.

If the box already has finds on it, you can contact an administrator who can change the box type manually.

If you reuse a stamp for a different box type, you should retire the old listing and create a new listing with the new type so people can record the type of box they actually found.

1. Click the Add Letterbox link from under the Letterboxes menubar option.
2. Type in a name and select the type of the letterbox, then click the Continue button.

At this point, you reach the main editing page. It shows all available settings currently available for the box along with links to edit the settings. The available settings will change depending on the type of box you are editing, whether it is a reserved box (or not), if you are the owner of the box, and so forth.

To edit a setting, use the pencil icon next to the setting you wish to change ().

Most settings you will likely leave in their default states, but a few of the settings you will probably update include:

• Location (only applicable for traditional boxes)
• Attributes (which vary depending on what type of box you are listing)
• Clue details

When you are done, click Save. Or, if you made a mistake and do not want to save, click Cancel.

If you are editing a setting that you want to save but wish continue to edit the listing, click the Change button. But remember, those changes will not be permanent until you click a Save button!

From your home page go to the my "My Page" tab upper right and go down to "Trackers". At the top of that page there are three options, click on Create Tracker. Then you need to fill in the blanks and click the appropriate buttons. Clicking the yellow pencil will open up the areas where you can add or change information.

Name it and Click "Postal" for "Type".

Pick a "Start Date" and and if it's going to be a Ring, make sure it's far enough in the future so others have time to complete their boxes (4-6 weeks). Since all Postal Ring Boxes should start on the same date, pick "send by date" for that option. If you're listing a Singleton, as soon as your box is ready you can mail it. You just need to put it far enough in the future to allow for maximum sign-ups.

Of course you'll need to pick a theme, or make it a potpourri--whatever you want. A theme should be something that there are several carve-able images available that others could choose from. You don't have to supply ideas, but some hots will include links to lists or suggestions.

At the next screen just ignore "Location" and move to "Max Signups." START SMALL seriously! Ten to 12 is a good place to start, it takes an average of one week per stop, so that equates to 3 months. A lot can happen in 3 months to cause life issues to impact a smooth running of a ring, especially during times when people are gone on vacation, or there's a pandemic.

"Status" click the pencil and your options come up. The default is "Open" which means anybody can sign up, but some will chose "Limited" and expect boxers to ask to join or solve a puzzle.

"Subtypes" chose "Ring" or “Singleton” depending on your preference as defined above.

"Attributes" pick whatever you decide to do that's on the list. You can pick more than one.

"Owner" will default to your name. "Admins" you can pick somebody who's helping you or leave blank.

"Restrictions" are only based on PFX numbers from traditional in-the-wild LBs. So if you set a restriction that limits to only those with 50 plants or finds, even though they have done 100s of Postals, they will not be able to see the listing and sign up for your box if they don't do much Traditional Boxing. A "Whitelist" is used by some to limit the number of boxers who can see the listing so only they can join--kind of the opposite of a blacklist. You can add or delete members as you wish.

"Description" this is like the clue. Basic rules you want joiners to follow, etc. You can look at some other listed Postal Trackers to get an idea of what others include.

When you're all done click "Publish" and it will show up on the website.

If you need to make a change just call up the listing and click on the yellow pencil, it is your friend. Warning: If you pick the wrong type, i.e. Traditional instead of Postal, you cannot change it after publishing. You will have to delete the tracker and start over.

First, never list someone else's letterbox on Atlas Quest without their permission. You'll save yourself a lot of grief if you remember this from the very start.

With that disclaimer out of the way, there's no dedicated 'import' feature. You simply list your letterbox like you would any other letterbox with the Add Letterbox option. Type in the name of the letterbox, location, attributes, and so on. The only thing you might do differently if your letterbox is already listed on LbNA or a personal website is the listing of the clue. There no sense in listing duplicate clues, so you can link your listing to your remotely-listed clue.

If your box is listed on LbNA, change the source of the clue to "Letterboxing.org" and type in the box number from that website.

If your box is listed on any other website, select the option for "Other Website" and type in the URL for where your clue is hosted. If you have control of the source HTML, you can surround the actual clue with <!-- aq --> and <!-- aq end --> on lines by themselves and AQ will cache just the clue itself without any navigation bars or other page elements.

From the Letterboxes column on the toolbar at the top of the AtlasQuest page, select Record Find. Type in the name of the letterbox and change the type to HH/cootie/flea (for hitchhikers) or traveler (for personal travelers). Search, type in the pertinent information and then hit the record find button at the bottom of the page.

It is also possible to record a find directly from the box details page of the box you found. Run a regular search like you normally would from the Simple Search page or Advanced Search page. Once you've found the listing for the box you found, use the "Record Find" button on that box's page.

There are several ways to more effectively search through many box listings to find the ones that you would like the most:

• Learn Atlas Quest's Advanced Search feature. This feature allows you to sort by hike length, by specific planters, only for hand carved, pet friendly, etc. If you change the search type to "area" you can even search for all the mysteries in a particular state. By changing the search type to "trip," that enables the trip planner search which allows you to search stretches along major highways and trails such as Interstates or the Appalachian Trail.
• Look for boxes that others have rated highly with Blue Diamonds icons.
• Look for boxes that planters have rated highly (of their own boxes) with Planter's Choice icons
• Do a search on that city and when it pulls up all the listings, hit the "map results" button in the upper right hand corner. It will give you a map of the locations of the boxes that are listed IF the planter gave the address.
• Contact a local boxer. Out of all the choices above, a local boxer is going to be the most knowledgeable. You can do this privately in an e-mail (you may notice a lot of boxes in an area planted by the same person) or publicly on the state message boards. Some areas also have developed clue guides with tips and boxes for specific frequently visited places in their area.

You can view a list of all of your finds in your logbook at https://www.atlasquest.com/people/logbook.html?action=finds. Change the 'type' to the type of box that you inadvertently recorded a find on, so if you wanted to remove a find on a traditional box, make sure you're viewing the page for traditional finds. Then click the "Remove Find" link on the find you'd like to remove.

There are a couple of main options:

• Reissue as a Singleton postal so that the log book can fill up.
• Retire the postal letterbox (change the status to "retired").

Once a postal is retired, you may choose to do a number of things with it:

• Plant it as a traditional or mystery box.
• Use it as a hitchhiker (if it is small).
• Have it become a personal traveler (particularly if it is something special to you that you don't want to risk losing).

In these three cases, you will need to create a new listing for the box. You cannot simply change the box type or delete the old listing, because this can cause confusion in the online logbooks. You may consider noting in the clues that it was previously a Postal Letterbox so that nearby postal finders can choose whether to hunt for a stamp they may have already received in the mail. Some people also opt to use a new logbook for the box rather than the one that traveled as part of the PLB.

The simplest, quickest, and most common search you'll likely run on the message boards is to look for posts with a specific keyword or phrase within the message. You can run this type of search from most any message board page just by entering the keyword in the search box in the upper-right corner of the page. For more advanced search options such as searching for posts by specific members, on specific boards, during a specific timespan, and more, use the dedicated Search Messages page.

A few things to know about keywords searches. First, searches are case-insensitive, so capitalization will not matter. Second, some common words are automatically ignored such as and, then, don't, etc. These are called stopwords, and the full list of stopwords used are:

a, ain't, all, am, an, and, any, aq, are, aren't, as, at, be, became, because, been, being, box, boxed, boxes, boxing, but, by, came, can, can't, cannot, cant, co, com, could, couldn't, did, didn't, do, does, doesn't, doing, don't, each, edu, eg, either, else, et, etc, even, ever, every, ex, far, few, for, further, get, gets, getting, given, gives, go, goes, got, had, hadn't, has, hasn't, have, haven't, having, he, he's, her, here, here's, hers, herself, hi, him, himself, his, how, however, i, i'd, i'll, i'm, i've, ie, if, in, inc, into, is, isn't, it, it'd, it'll, it's, its, let, let's, letterbox, letterboxed, letterboxer, letterboxers, letterboxes, letterboxing, many, may, maybe, me, mean, might, much, must, my, myself, no, non, none, nor, not, now, of, oh, ok, okay, on, only, onto, or, our, ours, park, per, re, really, seem, seemed, seeming, seems, seen, series, she, should, shouldn't, since, so, sub, sup, th, than, thank, thanks, thanx, that, that's, thats, the, their, theirs, them, then, there, there's, theres, these, they, they'd, they'll, they're, they've, this, those, though, thus, to, too, trail, un, up, us, value, very, via, was, wasn't, way, we, we'd, we'll, we're, we've, were, weren't, whether, which, while, why, with, won't, would, wouldn't, yes, yet, you, you'd, you'll, you're, you've, your, yours, yourself, yourselves

Any word you attempt to search for in this list will be ignored.

Search Operators

By default, Atlas Quest will return all searches that include one or more of the keywords you specify. You can, however, change that behavior through the use of operators. Supported operators include:

Operator	Result
+	A leading plus sign indicates that this word must be present in every post returned.
-	A leading minus sign indicates that this word must not be present in any post returned.
( )	Parentheses are used to group words into subexpressions
*	An asterisk is the truncation operator. Unlike the other operators, it should be appended to the word, not prepended.
"	A phrase that is enclosed in double quotes matches only posts that contain the phrase literally, as it was typed.
@distance	Tests tests whether two or more words all start within a specified distance from each other, measured in words. Specify the search words within a double-quoted string immediately before the @distance operator.
<>	These two operators are used to change a word's contribution to the relevance value that is assigned to a row. The > operator increases the contribution and the < operator decreases it.

Examples

Search	Results
apple banana	find posts that contain at least one of these words
+apple +juice	find posts that contain both words
+apple -macintosh	find posts that contain the word “apple” but not “macintosh”
+(apple banana) -macintosh	find posts that contain “apple” or “banana”, but not “machintosh”
apple*	find posts that contain “apple”, “apples”, “applesauce”, “applet”, etc.
"some words"	find posts that contain “some words of wisdom”, but not “some noise words”
"word1 word2 word3" @8	finds posts that contain the words “word1”, “word2” and “word3”—BUT only if all three words are located within 8 words of each other.
+apple +(>turnover <strudel)	Find rows that contain the words “apple” and “turnover”, or “apple” and “strudel” (in any order), but rank “apple turnover” higher than “apple strudel”.

First, make sure that the account is independent of all other accounts on AQ. If it's a sub-account of an already-existing account, spin it off into an independent account.

Second, start adding other independent accounts as sub-accounts. Accounts that are already a primary account to other sub-accounts or other sub-accounts cannot be added without first being turned into independent accounts.

To spin-off an account, change the "account type" to "spin-off."

Depending on your needs, there are several methods to look up clues for personal travelers.

• If you want to look up the personal travelers for an individual member, pull up their logbook and change the page to view their planted personal travelers.
• If you are attending an event, the active personal travelers of other letterboxers who are attending the event will be displayed in a list near the right side of the event listing, just below the event details. If you are logged in, personal travelers that you have already recorded as finds will automatically be suppressed so you can focus on the ones you have not yet acquired.
• If you want to browse through a generic list of personal travelers, try using the Advanced Search page. Be sure to check that the search type is set to Traveler.

Once you're in the chat room, you can type messages to send to others in the chat room in that long box near the bottom of the page and click "Send" when it's done. To exit the chat room, click the "Exit Room" link in the upper-right corner of the room. To open another page to continue visiting other places on Atlas Quest such as the message boards or to check your AQ mail, clicking on the AQ logo in the upper-left corner of the page will open My Page in a separate window.

Then there are the two control buttons at the very bottom of the page to allow the chat messages to auto-scroll or to be notified of whenever someone enters the chat room.

You'll also find a row of colors near the bottom right corner of the page. You can change your color by clicking on the color you are interested in.

The Billboard widget is something of a cross between the message boards (where what you type will stick around essentially forever) and a chat room (where the messages are as fleeting as the duration you're in the chat room). By default, you'll only see the last ten messages posted to the billboard, and only if they had been posted within the past 24 hours. You can change these defaults by clicking the 'Edit Preferences' link, the small pencil in the title bar (). The maximums allowed show 99 messages posted within the past 99 hours. The messages posted to the billboard are temporary in nature, and there is no mechanism provided to review or archive old messages.

This widget is a premium member perk, so you must be a premium member to add it to My Page. The messages are public that essentially anyone may read, so you are expected to conduct yourself just like you would in a chat room or on the message boards. Moderators can delete messages that they feel are inappropriate.

One use where this widget may be useful is to ask questions that you don't want to last for eternity on the message boards, such as, "How do I record a find on an unlisted box?" You might get an answer just as fast as by posting on the message boards, but the conversation essentially deletes itself after a period of time keep the message boards less cluttered with constantly repeated questions. Or you could just root for your favorite sports team, or wish everyone a happy holiday.

The widget does not auto-refresh, but it will update whenever you post a message, open My Page, or click the "Refresh" link in the title bar. The refresh link is the green, circular arrow in the title bar of the widget. ()

It is possible to ignore a specific member who posts to the widget. Use the Ignore Member option on that person's profile. The same settings used for ignoring a member in the chat room will also be used to ignore them on the billboard widget.

The vast majority of the time, it's because you recorded finds on incorrectly listed letterboxes and those incorrect listings were fixed.

The two most commonly found incorrect listings are:

• Multiple stamps in a single letterbox are listed as individual boxes. When we find these, we usually delete the extra listings--along with any finds you had on them. We count found boxes, not found stamps.
• Boxes are listed in the incorrect category, such as an event box that's listed as a traditional letterbox. When we find these kind of problems, we usually convert the box into the correct type. In this case, however, your traditional box F-count would go down by the same amount your event box F-count goes up.

The thing to keep in mind isn't that your F-count went down--it's that your F-count was inaccurate and was corrected. Just because you might record a thousand incorrect finds and they later get deleted, your real F-count hasn't changed. Your AQ count, however, will be different, as they should never have been in your logbook to begin with.

If you're recording finds and you see either of these types of problems in a listing, tell the owner of the box! Let them know that it's not right and give them an opportunity to fix the problem. And whatever you do, don't record a find on an invalid listing. If you're a premium member, you can accurately record your find as an unlisted box. If the listing is incorrect, that is, in fact, the only correct way to record your find. If an administrator has to step in and fix the problem, your find counts won't change like it would if you had recorded finds on invalid box listings to begin with.

Go to your logbook and change to the page with your find by adjusting the Action and Box Type drop down menus as needed.

Then click the delete icon () and confirm your deletion.

If you want to delete someone else's find on one of your boxes, there is no way to do that except to ask the finder to remove their find.

Doing a lot of Postal Trackers can become overwhelming. Keeping track of start dates, mailing lists, etc. Theoretically you could have four different types of Postal Trackers to keep track of and multiples of each one all at the same time. This level of involvement is not recommended for newbies. The four types are: Singles you list that others sign up for, Singles you sign up for that others list, Rings you list that others join, and Rings that others list that you join.

You can pick and label a tab for each of these 4 kinds of Postals. On the Tag chart that automatically shows up on each Tracker’s page, you can change the wording and assign a category for each type of Tracker you are in. Premium members have more options for tagging.

When you sign-up for a tracker it automatically goes to UNTAGGED category. From there you check on a defined tag and it only shows up under that category. You always have to remember to click on “Save Changes” once you’ve assigned a tag to make the assigned tab stick.

Label your tabs like this:
SINGLES I LISTED
SINGLES INCOMING from OTHERS
RINGS I STARTED
RINGS I've JOINED

Also consider tabs labeled (remember Premium Members have more options):
COMPLETED (Stop Sign)
NAUGHTY LIST
Something has gone wrong and there is a short delay
BLACKHOLED (8 Ball)
Something has gone horribly wrong and I will never see this again.

So when a tracker is done, completed successfully and you no longer need to keep track of it, check the COMPLETED tag and make sure to uncheck the original tag it was listed as. Save the changes and that listing will go into an archive of all your completed trackers.

You can also use the tags to label trackers for LTCs to do and LTCs done and sent; and Traditional Trackers you’ve signed up for stamp donations.

There is a Countdown Widgetyou can add on your home page where you can add items with due dates and keep an eye on upcoming deadlines. There is also a Calendar Widget that automatically puts things you've signed up for on a calendar grid, including events, all types of boxes, LTCs etc. It puts a little icon on the date that you can hover over and read what's happening on that day.