Hi Robert,
Sorry for the delay in replying...
You say you looked at the help. Were you not able to use the back button to get back
to what you had typed - I just tried and had no problems but it is not a fail safe method.
If you are writing a long post, write it in a text editor (e.g. Notepad, Xemacs, Ultraedit),
spell check it if you want and then copy and paste it into a message.
As for the smilies, you can insert them anywhere in a post by either clicking on the
"Clickable Smilies box to the left of where you enter your message OR you can use the
shortcut characters (if you know them) e.g. ": D" gives , ": )" gives (there should be
no space inbetween the colon and "D" / ")"
Oh and pinned messages are ones that are deemed important and are thus placed at
the top of the forum so as to be easily seen.
Cheers
Neil