The majority of Reddit content focuses around funny images, memes and videos. However, Reddit also has a very strong culture around news, politics and people helping one another out.

Unlike most other social bookmarking sites, Reddit has a very strong sense of community. Reddit users call themselves “redditors” and share a strong bond around the site.

The site’s user base tends to be liberal and democratic group, though there are occasional posts by conservatives that gets voted to the top.

Using Reddit is easy. There are just a few main features to be aware of and once you get the hang of the interface, you can spend hours and hours and hours on the site without getting bored.

Upvoting and Downvoting

 

The site revolves around upvoting and downvoting. Anytime you see a post you see that you like, click the up button. Anytime you see a post you dislike, click the down button. The numbers between the buttons represents its current upvote to downvote ranking.

 

Sub-Reddits

 

Reddit is broken down into self-organized groups called sub-reddits. Sub-reddits are basically mini-reddits that have their own community, rules and topics.

Anytime you submit a post, it should be filed under the relevant sub-reddit. Anytime you want to find a specific kind of post, you easily find them by going to that sub-reddit.

To switch sub-reddits, click one of the listed sub-reddits in the top bar.

 

If you know the exact name of a sub-reddit, you can also find it by typing reddit.com/r/ followed by the name of the sub-reddit.

Browsing Posts

 

There are four different ways to sort posts on reddit: By what’s hot, what’s new, what’s controversial and the top voted. You can use each of these sorting methods for all of reddit overall, or any sub-reddit.

 

To switch sorting methods, just click on that method’s tab.

Here’s what each of them mean:

What’s Hot: This is basically a mix of newer posts and posts with high rankings. It updates very frequently, meaning you can check by several times a day and see new things.

New: These are the newest posts. Usually they don’t have many votes yet, so it tends to be a mixed bag of good posts and bad posts.

Controversial: Posts that have a lot of disagreeing opinions. Useful for sorting through news or other fact-based posts.

Top: The highest ranked posts for any given period.
Once you’re in a specific sorting method, you can choose what time period you want to see posts for. For example, in “Top,” you can see the highest ranked posts for this hour, for today, for the week, the month or all time.

 

Comments

 

Comments play a large role in the Reddit experience. People share their own stories related to the post, comment on the post and often have high level debates on the topic.

Comments can range from very informed to uninformed, from hilarious to serious.

To view any post’s comments, click the “Comments” button under any post.

 

Much like Reddit itself, comments can be sorted by hot, new, controversial, old or best (top.)

To post your own comments, just type your message in the comment box and click “save.”

Submitting a Post to Reddit

 

To submit a post to reddit, click “Submit a Link” on the right sidebar.

 

Choose whether you want to submit a link to somewhere else on the internet, or create a text post on Reddit.

 

If you’re submitting an internet post, fill out the post name, the URL and the sub-reddit it should be submitted to.

 

If you’re making a text post on Reddit, choose a title, enter the text and choose a sub-reddit.

Those are the basics of how to use Reddit. You’ve learned how to sort posts, how to use sub-reddits, how to use the commenting system, how to upvote and downvote and submit your own posts.