Forum Fun and tips

[beetle8]

Hello Everyone,
I have recently become a huge fan of forums and am a member of a bunch. If there is a topic or hobby you are interested in chances are there is a forum for it, filled with tons of great people and info.
In this post I will offer up what little info, tips and help I have.

My first one is for the avatar. Most forum hosts will allow you to have a personal avatar that will show up next to all your post. However most also do not provide the storage fot the image due to the space required.

:DSo if anyone is interested in having an avatar you can email me your picture and I will edit it (if necasary, or desired) and host it on my site indefinately for anyone who wants it. I have unlimited storage so if you decide you'd like a new one just let me know, or you could keep a couple and change them up ocaisionally, for the season or the mood whatever. ;D

After I get it up on my site I'll give you the "url" and all you have to do is copy and paste it in the apropriate location in your profile page.

[pamway]

Keith,

That's a great idea! Thanks for offering. Pam wanted to put a picture in but it said something about having to take the picture from a website or a url in order to insert. I'm certain that once the rest of the team reads of your generous offer that we'll have pictures flying around the site. You are doing exactly what we want to see on this forum; helping, exchanging ideas, learning, posting news, etc. Thanks again.

Wayne <><

[pamway]

Keith,

You seem to be a bit more computer literate than the rest of us so maybe you could explain what the words 'exalt' and 'smite' mean in our profiles. They seem to be clickable. I don't have them in mine. Also, what does 'karma' mean? Thanks.

Wayne <><

[beetle8]

pamway said:

Keith,

You seem to be a bit more computer literate than the rest of us so maybe you could explain what the words 'exalt' and 'smite' mean in our profiles. They seem to be clickable. I don't have them in mine. Also, what does 'karma' mean? Thanks.

Wayne <><

It seems as though all three of these ar interconected.
-click exalt if you feel someone has brought forward a good point or done a good thing.
-click smite if you think they've done wrong or bad
-both will tally as your karma score

[beetle8]

Here's a quick, fun, useful tip
Adding a picture to your post can help you ilustrate a point or just help you share with the comunity.
Here's how you do it:
First of all you need to write your post in the advanced submission box and not the quick reply box. This means click the reply button under a post or when you open a new thread you get to this box automatically.
The picture needs to be on the web already, this can be any picture that is already on the web or if you have a place to host images you can put it there first then follow the steps below.
1 Find the picture you want to install in your post. I usually do this in a seperate window so I can click back and forth to the forum.
2 Right click on the picture, at the bottom of the window that appears is the word properties,-click- on properties.
3 In the following box you will see Address (URL) and it will look like this- www.londonderryalert.org/images/LineCrew.jpg
highlight the address and right click, then copy.
4 Now back in your post window in the add tags box second row fourth button you'll see a picture button, -click- that and it will install the image tags into your post there will be a beginning tag and an ending tag they look like this ( img][/img ) (only I've removed the first and last bracket so they don't end up as code.)
5 Now put your cursor between the two image tags, right click and select paste.
6 -click- post reply/post message and you'll see your picture in the thread.

[beetle8]

Links in the forum:
I gave the info about installing the image in a post with out telling you about the details, so here they are. If you don't want to know the gory details about what makes things work you can skip this paragraph. The add tags area is just a convenient way of installing code tags. they could just as efectively be typed into the post. I beleive the type of code that this forum suports is called UBB but I'm not sure, some take HTML and blah blah, the point is you need these tags to let the forum know that you are going to do something other that type in normal text.

By clicking one of the buttons it automatically installs the beginning and ending code tags for you. To acomplish the coresponding result. In all of the examples below I have changed the beging [ to a { so that the code is visible

To put a link into your post you'll need to use the hyperlink tags [url} between these is where you put the web adress you want to link[/url]if the addres is inserted between the brackes as above it would look like this in your post alertld.proboards42.com/index.cgi?board=general&action=post&thread=1203428772&page=1

A more atractive way would be to have specifit text linked, that would be done like this.
{url=www.special_Place.com]Specific Text[/url] notice now that the address is after an = within the first bracket and the linked text is between the brackets, in your post it would look like this.
Specific Text

All of these things are easier than they look and sound (obviously... if I'm doing it)
It's definately easier than trying to explain to someone how to get somewhere. When you can just say " Hey go look at MY WEB SITE

[beetle8]

You'll notice two areas in the forum that help with navigation.
Top left and bottom right.
Top left is the trail, "I dont really know what it's called" but it's there and you can click on any point of that to quickly retrace how you got to where you are. It's only good for going backwards.
Then bottom right is the forum jump, a drop down menu that lists the different categories and forums on the page. This will become more handy when there is more then one category/forum on the page.