Registering & Using the Message Board

When you're logged in ..... in the top right corner you'll see ... Your Name, Users and Log out.

Click on Your Name .... You're taken to your editable profile page where you can add an avatar, make your email address available and other things that will show on your profile page. If you select the "make your email address available" option ..... it shows up as an envelope icon beside your name. People can click on that to send an email to you.

So .... it's up to the individual members to make their email addresses available.

Am I suposed to fill out the profile page? Right now Iam hopelessly confused, I guess I'm a slow learner and a bit of a techno phobe>

Just noticed that if you click on the envelope next to someone's name a window pops up to send a private e-mail WITHOUT giving the sendee's e-mail address.
That means only registered members can e-mail you.
It just gets better and better!

Just trying out putting in a video of where I live.

It couldn't be simpler as long as the video is flash-based and already online, such as YouTube.

If your flash movie (with the extension .swf) is on a different server besides YouTube (yours or someone else's) and you know the URL of the file then you can use the "Custom flash video" option and size it to your liking.

If your flash video is on YouTube then you get your code from the YouTube website by clicking the link below the video where it says "Share" or "Compartir" then select "Embed" or "Insertar", depending on your language. Be sure to select "Use old embed code" or "Utilizar el antiguo código de inserción". YouTube recently started using a new "iframe" code by default that will not work here. Highlight and copy the code. Then on this website click on the button that says "flash" to the right of the new message text area. A small window opens up with two options. Paste the code you copied from YouTube into the top option. Be sure the code you pasted begins and ends with the "object" tags, as it shows you in the window. After pasting your code, click the button that says "Insert flash video" and you're done! (If your video is on a different service other than YouTube the process should still be similar as for YouTube).

Tags:
how to, post, insert, include, video

Photos and other images can easily be included when posting or editing a message by clicking on the button to the right of the text field that says "image", then select "default" referring to the placement of the image. You can use the "Preview" option to see the appearence of your message before actually posting it. If you want the image to be located to the right or left of your text choose one of those options. Since I don't allow images to be uploaded to my website, the "thumbnail" options don't work.

TIP - You can also paste the image URL into your message first and THEN click the "image" button to the right and it will automatically insert the correct code to make an image from your URL.

You can include multiple images in your message by simply repeating the process.

Image files used on the internet will usually end in one of the following file types: .jpg (most common for photos), .png, .gif, or .bmp.

To include a photo or other image file in your message the image file must be already on the internet and accessible to the general public. You cannot link to an image file in your computer. Panoramio, Photobucket, Webshots, and Flickr are some of the more popular free photo sharing services where you can upload your image files for sharing with the public.

Be sure you link to the image file itself and not the webpage if you want a particular image to show in your message. If you want to link to the webpage where a photo or image is located then use the "link" option, not the "image" option.

To see the full URL (web address and file name) for any image file (except Shockwave/Flash and other video/movie files) on a PC you can usually right-click on the image in your browser and select "Properties" from the menu. On a Mac it depends on the browser, but usually you can open up a new tab and drag the image into the new tab and its URL will appear in the address bar, or else press Ctrl and click the image and select "View Image", then copy the url from your browser). Highlight and copy the URL (photos will usually end in ".jpg") and paste it into the field for the "Optional Image Link". If it's a photo and the URL you have does not end in one of the file types mentioned above then it probably isn't the correct URL (unless the file type ".jpg" or similar precedes a question mark "?" followed by some other characters, in which case it will probably work). Some web services don't allow hot-linking (linking to photos from their websites) in which case you have to use the "link" option to link to the page itself where the photo is in order to share it.

The Site Search Engine searches the rest of my website including the old Message Board Archives, but not within the new forum. The forum search feature only searches within this new forum.

Our man with the plan Scott has added a cool translation tool for both Spanish and English. To use this feature look in the lower right-hand corner of any message and click on the respective language link and the translated message will appear.

This feature is currently only available for individual messages in "Thread view", not "Table view".

Hi Rob,
I forgot my password and received a new one from the board but I want to change it to something I can remember well, try to remember! How is it that done?
Many Thanks,
Maggie

If you don't log in for over 6 months your account will be cancelled and you'll have to register again, so please remember to at least log in once in a while.

Rob is there any possibility that you could/would put a "Back to the forum index" link after the last of each thread's replies? Some of the threads have so many that they extend for nearly an entire screen, and it would be much quicker for readers to click said link...

One way to keep up with the latest posts is to select "Order by date of last reply" on the Message Board toolbar (the darker arrow will point down when this is selected). The Default is "Order by date of post" (with the darker arrow pointing up), so if you haven't changed it just click on it one time and see what is currently being discussed.

In case you never noticed, the Order control has two settings. Default is the messages appear in the order they were posted by date. The second option is the messages appear in the order of the most recent posting (my personal favorite).

The first setting is boring for me. You will miss a lot of what is going on even though the sidebar lists the ten most recent posts.

The second setting lets you keep up with all the active messages, even if someone replies to a message that is three months old.

Lots of folks using English keyboards ask how to type using accent marks. Of course there are several workarounds such as using the Character Map tool on PCs running Windows. However, Tony from Vancouver posted a helpful link (attaboy Tony!) that I thought would be a good idea to preserve here where it can be more easily found.

Holdkey is an easy-to-use freeware program that you might find useful: http://www.holdkey.eu/