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Arcadia's Helpful Forum Hints

PostPosted: Sat Nov 11, 2006 12:44 am
by Et in Arcadia ego
Hope these help you guys out. Any questions, holler at me.

Cheers,
D

A few quibbles and niggles

PostPosted: Sun Nov 12, 2006 2:57 pm
by Seamus OBlimey
Was gonna start a thread but then thought better, maybe you A. can let Jeff know how to sort these out quicker than he can work it out for himself.

First, I've noticed the Video Links Only thread has not been fully updated from EZ. Missing is from page 26 (10/25/06 12:45 pm) to end of page 27. There's a few posts on the new forum so could the missing old ones be inserted?
The same is probably still true of the Images Only thread but I haven't checked recently.

Next, Could links in posts be displayed in another colour or at least underlined? They're just not obvious enough in plain text. Surely it's just a style sheet edit?

And, The page Header, Ugh! That's the first thing anyone sees of the forum but it's totally unbalanced! Jeff's a pretty good artist (I'm presuming the blog pics are his own work) so it shouldn't be too difficult to make a banner incorporating the name rather than use the ugly default text. Or at least put a picture on the right and centre the text?

All more or less aesthetic quibbles and not the kind of problems you can solve but it's good of you to offer to take on some slack. I'm sure Jeff will get around to my second and third suggestions in time but for the sake of completion I don't want the first to be forgotten. Especially if it's happened on other threads.

Cheers!

PostPosted: Sat Nov 18, 2006 2:13 am
by Et in Arcadia ego
Ok, temporarily bypassing Seamus' issues, I'd like to give a few new people to this kind of forum a few quick and dirty tricks.

1st: As an original poster, you have the ability to delete your own threads. I need to test this against if other posters have made contributions, but I know for a fact that if you start a new thread, and there's no other posts, you can safely delete it.

2nd: As the Original Poster(OP, for future refference), you have the ability at ANY TIME to go BACK to your original thread starting post and edit it's Thread name.

3rd: Many members do not have their own online Server space, and often ask about how to upload images, or hotlink from other sites.

3a: If you cannot upload your image to your own webserver, you can use free image hosting services like ww.imageshack.com. You'll need to register, but it's free, etc, and once there, you're given a gracious upload capacity, ie: you can upload lotsa files, IF they are web-Optimed(subject for a new post). Once you register with imageshack, you can then upload to it from your own machine. When this is finished, you can then select the image and you'll be given 3 sets of pre-written code to post into the area sensitive to sharing your image(forum, myspace, etc). Copy the code, paste it into your post, and that's it. You *may* end up with a smaller(ie: thumbnail) version of the image that will expand upon clicking on.

3b: To grab images from your own webserver and/or from another site(hotlinking), all you have to do is get to the actual image, right click and slelect, "Copy Image Location".

Come back here to your post, and you have a couple different ways to make it appear in your post.

A - You can do it by hand, which requires the following code BEFORE AND AFTER YOUR IMAGE LOCATION:

[img]paste%20your%20copied%20image%20location%20address%20here[/img]

B - If you're a quick enough triple-clicker, you can grab the whole location address after you paste it into your post. This will select the entire image location address, and then you simply hit the "Img" button that sits to the upper right above your current post entry window. Clicking this once on a fully-selected image location AUTOMATICALLY adds BOTH the before and after code, so your work is done for you(This is what I use the most, btw).

C - BEFORE pasting you image location into your post, click on the 'Img' button I described earlier, and paste in the image location. You'll notice that fater you do this, the 'Img' button will have an asterick(*) in it, meaning the forum software wants you to puch it again and make the code complete.

Some times you are going to run across an image you want to snatch that's embedded behind things like the background behind Jeff's forum here(that I susbstantially web-optimized for him so people on dial-up load the RI pages much faster as soon/if he uses my versions I PM'd this morning to his '[i]Jeff' acccount) that we're all familiar with from ezboard. To access this,(in Firefox), right click on the image itself(and not something 'in front' of it), and select 'View Background Image'. You'll immediately have a new page open(sometimes rigt on top of your active post, but no worries, copy the image location, hit the 'Back button on your browser, and paste the sucker in like so:

Image

I'm short on time here as I have another forum I have to go moderate, but when I return, I'll show you how to EASILY take the LONGEST web addresses and make them read as however you want, like so:

Jeff's new Digs

To access how I wrote this code, or any other you may come across that makes you scratch your head, you need only hit my or other's 'Quote' option, and you will see the naked code and be able to learn it yourself.

It's Ezy-Breezy, trust me. You're all gonna be posting professionals by the itime I'm done with you..

Questions?

Cheers,
D

ps: You'll notice that my image post of Jeff's backgound image makes the page slide. This is remedied as Jeff has the option as Admin to assign both vertical and horizontal pixel dimensions for displayed images, ie, he decides how much of an image will be displayed before it cuts off and the rest is shown with the aid of it's own individual sliders..

*edit: the original image has since been replaced with a smaller one, but the info is still good.

For reference, KVR has a 6 inch horizontal cu-off you'll need to use sliders on the nottom of each pic to see if they exceed his 6 inch width limit.

Me personally, I think 8 inches is something to be far more proud of..

Image

On threads that spread way out and need to be slided to read

PostPosted: Thu Nov 23, 2006 2:54 pm
by Et in Arcadia ego
On threads that spread way out and need to be slided to read

This can be easily avoided by the original poster or the one that makes the post containing the non-wrapped text.

If you are making a post, hit 'preview'(a good habit I always use), and see if your post goes out of view to the right. If it does, select all the text in your post, open Wordpad(or Notepad, both under 'Accessories' in Windoze), paste everything in there, select it all again, then select 'word wrap'.

Your post will not stretch if you do this, and the mods won't have to fix it.

Cheers,
D

hotlinking to direct forum post

PostPosted: Thu Nov 23, 2006 3:26 pm
by Et in Arcadia ego
This is a GREAT feature that we didn't have at the old ez-board. Here's what it is:

If there's a post in a thread here(or any other phpBB Forum) that you wish to directly link to, here's how you do it:

Image

Right-click on that little square at the top of your target post and select 'Copy link Location', then paste it into your own post, and viola, you have a direct link to a specific post instead of having to post a link to the page like we used to or manually grab and paste text yourself.

Yuck.

Cheers,
D

Thank fuck for moderation

PostPosted: Thu Nov 23, 2006 7:25 pm
by Seamus OBlimey
Congratulations on your new status S, erm A, or D. I'm sure you'll be a great help. When you want to be.

Can you do something about posts being edited after someone has replied to them? It does tend make some replies seem meaningless.

Ta.

Re: Thank fuck for moderation

PostPosted: Thu Nov 23, 2006 9:49 pm
by Et in Arcadia ego
Seamus OBlimey wrote:Congratulations on your new status S, erm A, or D. I'm sure you'll be a great help. When you want to be.

Can you do something about posts being edited after someone has replied to them? It does tend make some replies seem meaningless.

Ta.


If neccessary, yes, but I only edit when there's an absolute demand(such as repairing syntaxes on image links, urls, or if a person asks me to delete a post which they must do so directly via PM.

I reflect on Jeff's existing policy strongly and will not lean from it in any direction whatsoever.

That as well as the fact that if we're talking about your own posts, you can edit them to your hearts content all by your lonesome.

Ain't it cool?

Cheers,
D

Potobucket

PostPosted: Fri Nov 24, 2006 12:18 pm
by xsicbastardx
Photobucket is a great image hosting site too. It's is really easy to use and it gives you all your codes at the bottom of your archived phots so it's really forth right.


Cheers.


* if you do use it....the correct code you want will be the last one of the three listed....it will have a [IMG] in front of it....theres two of them...one capital and one not....be sure to use the one with CAPITALS[/list]

PostPosted: Fri Nov 24, 2006 1:57 pm
by Et in Arcadia ego
Additions to the phpBB Forum code can be made that allow direct uploading to imageshack while you make your posts..

Re: On threads that spread way out and need to be slided to

PostPosted: Sun Nov 26, 2006 2:54 am
by yesferatu
et in Arcadia ego wrote:On threads that spread way out and need to be slided to read

This can be easily avoided by the original poster or the one that makes the post containing the non-wrapped text.

If you are making a post, hit 'preview'(a good habit I always use), and see if your post goes out of view to the right. If it does, select all the text in your post, open Wordpad(or Notepad, both under 'Accessories' in Windoze), paste everything in there, select it all again, then select 'word wrap'.

Your post will not stretch if you do this, and the mods won't have to fix it.

Cheers,
D


Hey Big E, I tried that on a thread "When Good Science Goes Bad" which I discovered has the slide problem, and so I copied to notepad, selected all, and did a word wrap check and re-pasted on edit, and yet still needing to slide to read.

What else can be tried when that does not work?
I failed to do the preview prior to original post like you advise, but I had never had that problem happen before, so I guess I will start checking for that. Any other tips to fix this is appreciated. Thanks!

PostPosted: Sun Nov 26, 2006 12:28 pm
by yesferatu
Ok, never mind, I see what happened.
My link was long, so the rest of the post, like water seeking it's level, extends to that extent.
So I made two lines out of the link, but when doing that it's link function goes away. But at least the slide is gone. I thought you wrote something about how to make shorter links, but can't find that info now. ???
thanks again!

PostPosted: Sun Nov 26, 2006 4:54 pm
by Et in Arcadia ego
et in Arcadia ego wrote:I'm short on time here as I have another forum I have to go moderate, but when I return, I'll show you how to EASILY take the LONGEST web addresses and make them read as however you want, like so:

Jeff's new Digs

To access how I wrote this code, or any other you may come across that makes you scratch your head, you need only hit my or other's 'Quote' option, and you will see the naked code and be able to learn it yourself.

PostPosted: Mon Nov 27, 2006 2:21 am
by yesferatu
et in Arcadia ego wrote:
et in Arcadia ego wrote:I'm short on time here as I have another forum I have to go moderate, but when I return, I'll show you how to EASILY take the LONGEST web addresses and make them read as however you want, like so:

Jeff's new Digs

To access how I wrote this code, or any other you may come across that makes you scratch your head, you need only hit my or other's 'Quote' option, and you will see the naked code and be able to learn it yourself.


I just tried something which you may want to share and pass along. I think I have seen others use it, since I saw the "tinyURL" text on their links...but I just now found out about it.
If you bookmark http://tinyurl.com/ and use them for when you have a long URL, and then follow the simple directions, that is another way of keeping the post from expanding into a "slide bar" mode. I just used it on a thread and worked fine. fwiw

Re: Arcadia's Helpful Forum Hints

PostPosted: Fri Oct 15, 2010 8:43 pm
by Castaigne
Don't want to start a new topic...

Would it be possible you link "Board Index" with the big title pic of RoseNosferatuWhatever?

It takes some fine targeting with the mouse to hit the minuscule link now... Or maybe I'm missing some easier way :)

Re: Arcadia's Helpful Forum Hints

PostPosted: Sun Jan 02, 2011 12:11 am
by justdrew
Castaigne wrote:Don't want to start a new topic...

Would it be possible you link "Board Index" with the big title pic of RoseNosferatuWhatever?

It takes some fine targeting with the mouse to hit the minuscule link now... Or maybe I'm missing some easier way :)


done. Roseferatu is now a link to the board index.