Forum Help

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Category: Uncategorised

Published on Saturday, 26 November 2011 20:24

Written by Super User

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Shortcut to BBcode

Since you are reading this page then it is safe to say you'd like to know how to use our forum and its many options.  When you get done reading this you will be able to reply to existing posts as well as make new posts. You will know how to format your text, make links, add images and videos and much more. We're not going to teach you how to use every little button, gizmo or forum feature but rather provide you sufficient working knowledge to feel comfortable enough to get involved here in the forum. After that, you can do a sleuthing around to learn what the rest of the goodies do.

Our forum uses Kunena as its base component.  You can read more about the Kunena forum management system on their web site.

Setting up your profile

Once you've registered, it's a good idea to set up and complete your profile. You access your profile by clicking 'My Profile' located at the top of the forum. This area is not much different than any other form you have filled out online or in real life except that much of the information in here is optional.

Personal Info

• Summary - All your settings from other tabs summarized.
• Edit Your Details - Edit your login name, email address and password.
• My Avatar - Select an avatar from those available or upload your own image. If you upload your own image, you can upload an image up to 250 x 250 pixels and 50 kilobytes. The forum will automatically scale the image for use in various locations.
• Depending on how the Administrator has set things up, you may or may not be able to make certain changes.

Forum Settings

• Look and Layout - Tweak a few forum appearance settings.
• My Profile Info - Fill in personal information that you don't mind sharing publicly. This is also where you fill out your forum signature.
• My Posts - List of your posts ordered by most recent. Handy for finding a post that you don't recall which board you posted it in.
• My Subscribes - List of topics that you have subscribed to send you an email notification for all new responses.
• My Favorites - List of topics that you have ticked as a favourite of yours so they are more easily identifiable in the forum list.
• Remember to press the 'Save' button any time you make changes in your profile.
• Depending on how the Administrator has set things up, you may or may not be able to make certain changes.

Reply to an existing post

You have just read someone's post and you have finally decided you are going to reply and contribute some information of your own. Great! This is done by pressing one of the 'reply' buttons.

• Quick Reply - this brings up a small text area (without reloading the webpage) where you can quickly type a short reply. Press 'Submit' when you are done typing your response. If you have a change of heart you can press cancel and nothing gets posted regardless if you typed anything or not.

• Reply - This is the standard method in which you should reply when you want to reply primarily to the most recent post. The reason for this is because the subject line of your reply will autofill with the subject of the post from which you are replying. In case you were wondering, yes, you can change the subject. OK, now you are looking at what is called a text editor. Think of it as a slimmed down version of a word processor (such as Microsoft Word) in which you can format your text, add links, images, smilies, etc. More on how to format your post later. For now, type your response and press the 'Preview' button at the bottom of the page if you wish to view your post prior to submitting it. When you are done editing and are satisfied your post is ready to contribute to the forum then press the 'Submit' button.

• Quote - If you wish to quote someone's post whether in whole or in part you simple press the 'Quote' button located beside the 'Reply' button underneath each post. The is very useful if you wish to make light of or expand upon a prior post. Once you press the Quote button you are brought into the same editing environment that you use to edit or create any other post. At this point, you type your response directly to that quote. When you are done replying, press the 'Submit' button.

• Reply Topic - This button functions the same as the 'Reply' button with the exception that your subject line will autofill with the subject of the original post (OP). This may come in handy if you replying to a long post whose subjects may have changed over time but you want to reply to the OP. When you are done replying, press the 'Submit' button.

Create a new post of your own

Navigate to our General board and click on it so that you can see the list of all of the existing posts. At the top of the list is a button labelled 'New Thread'. Click that button to start your very own topic. You are placed at the same text editor that you used earlier when replying to posts. Simply type your message and press 'Submit'. Now you have your own post topic in the list.

Format your post

Remember we said earlier that the text editor is very similar to a word processor? Well, as in any word processor you can format and arrange your text for emphasis here in the forum.

The first, basic thing you should know is that the forum uses what's called BBcode or Bulletin Board Code. BBcode uses 'tags' to 'mark up' your text. Each 'tag' has an opening and closing 'tag' denoted within brackets. An opening tag will look like [ ] and a closing tag looks like [/ ]. Notice the slash in the closing bracket is the only thing that is different. If you forget the slash, the forum will interpret your closing bracket as an opening bracket.

The easiest way to 'mark up' your text is usually to type it out first, then select it, and press the appropriate button at the top of the editor. For example, if you wanted to make 'some text' bold you would type it out 'some text', then select 'some text' with your mouse, and then press the 'B' icon in the toolbar located just above the Message area (where you are composing your message). You will now see: [b]some text[/b]. When you preview or submit your message it will be displayed as 'some text'. Alternatively, if you know them, you can type the tags manually right along with the rest of your text or you can use the buttons at the top of the editor to insert the tags the fill in your text.

The BBcode Wiki covers the basic mark up tags so let's move on to what the Wiki doesn't cover.

Lists

There are two types of lists: ordered and unordered. An ordered list is a numerical list like you might use to list the finishing order of a race. An unordered list is a list you might use to list groceries. There are two different tags needed to create a list.

First, you use a tag that creates the kind of list you want.

[ul] [/ul] = unordered list [ol] [/ol] = ordered list

Second, you use a list tag for each item in the list

[li] [/li] = each list item.

So, the code for an ordered list would look like this:

[ol] [li] 1st place[/li] [li] 2nd place[/li] [li] 3rd place[/li] [/ol]

Videos

Embedding a video in your post is a more recent addition to the forum and makes use of many video sharing websites on the web. This gives us the ability to show the video in our forum without having to host it ourselves or making you follow a link over some other website to see the video. Once you have a video that you want to post you need to find the unique identifier in the URL to that video.

It's difficult to provide detailed instructions or examples here, so we'll only cover the basics. Understand that each video sharing website uses a unique identifier for each video. For example, this video from YouTube whose URL is http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bqJE5TH5jhc. You need to know the video's unique identifier (which differs depending on what site you visit); in our example, the unique identifier is bqJE5TH5jhc. Once you know what that unique identifier is you can embed that video in our forum by selecting the video hosting website from the 'video' drop down list at the top of the WYSIWIG editor pr typing the following:

[video type=] [/video]

If you were embedding a video from YouTube, for example, the bbcode would end up looking like this:

[video type=youtube] insert_unique_identifier_here [/video]

for example

[video type=youtube] bqJE5TH5jhc [/video]

It's a good idea to preview your post to make sure the video is visible before submitting your completed post.

Edit your own post

There will be times when you make a post and you don't catch a misspelled word, fix a broken link or something that will require you to edit you post. It happens to us all so the edit button is easily accessible. When you are looking at one of your own posts that you need to edit you will find the 'Edit' button at the bottom of your post. Simply press the edit button and you use the same editor you used to create your post populated with the actual post. Edit your post as you see fit and, when you are satisfied, press the 'Submit' button at the bottom of the page. All done!

Visibility and notification of your favorite posts

If you want to be able to keep up with your favorite posts without checking in every five minutes to see if something new has posted, there a couple of ways that you can do that.

Subscribe

At the top and the bottom of every thread you will find the 'Subscribe' button. Pressing this button subscribes you to that topic so that any responses to that topic will generate an email notification to your email address stating that a new post has been made along with a link directly to said post for your convenience. You will notice the button now reads 'Unsubscribe' indicating that you are subscribed and pressing the button again will remove your subscription to that thread. Remember that you can also manage your subscriptions in your profile.

Favorite

Another way of gaining visibility of threads that wish to keep an eye on is set them as your 'Favorite'. This will place an obvious indicator, such as a star, beside the topic name of the thread so that it will stand out in the forum list of topics. You will notice the button now reads 'Unfavorite' indicating that the post is already one of your favorites and pressing the button again will remove it from your favorites. This is a great way to get visibility on multiple topics that you wish to watch without getting spammed by email subscriptions. Remember that you can also manage your favourites in your profile.

The Karma System

The karma system is one of those neat little things that contributes to the community aspect of a website by empowering you to give feedback to those who deserve it. It is a tool you can use to show appreciation or disapproval for anything that another member has done.

Maybe you posted for help on how to do something and got such a swift and helpful response from another member that you want to show appreciation in more than just words. You can applaud them by giving them Karma. Perhaps another member responded to that same post negatively offering no help and unnecessarily making you look foolish when you genuinely needed help. You can smite them by take away Karma. However, should you smite someone, you should follow that up with a message to an admin or moderator and let them know just in case there is a larger issue.

Please use the karma system responsibly. Don't abuse it by artificially inflating someone's karma or waging a personal war against someone by reducing their karma unnecessarily. If abuse is detected the karma system will be shut off as it is not a necessity.

The karma controls are located in the top, right of each post we make in the forum. The '+' sign adds karma and the '-' takes it away. You cannot adjust your own karma.

Conclusion

Now that you know how to create your own posts, edit them, set notifications, etc, you are ready to explore the rest of the forum. Don't be afraid. Go click things and see what they do. If something 'breaks' or you don't understand how to use something make a post in the forum and ask for help.

Privacy Policy 1

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Category: Uncategorised

Published on Saturday, 26 November 2011 20:39

Written by Super User

Hits: 85

PRIVACY POLICY

Welcome to 351C Info.

Your privacy is very important to us. Accordingly, we have developed this Policy in order for you to understand how we collect, use, communicate and disclose and make use of personal information. The following outlines our privacy policy.

Summary

• Before or at the time of collecting personal information, we will identify the purposes for which information is being collected.
• We will collect and use personal information solely with the objective of fulfilling those purposes specified by us and for other compatible purposes, unless we obtain the consent of the individual concerned or as required by law.
• We will only retain personal information as long as necessary for the fulfillment of those purposes.
• We will collect personal information by lawful and fair means and, where appropriate, with the knowledge or consent of the individual concerned.
• Personal data should be relevant to the purposes for which it is to be used, and, to the extent necessary for those purposes, should be accurate, complete, and up-to-date.
• We will protect personal information by reasonable security safeguards against loss or theft, as well as unauthorized access, disclosure, copying, use or modification.
• We will make readily available to customers information about our policies and practices relating to the management of personal information.

We are committed to conducting our business in accordance with these principles in order to ensure that the confidentiality of personal information is protected and maintained.

Detailed Policy Notes

We understand that privacy online is important to users of our Site.
This statement governs our privacy policies with respect to those users of the Site ("Visitors") who visit without registering and Visitors who register ("Registered Users") to make use of the various services offered by our Site.

"Personally Identifiable Information"
Refers to any information that identifies or can be used to identify, contact, or locate the person to whom such information pertains, including, but not limited to, name, address, email address. Personally Identifiable Information does not include information that is collected anonymously (that is, without identification of the individual user) or demographic information not connected to an identified individual.

What Personally Identifiable Information is collected?
We may collect basic user profile information from all of our Visitors. We may collect one or more of the following additional pieces of information from our registered users: name, date of birth, email addresse, IP address, username, avatar.

What organizations are collecting the information?
This Site does not share any Personally Identifiable Information with any other organizations.  However, this Site may link to other sites (such as Amazon.com) which may directly collect personally identifiable information on our Visitors or Registered Users.  We do not control how these third parties use such information.

How does the Site use Personally Identifiable Information?
We use Personally Identifiable Information to customize the Site, to make appropriate service offerings, and to enhance the Registered User's interaction experience with the Site. We may email Registered Users about research or information related to the subject matter of the Site. We may also use Personally Identifiable Information to contact Registered Users in response to specific inquiries, or to provide requested information.

With whom may the information may be shared?
Personally Identifiable Information about Registered Users will not be shared with any third party vendors.  We may share aggregated information about our Visitors, including the demographics of our Visitors and Registered Users, with our affiliated agencies and third party vendors. We also offer the opportunity to "opt out" of receiving information or being contacted by us or by any agency acting on our behalf.

How is Personally Identifiable Information stored?
Personally Identifiable Information collected by us is stored in a database and is not accessible to third parties or Site Administrators except for use as indicated above.

What choices are available to Visitors regarding collection, use and distribution of the information?
No personally identifiable information is collected from Visitors other than storing a cookie on thier computer.  Registered Users may opt out of receiving unsolicited information from or being contacted by us by emailing the Site Administrator.  Opting out of third party affiliates needs to be done with the third party affiliate as this Site does not share any personally identifiable information with third parties.

Are Cookies Used on the Site?
Cookies are used for a variety of reasons. We use Cookies to obtain information about the preferences of our Visitors and to administrate User features of the site. We also use Cookies for security purposes to protect our Registered Users. For example, if a Registered User is logged on and the site is unused for more than a specified amount of time (set by the Site Administrator), we will automatically log the Registered User off.

How does the Site use login information?
We may use Registered User login information, including, but not limited to, IP addresses, ISPs, and browser types, to analyze trends, administer the Site, track a user's movement and use, and gather broad demographic information.

What partners or service providers have access to Personally Identifiable Information from Visitors and/or Registered Users on the Site?
The Site may enter into into partnerships and other affiliations with a number of providers such as Google or Amazon.  The Site does not share any Personally Identifiable Information with these third parties.  Our privacy policy does not cover their collection or use of this information.  Please see the Privacy Policy for any such third party this Site may link to or be affiliated with.

351C Info is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com.

Disclosure of Personally Identifiable Information to comply with law.
We will disclose Personally Identifiable Information in order to comply with a court order or subpoena or a request from a law enforcement agency to release information. We will also disclose Personally Identifiable Information when reasonably necessary to protect the safety of our Visitors and Registered Users.

How does the Site keep Personally Identifiable Information secure?
The Personally Identifiable Information of our Registered Users is only accessible to a limited number of qualified individuals who are given a password in order to gain access to the information. While we take commercially reasonable measures to maintain a secure site, electronic communications and databases are subject to errors, tampering and break-ins, and we cannot guarantee or warrant that such events will not take place and we will not be liable to Visitors or Registered Users for any such occurrences.

How can Visitors or Registered Users correct any inaccuracies in Personally Identifiable Information?
No personally identifiable information is collected from Visitors other than storing a cookie on thier computer.  Registered Users may contact us to update Personally Identifiable Information about them or to correct any inaccuracies by emailing us at

Can a Visitor or Registered User delete or deactivate Personally Identifiable Information collected by the Site?
No personally identifiable information is collected from Visitors other than storing a cookie on thier computer.  For Registered Uses, We provide a mechanism to delete or deactivate Personally Identifiable Information from the Site's database by contacting the Site Administrator. However, because of backups and records of deletions, it may be impossible to delete an entry without retaining some residual information. An individual who requests to have Personally Identifiable Information deactivated will have this information functionally deleted, and we will not sell, transfer, or use Personally Identifiable Information relating to that individual in any way.

What happens if the Privacy Policy Changes?
The privacy policy will always be linked to from the home page of the Site.  Any changes affecting the disclosure of personaly identifiable information will be outlined in an email sent to all Registered Users.  Any user wishing to opt-out of such changes may request their account be terminated by emailing the Administrator of the Site.

Links:
This web site contains links to other web sites. Please note that when you click on one of these links, you are moving to another web site. We encourage you to read the privacy statements of these linked sites as their privacy policies may differ from ours.

Terms and Conditions

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Category: Uncategorised

Published on Saturday, 26 November 2011 20:44

Written by Super User

Hits: 90

Web Site Terms and Conditions of Use

1. Terms

By accessing this web site, you are agreeing to be bound by these web site Terms and Conditions of Use, all applicable laws and regulations, and agree that you are responsible for compliance with any applicable local laws. If you do not agree with any of these terms, you are prohibited from using or accessing this site. The materials contained in this web site are protected by applicable copyright and trade mark law.

2. Use License

1. Permission is granted to temporarily download one copy of the materials (information or software) on 351C Info's web site for personal, non-commercial transitory viewing only. This is the grant of a license, not a transfer of title, and under this license you may not:
   1. modify or copy the materials;
   2. use the materials for any commercial purpose, or for any public display (commercial or non-commercial);
   3. attempt to decompile or reverse engineer any software contained on 351C Info's web site;
   4. remove any copyright or other proprietary notations from the materials; or
   5. transfer the materials to another person or "mirror" the materials on any other server.
2. This license shall automatically terminate if you violate any of these restrictions and may be terminated by 351C Info at any time. Upon terminating your viewing of these materials or upon the termination of this license, you must destroy any downloaded materials in your possession whether in electronic or printed format.

3. Disclaimer

1. The materials on 351C Info's web site are provided "as is". 351C Info makes no warranties, expressed or implied, and hereby disclaims and negates all other warranties, including without limitation, implied warranties or conditions of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, or non-infringement of intellectual property or other violation of rights. Further, 351C Info does not warrant or make any representations concerning the accuracy, likely results, or reliability of the use of the materials on its Internet web site or otherwise relating to such materials or on any sites linked to this site.

4. Limitations

In no event shall 351C Info or its suppliers be liable for any damages (including, without limitation, damages for loss of data or profit, or due to business interruption,) arising out of the use or inability to use the materials on 351C Info's Internet site, even if 351C Info or a 351C Info authorized representative has been notified orally or in writing of the possibility of such damage. Because some jurisdictions do not allow limitations on implied warranties, or limitations of liability for consequential or incidental damages, these limitations may not apply to you.

5. Revisions and Errata

The materials appearing on 351C Info's web site could include technical, typographical, or photographic errors. 351C Info does not warrant that any of the materials on its web site are accurate, complete, or current. 351C Info may make changes to the materials contained on its web site at any time without notice. 351C Info does not, however, make any commitment to update the materials.

6. Links

351C Info has not reviewed all of the sites linked to its Internet web site and is not responsible for the contents of any such linked site. The inclusion of any link does not imply endorsement by 351C Info of the site. Use of any such linked web site is at the user's own risk.

7. Site Terms of Use Modifications

351C Info may revise these terms of use for its web site at any time without notice. By using this web site you are agreeing to be bound by the then current version of these Terms and Conditions of Use.

8. Governing Law

Any claim relating to 351C Info's web site shall be governed by the laws of the State of Washington without regard to its conflict of law provisions.

General Terms and Conditions applicable to Use of a Web Site.