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An Avatar is the small picture that will show up under your screen name.
How do I get one? After you log in look to the left side of your screen for the thingy that says "User CP." That is your personal "user Control Panel!"
Click on "User CP" and a window opens with options for setting up your personal Profile.
Click on "Edit Avatar." A window will open up that looks like this one: Click here
Before you get to this point you should have located a picture on your computer that you want to use as your Avatar. Resize that picture to 80X80 pix and less then 19kb.
In the "Custom Avatar" window - "Browse and upload that picture - that is all there is to do.
Or You Can Do This
An avatar is that little picture beside each person's user name when they post a message. The following is snipped from the BMWMOA Forum. It says the maximum size is 70 x 70 but ours here is 80 x 80 pixels.
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Here's how to put up an avatar (that little picture under your name) that you like. It could be your club logo, it could be a picture of you on your bike, it could be a big scary fish, it's up to you.
First off - find a picture you like. I found my avatar, by doing a search at Google for kielbasa and clicking on the tab marked images. I found lots of pictures of kielbasa.
I found one I liked and then right clicked on it. On the menu that popped up, I selected "Save Picture As" and saved the picture to my desktop.
To tell if it was too big, I highlighted the file (now living on my desktop) and right clicked. I then selected "Properties" from the menu and looked at the "Summary" tab. Be sure you have "Advanced" displayed. If you look, you'll see that Windows will show you how wide and tall the picture is in pixels.
My image was a little too large and the maximum size for an avatar is 70 x 70 pixels.
To shrink my picture to the right size, I used Irfanview, which is free and available at Irfanview.com .
In Irfanview, I opened my picture and used Image-Resize and Resample to change the size.
I then saved the picture as kbasaavatar.jpg. My avatar was ready to upload.
I then clicked on the User C.P. button at the top of the screen and went to "Edit Options". Down at the bottom of the screen is a way for you to load your own image from your computer to use as your avatar.
And now you're done. A copy of your avatar is safely living up on the Bulletin Board's server. You can keep your copy in a safe place.
If you have a digital camera and want to upload some of those nice pics here but you can't because the files are too large, check this out!
How do you get them to a size that'll allow you to post?
1. Get yourself a copy of IrfanView. It's free and you can get it at www.irfanview.com.
2. Fire up Irfanview and open your image.
3. Select Image-Resize & Resample
4. Select 72dpi and a size of about 300dpi across or so. Be sure to leave the little "preserve aspect ratio" box checked so your image doesn't get distorted.
5. Save your photo using File-Save As. This will keep you from changing your original file and will give you a nice one to put up on the web.
6. When you post your message, use the Attach File item, but don't preview your message! vBulletin, our forum software, will drop your attachment if you do.
7.To have the photo show up directly in your posting or reply you upload that photo to the Forum server by looking just below your posting or reply window and finding a little Bar that says "manage attachments.
Click that bar and just follow the prompts. Remember, you must resize your photo prior to uploading it - no larger then 195kb and 800X800 pix. You can resize a picture in your image software on your computer or download a really simple and fast "resize" free piece of software that I and many others use for this purpose. This link has information on the software and how to get it - the link also explains how you can use your email program to resize if you don't want to download the software:
To have an image from another site that you want to show up in the message, you click on the little "mountain with the yellow sky" icon and then paste your url inside the space in the window that opens up. It'll look like this after you click "OK": [img]url here[/img] When you have uploaded the image to your message it will show up in your message as a "Thumb Nail" - to open that thumbnail all a person has to do is "click" on it and it will open to full size in a separate window.
Or You Can Resize this Quick and Dirty Way
YOU CANNOT POST HUGE IMAGES TO THE FORUM!!! You must resize them first.
This works for sure on .jpg images someone can try it with gif,Tiff, and bmp.
When I want to resize pictures in a hurry I E-mail them to myself. Windows Xp with Outlook or Outlook Express will ask you if you want to shrink the images.
Here is a good resizer. Windows Resizer
Save the images to your desktop or some other familiar location and post them to the forum from there.
Members that use AOL on XP can also Mail things to themselves by dragging them to a mail window. AOL will ask if you want to re size the images. Say yes and mail them to yourself. A few seconds later you will have mail and you can Save them to your desktop or some other familiar location and post them to the forum from there.
Not so sure about MAC and Linux users
Jeff
If there is an event on the calendar that you are interested in, You can click on it. This will open a window with details if they are available. ALSO ( and this is the cool part ) in the upper right hand corner of the window that opens is a little blue link about reminders. click it and the system will open a dialog box that will send you an Email before the event.
HOW COOL IS THAT???
IF YOU ARE HAVING PROBLEMS READ THIS. IT DOES NOT HAPPEN TO EVERYONE
I have arrived at the reality that Vbulletin the software that drives our forum has issues with users of AOL and other programs that use their own Software to handle the internet and E-mail.
YOU ARE NOT CRAZY
Vbulletin IS MAKING YOU LOG IN OVER AND OVER!!!
The short story is if you have Cable, Dsl, or satillite, use your NON AOL browser to access the site.
If you MUST use AOL or some other service that does not use Internet Explorer, Mozilla or an Equivelent, Make your connection, Minimize the Program you made the connection with, and Start Internet explorer.
Internet explorer is known to function properly with Vbulletin
AOL and hot mail appear to have trouble with the Mail Service from VBulletin. Mails through CERTAIN AOL SERVERS just don't get to you. I have A Yahoo Account to receive Vbulletin notifications on, They land in BULK mail which is fine.
If technical things make your head explode read no further
For the brain boxes that want to know why the answer is
AOL is known for assigning a unique IP with each URL request that is sent, Vbulletin tracks messages, posts and URL requests by the ip address the are received from, and it disconnects you and asks you to log back in. The request to reload the screen comes in on yet another IP address, so it kicks you out again and asks you to re log
I recommend indicating what program opens files other than the ones that windows and it's accompanying products open "out of the box".
If you post a PDF file say " you will need the Adobe Acrobat Reader to open this " etc.
Perhaps for a month we need to also include the link where appropriate.
A statement to the effect of " This works with all software compatible with the Garmin GPS V blah blah blah should forestall anyone from downloading the Item that does not own said Device.
This hopefully will cut down on inquiries of " Why can't I open this? "
EMail Notification of New Posts
In the environment of the forum, Email notification of new posts is handled by a process called SUBSCRIPTION.
When you are Creating your new account it will ask you how you wish to be notified of New posts and how you want your subscriptions to be handled.
If you picked do "not subscribe", you will need to go into the user CP ( User control panel )
Select Options
Scroll Down to " Messaging and Notifications"
Default Thread subscription Mode
Select Either Daily or Instant Email notification
Then go to the bottom and hit SAVE CHANGES
This will cause Any thread you post in to be automatically subscribed to.
There are other options in there, that affect the behavior of the forum just for you.
If you want to subscribe to a thread that you are interested in Without posting in it click on thread Tools ( look up at the blue bar above this window ) and select Thread tools and subscribe to the tread. There is also a similar box on the forum headers (FORUM TOOLS) where you can subscribe to entire forums.
The reason it is handled this way is so you can pick and choose what you are notified of. I have seen forums with 250,000 members of which 1500 are on at a time. You would not want hundreds of notifications in your email box.
I expect to have to revise these directions a few times
Getting Logged Out In Mid-Post
By Bill Gould
I thought it Deserved a thread in the help section
This works for me.
If you don't remember to paste you post to the windows clipboard or
write your post in notepad, when you get to the hated login screen don't
sit there in disbelief. Go ahead and sign in again using the big box
in the center of the screen and hit the This does not work if you use the login which also appears at the same
time in the upper right hand corner!! (I don't have a clue why)
My last two long post have come up with the login screen and I used
this procedure and reached computer nirvana (and a saved post).
Bill
(nothing is foolproof because the fools are soooo ingenious)
The following posted by Ian
The Jellsoft FAQ suggests Deleting cookies to solve many problems with Vbulletin... Below is A section of a Post By Ian with Good directions on how to accomplish this task.. Thanks Ian
it's considered good practice to delete cookies and off-line Internet files regularly. For one thing, spyware lives in cookies, for another, it can free up disk space and help your computer operate better.
Here's how to do it in Microsoft Internet Explorer:
On the top menu, choose: Tools - Internet Options
In the dialog box, you'll see three buttons:
- Delete cookies Delete cookies, then when clicking Delete files, be sure to click the "Delete off-line content" checkbox.
You will have to log back into sites like the forum, and this will re-place a cookie (if you check the "remember me" box...).
I think you'll be much happier.
Butt... if you insist, then use a program like Notepad (it's under Accessories in your list of programs) to create your posts. Then copy/paste the post into the window and you shouldn't have the issue you're currently experiencing.
Ian
IF YOU ARE HAVING PROBLEMS READ THIS. IT DOES NOT HAPPEN TO EVERYONE
I have arrived at the reality that Vbulletin the software that drives our forum has issues with users of Web Accelerators!!
You can add "proxy" browsers to this also. websites that make it difficult yo track who you are, will make it difficult for you to use this forum.
YOU ARE NOT CRAZY
Vbulletin IS MAKING YOU LOG IN OVER AND OVER!!!
The short story is if you have A web Accelerator tell it not to accellerate this site.
If technical things make your head explode read no further
For the brain boxes that want to know why the answer is
Many web accellerators pre cache pages and requests on high speed backbone servers. They replace incoming and out going page requests ip addresses with their own IP address and handle the routing in the backround. Vbulletin tracks messages, posts and URL requests by the ip address the are received from, and it disconnects you and asks you to log back in. The request to reload the screen comes in on yet another IP address, so it kicks you out again and asks you to re log
- Delete files
- Settings