Post by worf rat on Sept 19, 2015 23:15:45 GMT -5
I was bored, so I thought I'd make a quick guide for those folks that are having some difficulty with the forum software.
Web based forums (it's really fora, but like smosey pointed out, who talks like that?) are something of an old-school way of doing things. A decade or so ago, this was the primary form of social networking on the internet. Before that, it was Bulletin Board Systems, which predate the web by some years. Forums are basically web-based versions of those BBSs, but more interactive and customizable. Now they even have some of the same toys as the big social networking platforms, too.
Here's how to change your avatar:
From the home page of the forum, lockn.proboards.com, click profile.
This allows you to view your profile. To make changes, click “Edit Profile.”
The default tab on the edit page is the avatar. As you can see, we have several options. Let's go over them in order, from simplest to most complicated. The simplest thing to do is nothing. The default setting is “No Avatar;” the one at the bottom. Next is “Use a Forum Avatar.” Click “Pick One.”
A pop-up opens up and gives you six selections (looks like there used to be seven, but one's dead somehow). If you can live with one of those six, just click it and that's your avatar. You then need only click “Save Avatar Changes” and you're done.
We'll just skip right over the next one. You'll probably never use it anyway.
Next is “Use Only Uploaded/Linked.” Now is your chance to really personalize your avatar. We're going to focus on uploaded, because linking your avatar is something forums who aren't using a free, ad-driven platform use to save bandwidth. Also, if you don't do it right, it can really piss a lot of people off, or even get you into trouble. When you click the link, another pop-up...well, pops up.
This is where you can upload a new avatar or change your existing uploaded one. You'll see that the recommended dimensions are 150x150, the file size must be 1MB or less, and the format must be either .gif, .jpg, or .png. It also says “Or Link To An Image On The Internet,” but we're not going to worry about that right now.
GIF, JPG and PNG are all common formats, so the pic you have in mind is probably fine. To see what the file size is, right click the photo file on your computer and go to “Properties.” If you don't have a small enough photo, you're going to need to scale the image down with some photo editing software.* These days, the default image viewer in Windows or Mac will probably take care of that. After that, it's just a matter of clicking on “Select Image” and browsing for the photo on your hard drive. Once again, click “Save Avatar Changes” when done.
Now we move on to “Use Only Your Default Avatar.” If you haven't ever made any changes, your Profile Avatar and your Default Avatar probably look like this:
Ladies, yours probably looks like this:
Let's click on “Default Avatar,” and see what happens.
Yet another pop-up, with a little man who tries to explain things to you. I'm not gonna get into all the nuts and bolts, but you can customize the little cartoon character. You can change it's face, hair, eyes, lips, facial hair, ears, clothes, background and more. Play around with it. It's quite amusing. You can make it look like you, or look silly, or whatever you want to do. Just make sure to click “Save Avatar Changes” when you're finished.
No matter what style of avatar you choose, make sure you select the correct radio button as a final step.
There you go. That should be enough to get you started. No, I don't know how to do all this on your phone, except to say you're definitely better loading the mobile site on your phone's browser than trying to do with an app like Tapatalk. I don't think you can do it with Tapatalk.
Hope you found this guide useful, and look for upcoming episodes, including how to embed photos and videos in your posts, how to embed multiple quotes in your posts, and probably one on the text editor in general, that will also touch on some elementary markup language.
Coming your way, just as soon as I get bored again!
PS: That middle one? The one we skipped? It's just what it says: if you want an uploaded photo as a background for your default cartoon avatar. I don't know why you'd ever go to the trouble. If you want to do this, don't call me unless you want to be talked out of it.
*I recommend GIMP. After opening the file in GIMP, go to “Image>Scale Image.” Change the drop-down menu that says” Pixels” to “Percentage.” Then just enter lower values and export.
Web based forums (it's really fora, but like smosey pointed out, who talks like that?) are something of an old-school way of doing things. A decade or so ago, this was the primary form of social networking on the internet. Before that, it was Bulletin Board Systems, which predate the web by some years. Forums are basically web-based versions of those BBSs, but more interactive and customizable. Now they even have some of the same toys as the big social networking platforms, too.
Here's how to change your avatar:
From the home page of the forum, lockn.proboards.com, click profile.
This allows you to view your profile. To make changes, click “Edit Profile.”
The default tab on the edit page is the avatar. As you can see, we have several options. Let's go over them in order, from simplest to most complicated. The simplest thing to do is nothing. The default setting is “No Avatar;” the one at the bottom. Next is “Use a Forum Avatar.” Click “Pick One.”
A pop-up opens up and gives you six selections (looks like there used to be seven, but one's dead somehow). If you can live with one of those six, just click it and that's your avatar. You then need only click “Save Avatar Changes” and you're done.
We'll just skip right over the next one. You'll probably never use it anyway.
Next is “Use Only Uploaded/Linked.” Now is your chance to really personalize your avatar. We're going to focus on uploaded, because linking your avatar is something forums who aren't using a free, ad-driven platform use to save bandwidth. Also, if you don't do it right, it can really piss a lot of people off, or even get you into trouble. When you click the link, another pop-up...well, pops up.
This is where you can upload a new avatar or change your existing uploaded one. You'll see that the recommended dimensions are 150x150, the file size must be 1MB or less, and the format must be either .gif, .jpg, or .png. It also says “Or Link To An Image On The Internet,” but we're not going to worry about that right now.
GIF, JPG and PNG are all common formats, so the pic you have in mind is probably fine. To see what the file size is, right click the photo file on your computer and go to “Properties.” If you don't have a small enough photo, you're going to need to scale the image down with some photo editing software.* These days, the default image viewer in Windows or Mac will probably take care of that. After that, it's just a matter of clicking on “Select Image” and browsing for the photo on your hard drive. Once again, click “Save Avatar Changes” when done.
Now we move on to “Use Only Your Default Avatar.” If you haven't ever made any changes, your Profile Avatar and your Default Avatar probably look like this:
Ladies, yours probably looks like this:
Let's click on “Default Avatar,” and see what happens.
Yet another pop-up, with a little man who tries to explain things to you. I'm not gonna get into all the nuts and bolts, but you can customize the little cartoon character. You can change it's face, hair, eyes, lips, facial hair, ears, clothes, background and more. Play around with it. It's quite amusing. You can make it look like you, or look silly, or whatever you want to do. Just make sure to click “Save Avatar Changes” when you're finished.
No matter what style of avatar you choose, make sure you select the correct radio button as a final step.
There you go. That should be enough to get you started. No, I don't know how to do all this on your phone, except to say you're definitely better loading the mobile site on your phone's browser than trying to do with an app like Tapatalk. I don't think you can do it with Tapatalk.
Hope you found this guide useful, and look for upcoming episodes, including how to embed photos and videos in your posts, how to embed multiple quotes in your posts, and probably one on the text editor in general, that will also touch on some elementary markup language.
Coming your way, just as soon as I get bored again!
PS: That middle one? The one we skipped? It's just what it says: if you want an uploaded photo as a background for your default cartoon avatar. I don't know why you'd ever go to the trouble. If you want to do this, don't call me unless you want to be talked out of it.
*I recommend GIMP. After opening the file in GIMP, go to “Image>Scale Image.” Change the drop-down menu that says” Pixels” to “Percentage.” Then just enter lower values and export.