The Deathlist Howto

[Magere Hein 1,399]

The DeathList HOWTO v. 1.20

This is a list of technical issues that newbie users often have trouble with. It is a work in progress, so feel free to add issues and comments, either by posting them, or by PM'ing (Private Messaging) the author.

1. How do I search the forum?

There's more than one answer to that question.

a. Quick search of a forum

1. In the search box in the top right corner, fill in the phrase you want to search, e.g. the name of the person you want to post about.

2. You can specify where you want to search (forums, members, help) by clicking on the grey bit on the right of the search box.
3. Click the green button with an icon of what is supposed to be a magnifing glass.

This quick search is useless. You either get either no, or too many results. To make matters worse, results are presented as a list of topics, some of which have the word(s) in its title, others have the word in one or more posts in the topic. If there are many topics with matching posts you're up the creek.

b. Real search, with options

1. Click the icon that looks like a cog rightmost of the search box.
2. A page will open opens that looks something like this:

3. Fill in the phrase you to search for in the box labelled "Find words".
4. Specify where you want to search (forums, members, help) by clicking on the appropriate radio button labelled "Search in section".
5. Refine what to search by choosing options in the comboboxes labelled "Match". In the right one, "Only search in content" is very useful in combination with the option "Display results" set to "As posts".
6. When you fill in one or more tags in the box labelled "Find tags", only results from topics with those tags will be returned. Use with care, it's easy to get no results at all using this.
7. If so desired, enter the name of the member who wrote the post in the box labelled "Find author". Make sure the user name is spelt correctly, otherwise no posts are found.
8. If so desired fill in a start date and/or end date for the period in which you want to search. Ordinarily you'll want to leave both empty to find.
9. Select a forum, or all fora, in the listbox labelled "Find in forum".
10. Set the display option with radio button labelled "Display results". Normally you'll want "As posts".
11. Fiddling with the other options is pretty useless.
12. Click the button labelled "Search now."

Quite often you don't get the results you want, either too little or too much. Here are a few tips to expand or refine your searches:

1. A search phrase must contain at least 4 characters. Use fewer and you get no results, without explanation.
2. The search engine is very picky in matching a search phrase. Particularly (and irritatingly), it considers interpunction marks as part of a word. E.g. if you search for "foo", it will return posts containing "foo", but not ones which contain "foo," so . Using wildcards, such as "foo*" helps.
3. Sometimes you get many results. Refine your search by using the '+' sign as a logical AND operator. A search phrase like "+foo* +bar*" should return all posts containing the words "foo" and "bar", as well as the one about a foolish barrister.
4. Selecting "Display results as posts" really is a useful one. If you're looking for words in a post, this is the one you want, as it lists all matching posts, so you can quickly find relevant ones.

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2. How do I post a link to a web site (URL)?

1. Copy the URL from your web browser's Location bar.
2. Click button.
3. Paste the URL in the popup box.
4. Click the button labelled "OK".

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3. How do I post a link to a another post on this forum?
There used to be an editor function for this, but that's been removed from the useless new editor. Now you have to use BBCode for this.

1. Find the post you want to link to.
2. Click the link at the upper right corner of the the post you want to link to, labelled "#xxxx", where xxxx means the number of the post in the topic.
3. Copy from the URL in the pop-up box the rightmost number, after "&p=".
4. Return to the edit window of your new post.
5. If you haven't already done so, put the post editor in raw mode, by clicking the leftmost icon in the editor toolbar, .
6. Type in the post: this post.
Replace, of course "xxxx" with the post number of the post you want to link to. This has the side effect that the link so produced will, if clicked, move to that page, rather than open a new window or tab.

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4. How do I post a picture in a post?

1. Click the icon button
2. Copy and paste the URL where the picture is located in the box that pops up. eg. http://www.deathlist.net/forums/style_images/header.gif
3. Click OK.

(Answer provided by football_fan)

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5. How do I get a picture from my computer on the Web?

1. Point your web browser to Postimage.org
2. Click the button labelled "Browse..."
3. Locate the picture on your computer
4. Click the button labelled "Upload It"
5. Copy the URL from the box labelled "Direct Link"
6. Paste the URL in your post.

There are similar free picture hosting sites on the Web, see this list.

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6. How do I set an avatar?

1. Log in
2. Go to your Control Panel by clocking the link labeled with your user name in the upper right corner.
3. Go to yout Profile by clicking the button labelled "Edit my Profile".
4. Click the button labelled "Change my photo".
5. Click the button labelled "Browse" if you already have a picture on your computer.
6. Enter the URL of a nice picture on the web if you don't.
7. Change cropping settings if the picture doesn't fit as you like

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7. How would I go about quoting several different people in a post while preserving the QUOTE information?
There's a way to let your browser and the forum software do the entering of the poster and date/time of post. Here's how.

1. Click button labelled "Quote" of first post to be quoted.
2. In edit window, click button labelled "Preview Message".
3. In new edit window, copy all text.
4. If you're done, goto 9.
5. Hit back button twice.
6. Click button labelled "Quote" in next post to be quoted.
7. Paste all text in edit window.
8. Goto 2.
9. Sort out mess.

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8. Is there a feature on the site to allow us to look at an indivual's collective postings? (Question by Godot)

1. Go to members at the top and find their profile (either by search or just click on the profile on the left if they posted in a thread recently. (Answer provided by Octopus of Odstock)
2. If a member hasn't posted for a while, the method above will return no result. In this case use the extended search utility. Leave the "Search by Keywords" box empty and fill in the user name whose posts you're looking for in the box labelled "Filter by Member Name (optional)"

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9. I have just learned that placing the letter B with the ) mark after it gives me a happy face. This is bothersome if I want to do a listing with A B C D etc, since I like to place a ) afterwards. Is there anyway to disengage that feature? (Question by BrunoBrimley)

No, use a

1. .
   

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   10. Can someone explain to me why I can't see the PM's that I have sent to other users? (

Question by Banshees Scream)

You have to tick the box that says 'add this item to my sent folder' at the bottom of the screen below the PM you have typed, before the upgrade they were saved automatically, now you have to manually save them. (Answer by Lady Grendel)

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11. I'm having trouble updating my avatar. I've done it before, so I know what I'm doing, but it only seems to accept either the Carpenters one or none at all. I'm not anything different, so what's going on? (Question by Handrejka)

When you have updated your avatar to what you think is the right one, reload the Avatar Changing Page. I've noticed similar problems, apparently that page's code is a bit dodgy.

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12. How does one turn a URL above into a short summary of what the article's about? (Question by Cowboy Ronnie)

There are two methods:

1. Copy the URL to the clipboard of your computer.
2. Click button labelled
3. Remove the 'http://' bit
4. Paste URL from clipboard
5. Click Ok or press Enter
6. Type summary
7. Click Ok or press Enter

1. Write summary
2. Copy the URL to the clipboard of your computer.
3. Select text of summary
4. Click button labelled
5. Remove the 'http://' bit
6. Paste URL from clipboard
7. Click Ok or press Enter

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12. What ever happened to us being able to visit anonymously? I had that setting on "on" for the longest time, and now I'm visible again and can't seem to figure out how to turn it back on again. (Question by Canadian Paul)

Log out. You'l get the invisible option when you log in again. (Answer provided by Vaagheid)

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13. How do you know what your first post was? (Question by Paul Bearer)

1. Start a Real Search as explained in section 1b above.
2. In the edit box labellel "Find author", fill in your member name.
3. Select the radio button labelled "Display results" "As posts".
4. In the combobox labelled "Result sorting" choose "Last Update Time" and "Ascending".
8. Click the button labeled "Search Now".
9. Which returns your maiden post as the one on top.

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14. Is there a way to block a user so that I don't have to read his posts? (Question by Dia de los Muertos)

1. Click on your user name in the top right corner.
2. Choose "My settings".
3. In the left hand menu, click "'Ignore' Preferences".
4. Type the user name of the member you want to ignore in the edit box labelled "Add a new user to my list".
5. Select the radio button of what you want to ignore.

[Deadornot 12]

The DeathList HOWTO.

 

[snipped for brevity -- MH]

I just realised its been ages since my last avatar change.

i know this is a repeat avatar but bear with me for a moment.

It was the best i could get.

Edited October 20, 2005 by Magere Hein

[Tuber Mirum 125]

Hey Mr. Hein, you would appear to be a twunt.

 

Just like Dan Quayle. (Historic first mention of the word "twunt" on Deathlist.)

 

How about some guidelines for successful operation of the various search features?

 

[How about V 1.01? -- MH]

Edited October 20, 2005 by Magere Hein

[Lady Die 63]

Thank you Mr Hein and congrats on your new-found Twuntdom

[Deadornot 12]

http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?book...ary&va=twuntdom

[Tempus Fugit 214]

.

[Magere Hein 1,399]

The search facility does work for peoples names though.

I tried it with Shelley Winters and John Spencer searching for individual posts, and it was fine.

You're quite right. HOWTO so amended.

 

regards,

Hein

[Lady Grendel 139]

Thanks Hein lots of helpful info there and congratulations on your 1,000th post.

[Lady Die 63]

http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?book...ary&va=twuntdom

Just because it's not in that dictionary doesn't necessarily mean there's no such word.

[Captain Oates 21]

7. How would I go about quoting several different people in a post while preserving the QUOTE information?

This can also be done quite efficiently by opening the postings that you wish to quote in multiple tabs, quoting and previewing each one and copying the results to your reply.

(Multiple windows also work - but less neatly.)

 

This may seem laborious, but I find that it avoids muddle.

 

 

Congratulations, Hein, on your accession to Twunthood and beyond......

[Paul Bearer 6,093]

Welcome to post twuntdom MH. You see, it wasn't that difficult!

[Boudicca 702]

Congratulations, Hein!

 

And thanks for this thread.

 

Great idea

[Windsor 2,233]

Congratulations on being elevated to the rank of Twunt and then post-twunt, Hein.

Happy 1000th post.

 

[Grim Reaper 186]

I think this thread deserves the honour of an official pinning.

[football_fan 42]

I think this thread deserves the honour of an official pinning.

I agree. Thanks for taking the time to put all of that information together, Magere Hein. We appreciate it.

 

P.S. Congratulations once again on your 1000th post and achieving the status of Post-Twunt

 

Regards,

 

ff

[in eternum+ 22]

A fabulously useful thread which I've already made use of. (The dead Pope also thanks you, BTW).

 

Happy Twunting!

[millwall32 114]

Indeed, thanks for all the useful info MH.

[BrunoBrimley 86]

How about getting better heat? Any ideas on that?

[Cerberus 296]

Er, change your gas/electricity supplier perhaps?

[Slave to the Grave 26]

Put another jumper on?

[Lady Die 63]

Get some of these?

[Slave to the Grave 26]

Get some of these?

Oh yes, very fetching.

[BrunoBrimley 86]

Thanks for the suggestions all. Heat is better now, turns out I was outdoors ------and naked too

[Lady Die 63]

You keep your computer outdoors?

[BrunoBrimley 86]

Doesn't everybody? It helps in case aliens come to abduct me. Yes it most certainly does.