Blade

Summary: Below you'll find information on cookies and logging in or out problems; our policy on User Name changes, Signatures and Pop Up Ads; forum features like SEARCH, user titles, avatars, quotes and other features; how to create simple tables or make spaces show up in a post, and also what to do if the forum seems to be running slow for you.

ADDING DVDTALK'S AFFILIATE ID TO A STORE LINK
Amazon.com:
Find the item's ASIN number and put it where the xxx's are in the following link:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/xxx/dvdtalk

Example:
Link to Monster's Inc. on DVD, ASIN number in bold:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/<b>B00005JKDR</b>/ref=ilm_rc_302319/102-9755103-2688159

DVDTalk affiliate link to Monster's Inc.:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/<b>B00005JKDR</b>/dvdtalk

COOKIES/LOG IN or OUT PROBLEMS
If you're having problems with logging off and on or with cookies not staying set, please read the following:

For some as yet unidentified reason, every once in a great while, a member's computer will stop storing the DVDTalk cookie properly. Sometimes it's related to work being done on our server, and sometimes it just goes away on it's own in a day or so.

One of our members (and a DVDTalk Reviewer) has suggested the following as a possible fix:
Once you've cleared your cookies, you'll need to go into the USER CP and select the 'Edit Options Tab'. There's a line which says: Automatically login when you return to the site? (uses cookies)

Be sure to change that to YES, so that the next time you return you won't have to re-login

The above may also be helpful with trying to Log off from DVDTalk.

STARTING A NEW THREAD
Just above the list of threads in any forum area is a post new thread button:


Click that button to start a new thread in that forum area.

This graphic also appears at the top of any thread (like this one!)

MISSING BUTTONS
All of the forum icon graphics have been moved to the ads.kleinman.com server. If you are blocking ads servers, then you won't be able to see the post new thread/reply to thread buttons and other buttons or icons. You'll need to exempt ads.kleinman.com (and/or kleinman.com) from your ad blocker.

Also, we removed the Members button from the line of buttons in the top right of every forum (it was with the other gray buttons: user cp, register, faq, search). Mostly because of concerns that spam companies were using it to get our member's email addresses.

<I>Missing Buttons if Your Use Norton Internet Security</i>
Apparently when using Norton Internet Security 2003, it's not as simple as just 'adding a site' to allow things through.

From NIS, click the Options button and select Internet Security.
Go to the Web Content tab.

If DVDTalk is not in the tree, add it.
The default global settings are:
Information about your browser: Use Default Settings: Permit
Information about visited sites: Use Default Settings: Block
Animated images: Use Default Settings: Permit
Scripts: Use Default Settings: Permit
Flash animation: Use Default Settings: Permit

The default user settings are:
Cookies: Use Default Settings: Permit
Java applets: Use Default Settings: Permit
ActiveX Controls: Use Default Settings: Permit
Pop-up ads: Use Default Settings: Permit

**Here's the kicker:**
In the Ad Blocking tab:
Click the Add... button.
Select the Permit radio button.
Key ads.kleinman.com in the text box.
Click Ok

Click Ok on the Options window.

Refresh the DVDTalk IE window.

The buttons appear.


NAME CHANGES
Our Name Change Policy:
As a result of an increased volume in name change requests and the inherent confusion caused by name changes, we're going to be putting some restrictions on name change requests from now on.

Name changes are fine (as long as they aren't too frequent) up until you reach the 1,000 post mark. At that point, you have likely become fairly well known in the forums you regularly participate in, and requests will then be considered on a case by case basis.

ie: We can understand that a name like 'MasterBaiter" might have been funny at one time, but may no longer be how you want to be seen on the forum. However, if you're a regular poster, going from "Chasing Amy" to "Run Lola Run" won't be an option anymore. So it's not a complete end to changes, but because of the confusion these things cause, you'll need to give us a good reason before we make a change from now on.

Changes that are mostly cosmetic (case, spacing) will still be allowed

Also, any major name change will now require that you put "formerly known as [old name]" in your Location field for two weeks.

I realize that this might be a little upsetting to some, but please try to understand that with as many active members as we have, it's already hard enough to keep track of who said what in the past. Throwing name changes into the mix just makes it next to impossible.

To actually get your name changed, you need to email an Administrator. Any Administrator is fine. (Please note that I, Blade, am now a retired Admin.)

USER TITLES
Under everyone's username is a user title. They change according to the number of posts you have:

New Member - 0
Cool New Member -20
Member - 50
Senior Member - 250
DVD Talk Special Edition - 1000
DVD Talk Gold Edition - 2000
DVD Talk Platinum Edition - 3000
DVD Talk Ultimate Edition - 4000
DVD Talk Limited Edition - 5000
DVD Talk Hall of Fame - 7500
DVD Talk Legend - 10000
DVD Talk Hero - 25000
DVD Talk Godfather - 50000
DVD Talk God - 100000

SEARCH
It's usually a good idea to do a search before starting a new thread. We've been around since 1999, and have answered a lot of questions since then. Depending on the forum, the posts actually go back pretty far (the less active, the further back they go). It's a pretty fast search engine too, so please try one of the following:

• Search Methods:
  This forum has two methods of searching for information you are looking for.
  
  1. The easiest can be found on every thread list page. Just go to the bottom of any thread list page and you'll see a box in the lower right hand corner labeled "Search this forum." Just type your keywords in there and it will search the content of the posts for only the forum you're in, regardless of date.
     
  2. The other is at the top right of almost every page. There's a bar of gray buttons and the second to last one says "search" and looks like this:
     
     <a href="http://www.dvdtalk.com/forum/search.php"><img src="http://www.dvdtalk.com/forum/images/top_search.gif" border="0"></a>
     
     Clicking on this button (the above is clickable, by the way) will take you to our search page which let's you search all forums, or one particular forum, and defaults to a search of the past month's posts. You can change that as well. You can also search only thread titles.
• A Note on Searching:
  The engine requires a minimum of 4 characters to perform a search. So if you're searching for a word of less than 4 characters (like a 3 digit number) you're going to have to try using another word that is likely to only occur with this particular keyword or subject. For example, if you were looking for a review of V, the tv series, try doing a search on miniseries.
  
  Also, the search engine does not do partial matches automatically. If you search on DVD it will only look for DVD, not DVDs. Note that this includes things like DVD" or DVD. or DVD,. (Wildcards are currently disabled because of the high load on server resources they cause.) To compensate for this, the search engine allows for the use of wildcards. If you're sure the word(s) you're searching for have been used, try adding "*" to your search. Either like this: DVD*, or like this: *DVD*, or even like this: *DVD.

AVATARS, other features
Avatars are not enabled for our forums. The bandwidth and server space that this would take up is too great a burden on an already fairly busy site. We'd very much like to add this feature, and if you can figure out a way to make it feasible costwise, please let us know.

Private Messaging and the Calendar features are also disabled, same reasons.

SIGNATURES
Sorry, but no images allowed. We do allow the use of forum smilies however.

Also, no HTML.

So to put a link in your signature, type the following:

[.url=http://www.yourlinkhere.com]your text here[/url]

but without the period after the first bracket (which is there so you can see the code).

There's also a five line limit on signatures. That includes empty lines. It's also based on a maximized browser window at 1024x768 screen resolution, with no child windows (like search or bookmarks) open.

If you see a violation, please just use the Report this post to a Moderator feature. Part of the reason we're asking for this is to cut down on bandwidth usage, so making a seperate post just to point out that someone's sig is too long sort of defeats that purpose. Thanks.

QUOTES
If you wonder how they do that quoting of another member's post stuff, at the top, far right of everyone's post, there's an icon that looks like this:
<img src="http://ads.kleinman.com/images/buttons/quote.gif" border="0" alt="Reply w/Quote">

Clicking on this icon will quote the text of that post. It will ignore, however, text that is already in quotes in that post.

FORUM SLOW
If the forum is slow, you need to open an MSDOS window and run enter the command "tracert www.dvdtalk.com", then use the block and paste buttons on the DOS window to copy the information that will pop up, then create a thread here and post that information. Someone will help you from there.

POP UP ADS
DVDTalk DOES NOT USE POP UPS!** I promise! (We did, however, start using pop unders in early July 2002, and had a month long one time pop-up ad deal with Warner.)

**Unfortunately, many advertisers are now requiring that pop ups be included in advertising deals, so at times, DVDTalk is forced to use pop up ads. As a general rule, we avoid them when possible, but the recent drop in Internet advertising dollars means that we can no longer turn away advertisers just because they require a pop up ad. There will be a thread announcing each promotion. Please post any problems or questions regarding the pop up in it's respective thread. Thank you for your understanding.

Either our adlink provider has made a mistake (and please try to copy and paste the url in your complaint thread) or you may have spyware/adware on your PC from another site. Or it's from another site you were visiting. Or someone posted something they weren't supposed to and will quite possibly soon be banned from the forum.

To clean out your PC, there are many software programs from Norton to McAfee.

One free one (and please do not consider this an endorsement) is AdAware. You can download it for free from this link: www.lavasoftUSA.com. DVDTalk makes no guarantees as to it's effectiveness, nor compatibility with your system. (Personally, I'm using it at home and work with no problem.) There is a version with more features for purchase, so if you like it, consider rewarding them by purchasing the more robust version.

A brief note on POP-UNDERS: While similar to pop-ups, pop-unders only show up briefly on your screen and then hide behind your main browser window, so that when you close your main broswer window, you'll see the ad. Because of the rising costs of running the forum, and the shrinking availability of ad revenue, we started using pop-unders in July of 2002. If you have cookies set up, then you should only be seeing them once per once per 12 hour session. We have a thread dedicated to Ad discussion, so if you have any problems or complaints, please post them there.

QUICK TABLES OR MAKING SPACES SHOW IN A POST
This suggestion was made by ctyner in this thread.

After creating the table or ascii drawing in the forum reply text box, copy and paste it into a text editor with a search and replace feature (Wordpad, for instance). Replace ' ' (a single space) with '&nb<b></b>sp;' and you'll be good to go. This creates an HTML space, that won't be ignored by the vBulletin software. (Note that the quote marks ' should be ignored when entering the code and the space in the find and replace operation.)

ADMINISTRATORS & MODERATORS
This is not our "job" as we aren't paid to do this. That's right, we're all volunteers, and we do this because we enjoy the subject matter of the various forums we moderate and because we've enjoyed DVDTalk and its members so much that we wanted to give back something because of all we've gotten.

So, as the site owner, Geoff Kleinman, said in another thread, please don't take us to task for every little thing. There are hundreds of posts everyday and we can't read them all. We are trying our best as our schedules permit.

If you have a problem with something a mod or admin has done, your best course of action is to first email that mod or admin. If you're not sure who to email, email any or all the mods of the forum your question concerns.

And please use the Report this post to a Moderator feature. If you don't get a response or see action taken within a day, feel free to email one (or all) of the Admins (X, benedict, pilot).

Blade

Added ctyner's great suggestion on how to create a quick table or make spaces show up in a post (for an ascii art drawing, or just quick diagrams).

I also modified the Search Explanation a few days ago.

Blade

Started a "how to" section on adding DVDTalk's affiliate ID to links to online store items. Started with Amazon...others to follow.

Blade

Added note to Name Change section that only Admins can change your user name and that you should email one of them with your request.

Blade

Good point. I updated the section on pop-ups and also added a note on missing buttons:

POP UP ADS
DVDTalk DOES NOT USE POP UPS! I promise! (We did, however, start using pop unders in early July 2002, and had a month long one time pop-up ad deal with Warner.)

....

A brief note on POP-UNDERS: While similar to pop-ups, pop-unders only show up briefly on your screen and then hide behind your main browser window, so that when you close your main broswer window, you'll see the ad. Because of the rising costs of running the forum, and the shrinking availability of ad revenue, we started using pop-unders in July of 2002. If you have cookies set up, then you should only be seeing them once per once per 12 hour session. We have a thread dedicated to Ad discussion, so if you have any problems or complaints, please post them there.

MISSING BUTTONS
All of the forum icon graphics have been moved to the ads.kleinman.com server. If you are blocking ads servers, then you won't be able to see the post new thread/reply to thread buttons and other buttons or icons. You'll need to exempt ads.kleinman.com from your ad blocker.

Also, we removed the Members button from the line of buttons in the top right of every forum (it was with the other gray buttons: user cp, register, faq, search). Mostly because of concerns that spam companies were using it to get our member's email addresses.

prokill25

Ok, HOW DO WE MAKE NEW POSTS in this forum? I don't see any buttons or links here.

Also, how do I get to a page that allows me to change my signature file?

Thanks for your help, I can make heads or tails here.

RandyC

Click on this top make a new thread. Click here to change your User Profile.

P.S. Don't actually click on these images. You need to click on the real ones.

prokill25

Oh I see, I don't see any images in your post, or on the header.

It's weird, my browser is saying that it's displaying everything...

Blade

You're probably using Win XP.

You need to adjust the firewall settings to allow "ads.kleinman.com" to be accessed by your PC. The image files have been moved to this server to inexpensively balance out the server load.

I'll have to update the FAQ for this....

Hope that helps.

prokill25

YES!

It was the firewall. I turned it off and then the extra buttons showed up.

Thanks.

Blade

Because of changes in our Search Engine and Pop Up policies, I've made changes to the following sections:

RDGAFFORD

USER TITLES
Under everyone's username is a user title. They change according to the following schedule:

New Member - 0
Member - 10
Senior Member - 250
DVD Talk Special Edition - 1000
DVD Talk Gold Edition - 2000
DVD Talk Platinum Edition - 3000
DVD Talk Ultimate Edition - 4000
DVD Talk Limited Edition - 5000
DVD Talk Hall of Fame - 7500
DVD Talk Legend - 10000
DVD Talk Hero - 25000
DVD Talk Godfather - 50000
DVD Talk God - 100000

Is this trades? What is the schedule measured in?

Static Cling

It's measured in the number of total posts you have.

DeputyDave

I know its been posted before, but for the life of me I can't find where...

I just got a new digital camera. How do I post pics?

RandyC

You can't upload pics directly to DVDtalk's forums. Some forums allow the "attaching" of image files. We do not.

You can show pics that are somewhere on the internet. This is easily done using the image tags in the code. Specifically, type [img] before the full URL of the image and [/img] after the url.

So for example, if the picture is located on the internet at:
http://www.chases.org/images/yelmug.jpg

I would post the following:


When you do that, it will come out as:


A common mistake is for someone to try to post a link to a picture file on their harddisk, so the img is from c:\mypics\etc That will not work.

RandyC

So the second part of your question is really how do I get these pictures on the internet from your camera or your computer? There are a couple methods. In times past, there were a lot of free web hosts that would allow you to upload your pics and they would host them. Many of those went out of business or stopped the free part. Some hosts such as geocities made it so that you could not link to them for image files.

There are a few free resources around and a quick search should locate them. There have been threads about this subject.

The other alternative is use your own website. This is one I highly recommend. Even if your ISP account does not give you a free website, you can get a domain name for under $9 a year and a place to park your files for very cheap. I have seen some sites as low as a couple dollars a month. I have some doubts about sites that are too cheap, as it's not worth it to me when they go out of business. You can find very reputable hosting for $7 a month or a little less.

Gallant Pig

Why does Cranky wear no pants?

RoQuEr

user titles should be updated.

Also, can we get a list of commonly used abbreviations?
Whats YMMV?
YGM?
IRRC?

Copenhagen

YMMV - Your miliage may vary
YGM - You've got mail
IIRC - If I recall correctly

Michael Corvin

Is there a way to view how many total posts you have? I have been a Senior Member for ages. Or does the "quick reply" not count towards posts? If that is the case I guess I will be stuck as a Senior Member forever.

Static Cling

Click on your profile button... the third line is Total Posts. Looks like you're well on your way to becoming an SE.

Michael Corvin

You know, after almost 4 years I have not one paid any attention to or clicked on that button. Funny. Right under my nose.

hgar78

why do some post sometimes have lines thru sentences, etc.

Static Cling

Sometimes it's because a moderator has come through and crossed out the text, so as to leave the text behind but indicate that it's something that shouldn't have been said.

hgar78

thanks!