Site Rules
This site is, for the most part, family-oriented and you're expected to treat it that way. If you must cuss, keep it on the light side. Risqué pictures will be tolerated as long as they're in good taste and in context with the comment.
Also, now that racial issues are in the spotlight due to the election, please keep any rampant bigotry to a low mumble. Commentary should generally try to stay on-topic with the post.
All standard site disclaimers apply, such as the moderators not being responsible for comments, links or suggested programs. By the same token, this is a morally upright site and any malavolence will be removed immediately. The quickest route is to leave a comment in Bird Dog's most recent post.
This site recognizes you by IP address. Any flagrant violation of standard Internet protocol subjects you to being banned from the entire site. You will be given one official warning.
If a comment of yours has been deleted and you wish to fight the issue, there are numerous free 'instant blogsite' companies around where you may do so.
Copyright Issues
We are a non-commercial amateur site and cannot always determine where some content or images originated. If asked, we will gladly and respectfully take down, link or attribute any copyrighted material which we have innocently, educationally or unknowingly posted or linked.
Comment Area Tips
Overview
This is something of a good news/bad news story. The bad news is that you have to enter the commands manually, rather than use some cute tool bar, but the good news is that we have a lot more options available to us than the average blogsite, such as embedded links, email links, strikethrough fonts, blockquotes, colored text, listed items and — best of all — the ability to post pictures. Web forums usually allow pictures, but it's very rare in the blogosphere.
Most of the commands are fairly intuitive; "i" means "italics", "b" means "bold", "url" means "web url/address", etc.
You start the command by putting it in square brackets, and end it by putting a slash in front of it:
[b] starts bold fonts
[/b] ends them
You'll have the routine down in no time.
The Basics
Italics — [i] text [/i]
Underline — [u] text [/u]
Bold — [b] text [/b]
Strikethrough — [strike] text [/strike]
Web Links
If you just want to slap the web address out there, do it like so:
[url]www.domain.com[/url]
If you want to embed it so another word links to the site, here's the template:
[url=http://www.domain.com] text [/url]
Unless you're confident you can type it by hand, probably the best way to do this is to first highlight the template and hit Ctrl-C to copy it to memory, then punch it into the comment box with Ctrl-V. Then open the site you want in another browser window, click in the address box (which should highlight the entire thing), hit Ctrl-C to copy it to memory and then swing back to Maggie's. Carefully remove the example address and punch in the new one with Ctrl-V. Then delete the "text" and type in the word(s) you want linked to the site. You can test the link using 'Preview'. It'll open a new browser window.
Email Links
The template:
[email]youraddresshere@domain.com[/email]
Please note that spamming companies send out 'bots to scour the web looking for email addresses and that the comments on a blogsite are 'spidered' by the 'bots just as easily as the home page, so you're taking the chance that you'll end up on some spam lists. It would be better to just spell it out: "myaddress at mydomain dot com".
Blockquotes
The template:
[quote=place text here][/quote]
If you're writing a serious piece about a serious subject and are using a blockquote to back up a point, it would be 'good form' to include the link to the quote somewhere. And it's perfectly acceptable to blockquote yourself when referring to something you wrote on your own site.
Colored Text
For a quick red, green or blue, you can just use the common word, like so:
[color=red] text [/color]
For a full list of acceptable color names, open Outlook Express, pretend to write an email, then click on the little 'Font Color' box on the tool bar. All of these color names should work.
If it actually has to be an exact color, you'll need a program like Color Picker to give you the color value in hexadecimal code.
Using Color Picker
When you get to the site, click on 'Color Picker' over on the left, then on the image that pops up over on the right to download the file. No installation necessary, just copy the folder to a permanent home. Since you'll want an entry for it on the Start Menu, grab hold of the "FSColor" icon with the left mouse button and drag it over to the Start Menu and drop it in.
In Color Picker, you can either manually dial in a color over on the left, type in an RGB color if you have the value, or grab the little 'bull's eye' icon with the mouse and drag it over an existing color. When you have the color you want, click on the 'Web' button and it'll copy the hexadecimal code to memory. Swing back to Maggie's and punch it into the command area where the "color" normally goes.
Listing Items
The template:
[list]
[*]Item 1
[*]Item 2
[*]Item 3
[/list]
Additional Info
This editor is a plug-in for the blogging software the site uses. It can even do a few more tricks than listed above. More info here.
The editor was installed by Maggie's talented webmaster, Chris Southern from Chris Southern Consulting.
If you're thinking of getting a blogsite going, but don't want to have some company like Blogger or Googleblogs own your domain name, the free Serendipity blogware this site uses is really superb. It's obviously going to take more setting up than just hopping over to Googleblogs, but once it's up and running, you'll find it very easy to use. Home site is here.
post to del.icio.us