POSTING FAQs

Moods: How do I use and change my "mood" icon?
Pictures: How do I include a picture in a post?

PROFILE / DISPLAY FAQs

Why can't I change my display name?
Why does it say I have 50,000+ posts?

Moods: What are "moods" and how do I change mine?

Setting your current "mood" causes an icon depicting that mood to appear under your name (etc) on all of your posts. It's simply a way to let everyone know what kind of foul or dizzy mood you might be in.

To change your mood, simply click "your other settings" in the blue, horizontal menu near the top-right of every page: The first area on the resulting page is a simple drop-down menu from which you may select your current mood.

Whenever you change your mood, all of your posts, new and old, will appear with the new mood icon on them, no matter where and when someone is seeing them -- until you change your mood again.

(If you have a suggestion for a "mood", and an icon to depict that mood, which you'd like added to the selection, please PM UB -- we love fresh ideas!).

Pictures: How do I include a picture in a post?

If the picture is on the web and you just want to show it to your friends, you can do that... but this is called "hot-linking" and some websites will prevent the picture from showing. (If you have a picture of your own, on your computer, that you want to include in a post, see below).

Usually I'd not suggest people do this, as it's asking the other site owner's server to feed us the picture each time your post is read, but we're a relatively small site here and a picture in any given post isn't going to be re-displayed enough times to really use a measurable amount of the person's bandwidth.

So, with the picture in question on your screen, right-click on it. Depending on what browser you use, find the option that's about the picture's "location" or "URL" (in Firefox you'll see "Copy Image Location").  Either click a choice that copies the picture's URL to your clipboard, or if it displays the pictures URL to you just highlight the URL and press CTRL-C to copy it to your clipboard.

Now go back to your post here, and wherever you want the picture to appear, press CTRL-V to paste that URL you copied above.

Lastly, type "[IMG]" before the URL and "[/URL]" after it. Like this:

[IMG]http://SomeServer.com/SomePicture.jpg[/IMG]

Now the picture will display cleanly in your post! Sounds more complicated than it is... really it's just a few keystrokes -- so have fun decorating your world here!

Including Your Own Picture In A Post

It's a regular conundrum for folks that aren't used to working with files on websites, to get a picture they want to use in a post up somewhere.

But these days there are lots of sites out there that will host your picture for free.

Here is a link that will do a Google search for free picture-hosting sites. Choose one of these and follow their instructions for getting your picture uploaded to their server.

Then, simply follow the above instructions for including any picture in a post.

 

Feel free to write me if you need any further help

Why can't I change my display name?

One of our goals here is to create that hard-to-nail-down feeling of real community, or even family, and we've found over time that when people change their name regularly, it makes it very hard for new Residents to know who is whom, and to develop an individual identity that everyone associations with the real you. Members of families rarely completely change their name to something totally different, and we want this to feel like a family.

That being said... sometimes people do change their names in life, so if it's important to you, please do contact us and we'd be glad to help -- just please try to avoid playing musical names. :)

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Why does it say I have 50,000+ posts?
Those who've chosen to have certain content filtered for them have their post-count set by us to add 50,000 to whatever it was, for inane technical reasons that are too boring to go into, and which should be remedied soon to provide a more elegant solution. Obviously no one has posted that many times, so when you see a count that high, just subtract 50,000 from it if you care to.

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