Australia Signs Marketing Ideas Centre /  User Guide

Thanks for participating but dont write junk, it just gets cleaned out.
All the good 'how to use' is below. It's really easy!

Marketing Ideas Centre Admin January 1, 2007.

1. Forums-wide user options
   1. Users hierarchy
   2. User's registration
   3. User's login
   4. New topics and replies
      • Automatic links highlighting
      • BB Codes
      • Quoting messages
   5. Editing messages
   6. Changing user password
   7. Forgotten password
   8. Forums search panel

Introduction

The Australia Signs Marketing Ideas Centre is a flat-type (not threaded) bulletin board, discussion forums software. It has special anti spam features and your email will not be publicly display if your choose to sign up and choose not to display it, thus, it can not be retrieved by spam lists.

You can add to the ideas, discussions or hot threads anonymously or as a signed up member.

Users hierarchy

There is a "liberal" users hierarchy in Australia Signs Marketing Ideas Centre. Topics can be made both by anonymous users and registered users. Let's see what happens.

• Anonymous users. a) If you do not register for some reasons, you can make an anonymous post, even under your usual nickname (nick), if it's not taken by another member already. Simply type your username in "Login" field without password, and make a post under this name. If you leave both fields blank, your name automatically will be "Anonymous". If you only ever use anonymous, and one day want to sign up, the name may already be taken.
  b) If you use our Marketing ideas more than 30 times as an anonymous poster, at #31, your IP is banned. This is for security.
  c) Anonymous users and 'Nickname' users have no access to Private Ideas.
   
• Registered users. WE STRONGLY RECOMMEND all users Register including those who visit this forum regularly, first time, seldom or periodically. Why? Firstly, no one else will take your "unique" username/nick, and anonymous users will not be able to post messages under your 'wanted' nickname by being there first. Second, if you will post some messages under your nick, and register it later, it is NOT POSSIBLE to edit these "anonymous messages" anymore. And finally, any registered user may have the same name and use it first. Name and passwords in the Australia Signs Marketing Ideas Centre are not duplicated. First in, first served as far as names.
• We do not send a 'Welcome' email. We do send out the occasional newsletter or mail, however, on any newsletter mails, you always have the option to UNSUBSCRIBE. We respect your choice and no further contact will be made. You do not need to receive newsletters to remain an active participant on the Australia Signs Marketing Ideas Centre. If you choose to unsubscribe, no more newsletters will be sent. You can not later choose to re-subscribe. It would require a new newsletter registration/sign up. This is not the same as the Marketing Ideas Centre Registration.
• Registered Users will also have access to 'Private Ideas' in which a more confidential suggestion or concept is explained in detail and NOT publicly listed. Private Ideas are very valuable to registered users.
• Registered Users have unlimited post numbers in forums. Anonymous Users are IP blocked at post #31. Anonymous Users are regularly cleaned out, removing any permalink to another website.

User info is displayed on a separate page. On the threads page, you'll find only user's nickname and, if this user is registered, a "member" beneath. Clicking on it, you'll get all possible info about user and only what they allow to be public, which either is specified/allowed by admin or the user. NOTE: by clicking on user's nickname, you "quote" his nickname in the reply form! Any report of abuse, and we ban by both IP and other features.

User's registration (Sign Up)

We recommend that you 'Sign Up' as it gives you extra benefits

1. Posts wont be cleaned out as junk.
2. We allow you to add your website URL and gain additional traffic and 'link status'.
3. You will be able to talk directly with staff or registered experts and highly regarded individuals on more in-depth topics that may not be appearing on the General Australia Signs Marketing Ideas Centre
4. You will be able to view more Private Ideas not accessible to nickname or anonymous participants.
5. We will promote within other areas of our site to your web pages and/or promote your business free.
6. Registered users, after permission is granted by admin, be occasionally allowed to promote direct business services on this site.

For registering, just click on "Registration", "Sign Up" at the top menu, proceed past the non-robot technology and fill in the form as a normal human.

Step 1. Use of Captcha Technology. We use Captcha Technology that stops auto spamming of the Ideas Centre, Fill in the numerical and letter characters to proceed to the 'Sign Up' Details. Its very easy!

Necessary fields are:

• LOGIN: your username, must be unique - if a user with the identical login already exists, you won't be able to register. Login must contain only symbol combination defined by admin. Usually, we recommend to use only A-Z letters, digits and maybe "_" sign. But, if admin defines more symbols, you can also use them. There is only one possibility to view defined symbols - to make a mistype in username. Then you will see them in error message. Anyway, don't choose "exotic" usernames - at least, it is stupid. You can use a name with length from 3 to 40 symbols.
• PASSWORD: your password for BB. Must contain only A-Z letters, digits and "_" sign (no spaces!). You can use password with length from 5 to 32 symbols. Why exactly 32? We don't know ;) If seriously, try to use not more than 10 symbols.
• PASSWORD ONCE AGAIN: this must be the same symbol combination, as the "PASSWORD". This is just for checking - have you entered password correctly, or not. Pay attention: all passwords are saved in encoded way. There is no possibility to view user password even by admin! Despite you can anyway receive new password via email, but it will be different from your orignal one (randomly generated).
• EMAIL: your email. Must be also unique (no 2 users with the same email are possible). Email is checked by simple regular expression for avoiding "stupid" emails. If you can't register some email, please report to admin, or via our contact page. Even we have checked this combination in many cases, there are some "exotic" emails that can not be validated with our function. But this is a rare thing.
• EMAIL: We do not pass on any email addresses to anybody or non Australia Signs list.

Copyright

The information shown and delivered by the Australia Signs Marketing Ideas Centre is subject to copyright. Posters acknowledge that by adding to or creating any element or other it will be publicly displayed.

Deleting messages. Only admin is allowed to delete user messages. If you want a message deleted, contact us with hyperlink to that forum or topic page.

Deleting topics. Only Admin or moderators are allowed to delete all available user topics. If you want a topic deleted, contact us with a hyperlink to that topic.

Forums-wide user options

User's login

Users must have cookies enabled in the browser. Cookie passwords are encrypted format and are not malicious. The User login form is located on every topics or threads page, as well as on the first page. For that to work, it just needs a cookie. On the topic or thread pages, you are able just to log-in without posting any text. You need to type your login and password correctly. This makes the Marketing Ideas Centre work faster for you.

Usually the interactive login expires within 1-2 hours or immediately when you close down. We recommend to do logout before leaving the Marketing Ideas Centre.

Anonymous users also receive cookie that goes from one page to another. Enjoy comfort!

New topics and replies

New topic form is placed at the bottom of each topics listing page. You need to type topic's title ("New topic") and body ("Message"). At least, "New topic" field must be filled in. If you write in it and don't write in "Message", message will be automatically equal to topic's title.

New post form is located at the bottom of each threads page.

Note: The anti-spam protection is always enabled. You can make posts and topics only once-per-defined-time. Usually, this time is 1-2 minutes - and it means, you can make extra posts AFTER the time has elapsed. A small clock timer will show you. This is so that auto spammers can not fill the Marketing Ideas Centre and help keep it clean for your benefit. THIS IS FOR YOUR BENEFIT.

Note 2: Text breaks (newlines+carriage returns) are automatically converted to "physical" breaks.

Note 3: Don't use a lot of apostrophes, quotes and specific tags in your messages. Actually, they are converted to "real" HTML-tags like "'" (apostrophe), "&" (ampersand) etc.

Note 4: Swear and Offensive Words. Posters using unacceptable words, phrases or posts that attact or provide poor content are removed and/or banned. Keep it clean.

Automatic links highlighting

If you are using links like http://www.australiasigns.com.au  (beginning with "http://", "https://", "ftp://", "www" or "mailto:"), they are automatically converted to "real" links. But, when checking "Disable" box, links ARE NOT automatically highlighted, both as BB-codes (see below).

BB Codes

In Australia Signs Marketing Ideas Centre, there is no possibility to include HTML in topics or posts. They can contain only "BB-codes" - special HTML-code replacements, that "emulate" HTML code. Since HTML is not supported in our Ideas Centre, most popular BB-codes are good alternative when posting new message or topic.

Each New Topic | Reply | Quote etc message field has lots of BBcode Buttons you can click.

    buttons that helps you to insert these tags into your post.

Currently, Australia Signs Marketing Ideas Centre supports following codes:

• [url=SOMEURL]SOMETEXT[/url] where SOMEURL is URL like http://www.australiasigns.com.au, SOMETEXT is alternate text to URL. DON'T USE QUOTATION MARKS OR APOSTROPHES INSIDE THIS TAG. In a post, these tags are replaced like following: <a href=SOMEURL>SOMETEXT</a>.
  
  So to make a URL that you can read as words, do this [url=http://www.australiasigns.com.au/ideas/index.php]Marketing Ideas Centre[/url]
  It will look like this: Marketing Ideas Centre when posted. I highlighted the square bracket ] so that you can see where it needs to be added.
   
• [imgs(left|right)]http://www.someserver.com/images/image.gif[/img] where http://www.someserver.com/images/image.gif is exact URL for an image file (.JPG or .GIF). Alternatively, you can use "left" and "right" tags (without trailing space!) followed exact after "imgs". They place image left or right on the page, in the same way like HTML does. Usually, only [imgs] tag is used, but in systems like "Idea Center NEWS" you can also use left/right aligns. This tag is replaced with: <img src='http://www.someserver.com/images/image.gif' border='0' align='left OR right OR nothing' alt=''>. (Example: [imgsleft]http://www.someserver.com/images/image.gif[/img]) Note: because of hack protection, you can include images only from http:// servers, also as with only extensions like .gif or .jpg. all posted images are shrunk to the width of 150 pixels, so they can not break the look of the thread.
   
• [b]Bold[/b] where "Bold" is the text you want to markup as in a "bold" style. Example: [b]Attention[/b] produces Attention.
   
• [i]Italic[/i] where "Italic" is the text you want to markup as in an "italic" style. Example: [i]I apologize[/i] produces I apologize.
   
• [u]Underlined[/u] where "Underlined" is the text you want to markup as in an "underlined" style. Example: [u]Don't write me an email[/u] produces Don't write me an email.

Note that the case of BB codes doesn't matter. You can type "[URL]" or "[uRL]" or whatever. Only opening and closing tags [urL]...[/uRL] are important, also tags CAN NOT CONTAIN SPACES! USE SQUARE BRACKETS!

Both anonymous and registered users can use BB-codes, but also you can DISABLE BB-code in your post, checking "Disable" flag. Usually this is not necessary, because BB-codes allow posts be more organized and good-looking messages. But if you need to post something using not BB-code, but actual info containing BB-code, it is useful. For avoiding BB-codes, you can also put spaces inside them.

It is possible to combine tags with each other, i.e., to make "bold+italic" or "bold link". But be careful again with opening and closing tags correspond. Example:

If you need to post 100% "tagged" URL, it is better to do it with tags, since automatic replacements can't work in some cases. i.e., the following example will not work: [b]http://www.australiasigns.com.au[/b]. It is only "bolded", but not "highlighted". For bolding url links, use [url] tag.

Note: you can use tags also for multi-line text. Example:

[b]Text1

Text2[/b]

(text contains two paragraphs) produces:

Text1

Text2

ADVANCED: Only Admin can use "color tags" for various text colors in messages: Anonymous, Registered users can not use color. The Australia Signs Marketing Ideas Centre is designed for Pictures and Reading, not rainbows.

• [font#(HEX-COLOR)]Colored Text[/font]

This option is not available for non moderator users, because of its restrictions and format.

Quoting messages

Idea Creators can quote other messages. There is no "quote" BB-code included, as on some bulletin boards. Instead of it, you can use "italic" style to separate quotes. For better comfort, there is a "quote" link near every post made. For making a quote, you need to select some text and press this link. Selected text will be automatically inserted into reply box at the bottom of the page.

Note: To quote a previous post, move your mouse over the text and highlight the important parts your want to quote. Then, click the 'quote' option. That text will automatically be placed in your new post.

Editing messages

Registered users (and only registered) can edit THEIR messages, but only if they are cookie-logged and only if the time of the message is not expired. For this, just click on "Edit" near each post (if it is your message, you'll see the link, else not). When editing message, "automatic highlights" are replaced with "real" BB-codes, so there is no need to delete them once again. Also, "real" HTML tags are replaced back to codes. Via editing, user can add new BB-codes, links etc. - like in any new post or topic. User can edit only his POST, not topic's title, even if he is the author of the topic. After message is edited by user, info about that is displayed near each post.

Only Admin can delete messages.

Changing user password

Login, go to the preferences, type new password 2 times in "password" fields. Your password will be updated to the new one.

Note: after changing password your old password will not be valid, and you will need to re-login on the login page. If you will edit more settings, you'll get the message "not allowed" or something similar.

Changing forgotten password

Australia Signs passwords are encrypted algorithm.  The longer password characters you have the better. If you have forgotten your password it generates new random password.

Follow these steps to receive new password:

• Click on "password" links near login form;
• Enter an email you've mentioned in the registration form;
• If your email is correct (we hope, yes :) you will receive further instructions via email;
• Follow link described in email and confirm your password;
• Your password will be changed only after confirmation. You will be able to change it to something "human" in "preferences".

Forums search panel

You can quickly search forums for keywords. Search panel is placed under the "Search" link in menu. You can search text in topics and posts, in topics only, in poster names, in specified forums, by all words, any words or the whole phrase. Newest messages are shown first.

Search phrase length can't be more than 100 chars. Minimum length of any word is 3 symbols. As more search parameters you specify, as more longer by time and specific by content will be search results.

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