Macrotone

Introduction

These are the basic rules of the forum. Nothing that one wouldn't expect but if we do not specified what they are, we can hardly expect everyone to 'know the rules'.

We would like to specify that we are not aware of anyone every having 'broken' the rules, but there is always likely to be a first time.

The other reason to specify the rules is the recent surprise decision (June 16 2015), of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in Strasbourg that has ruled that a site (specifically the Estonian news site Delfi) may be held responsible for anonymous and allegedly defamatory comments from its readers. As the digital rights organisation Access notes, this goes against the European Union’s e-commerce directive, which "guarantees liability protection for intermediaries that implement notice-and-takedown mechanisms on third-party comments.". This article goes into more detail.

General Rules

• When registering, a valid email address has to be used. Disposable email addresses are not permitted. If found, we reserve the right to remove the account in question.
• Keep all posts on-topic.
• Do not pretend to be/represent somebody else. Your account may be deleted if found to be in breach of this rule.
• Do not discuss illegal activities.
• To accept full responsibility for the post contents that you submit.
• To use this function only for lawful purposes.
• Not to post defamatory, abusive, offensive, racist, sexist, threatening, vulgar, obscene, hateful or otherwise inappropriate comments, or to make posts which will constitute a criminal offence or give rise to civil liability.
• Not to post or make available any material which is protected by copyright, trade mark or other proprietary right without the express permission of the owner of the copyright, trade mark or any other proprietary right.
• To evaluate for yourself the accuracy of any opinion, advice or other content.
• Please check that your question has not been answered anywhere else on the site. Use the search feature.
• Post your comment/question to the most appropriate place. Any posts deemed to be in the wrong forum will be moved. Please do not cross-post the same question to multiple places.
• Please ensure you have read the parent article/post completely before posting a reply
• Use your own words. If you wish to use the words of somebody else, quote them, citing the source. Plagiarism is unethical and is illegal in many countries.
• Please Choose an appropriate subject line. Try to summarise the problem briefly in the subject, and elaborate in the message itself. Repeat the subject in the body if it will make things clearer. Do not use all caps and do not add false information just to get attention (e.g. ;read this or you will be arrested;). An example of a bad subject would be "HELP ME". A good subject might be, "Foo crashes when I do bar". Do not use a URL as a thread title.
• Include as much information as you can when seeking help. This may include logs and command line output. Nobody will be able to help you if you don't provide sufficient detail.
• Ask Questions The Smart Way. Read this by Eric Raymond.
• No useless posts. This includes: Thread bumping, useless one liners, Flamewars, Trolling and Spamming.
• Thank those who help you. Acknowledgment of a helpful suggestion not only placates those who helped you, it can also help others with a similar problem. All those who have been helped on this forum are invited to help other users by responding to their questions when they know the answer and /or to consider donating to the project.
• Do not link to any site that contains adult content, sexually oriented material or might otherwise be considered offensive. Any post containing an inappropriate link will be deleted and the poster will receive a warning.
• Do not propose/link to any site that contains warez/copyrighted software/materials that can be downloaded illegally.
• No affiliate links should be posted, anywhere on the forum.

Signatures

• Should be setup in your Profile (user Control Panel) , and not manually added to your messages.
• May NOT contain any images.
• May not contain any pricing, sales, product etc. details.
• May contain a maximum of two smilies. Or one animated smiley.
• May include two clickable links. URL's or mailto: - No duplicate links
• May include two colours. Hyperlink colour is set by the forum and is not counted as a colour.
• Maximum font size cannot be larger than normal.
• May not contain links to other threads or posts for the purpose of self promotion
• Your signature is your signature. It is not for sale or rent.
• Any signature or avatar that is offensive or insulting to either us, our members, or our staff, are prohibited.
• We reserve the right to ask you to change and/or remove your signature or avatar at any time, for any reason.

At all times:

• Keep all commentary civil, and be courteous at all times. Constructive criticism is welcome, but insults directed towards other users or the site administrators will not be tolerated. Coarse/insulting language will not be tolerated.
• No commercial advertising is permitted.
• When recommending an extension or other product to help a user solve their issue, you must disclose any affiliations you may have with the company or group that authors that particular product. This includes, but is not limited to: any paid or non-paid relationships past or present, receiving any promotional products or services, or any other similar information.
• Any posts deemed to be self promotion, advertising, or spam can and will be removed. NO SPAM - NO ADVERTISING eg. Posting and making excessive, inappropriate and unnecessary references to your products and websites is self promotion.
• This is not the place to settle a commercial disagreement for custom development or to be a 'wall of shame'. Any posts deemed to be of this nature will be removed. Settle your disputes in private please.
• If you feel a post violates any of these rules, or you need to bring it to the attention of a moderator (move threads/close/split), please use the ‘report this post’ link to notify the moderators.
• This forum is centred on Macrotone Consulting software. It is not a place to promote ideological, religious, or political matters. All such discussions will be deleted/closed.

Failure to abide by these rules may result in an editing, negative moderation or deletion of your post. We reserve the right to ban abusers from the site. We reserve the right to change these rules at any time.

Introduction

Since you are reading this page then it is safe to say to that you already know basic website navigation such as typing web addresses, clicking through links and maybe even watching or listening to multimedia. What we’ll do here is try to familiarise you with how to use our forum and its many options.

When you read this article this you will be able to reply to existing posts as well as make new posts. You will know how to format your text, make links, add images and videos and much more. We’re not going to teach you how to use every little button or forum feature but rather provide you sufficient knowledge to feel comfortable enough to be involved in the forum. After that, you can do experiment on your own to learn more.

Warning

This site is protected by software that actively monitor submissions (amongst other things) and has software that tries to detect SQL injection and PHP cross site scripting attempts, and it can be very rigorous in what it interprets as possible violations. When it detects situations that it interprets as possible hacking attempts it gives each specific IP address 3 attempts and then bars that IP for a predefined period (many days).

We apologise in advance if you are blocked but we must endeavour to maintain our system integrity. The only way to get the block lifted is to wait until the blocking period elapses, or to send us an email with the details of your IP address and we will lift the block manually.

The best way to submit code etc., is to attach a file that contains the appropriate code we can then look at.

Set up your profile

When you find a community and forum that you like and plan on staying for a while it is a good idea to set up and complete your profile. You access your profile by clicking the My Profile menu tab located at the top of the forum.

Profile summary

On the profile summary page you will see a number of tabbed areas that contain information about the posts you have made, the forum categories or topics you are subscribed to (more about this later), favourite topics, “thank yous”, and details of any attached files you have added to your forum posts.

Changing your profile

To add to or change your current profile information, find the Edit button located on the right side of the line where you see “Profile for <your username>”. There are four tabbed areas where you can change your user account (e.g. email address, password, current timezone), forum profile (e.g. date of birth, gender, forum signature, etc.), avatar image, and preferred forum settings (e.g. do you want to see posts listed “oldest post first” or “newest post first”). Remember to press the Save button if you change any of your forum profile information.

Reply to an existing topic

So, you have been looking at the forum for a while reading every post and getting to know everyone. You have just read someone’s post and you have decided to reply and contribute your own thoughts. This is done by pressing one of the “reply” buttons.

• Quick Reply - brings up a small text area (without reloading the webpage) where you can quickly type a short reply. Press Submit when you have typed your response. If you decide not to submit your message to the forum, you can press Cancel and nothing will be posted whether you typed anything or not.

• Reply - is the standard method in which you should reply when you want to reply primarily to the most recent post. The subject line of your reply will autofill with the subject of the post from which you are replying. You can change the subject. You are looking at what is called a “text editor”; it is like a trimmed-down version of a word processor (such as Microsoft Word) in which you can format your text, add links, images, “smileys”, etc. More on how to format your post later. For now, type your response and press the Preview button at the bottom of the page if you wish to view your post prior to submitting it. When you are done editing and are satisfied your post is ready, press the Submit button.

• Quote - If you wish to quote someone’s post (whether in whole or in part) you simply press the Quote button located beside the Reply button underneath each post. This can be useful if you wish to make comment or expand upon a prior post. The Quote feature copies the entire post (“wrapped” in [quote] [/quote] tags) that you can edit if you wish. Once you press the Quote button you are brought into the same editing environment that you use to edit or create any other post. At this point, you type directly into the text editor. When you are finished composing your message, press the Submit button.

• Reply Topic - This button functions the same as the Reply button except that your subject line will auto-fill with the subject of the original post (OP). This may come in handy if you replying to a long topic whose subjects may have changed over time but you want to reply to the OP. When you are done replying, press the Submit button.

Start a new topic

To create your own topic (perhaps to tell us a little about yourself) you should go to the category index to see the list of all of the existing topics. At the top of the list is a button labelled New Topic. Click that button to start your own topic. You are placed at the same text editor that you used earlier when replying to posts. Simply type your message and press Submit. Now you have your own new topic in the list.

Format your post

As we said earlier, the forum text editor is very similar to using word processor. As in any word processor you can format your text with added emphasis, add lists, insert images and much more.

BBcode

The first, basic thing you should know is that the forum uses what's called BBcode or Bulletin Board Code. BBcode uses “tags” to format your text. Each BBcode tag has an opening and closing form denoted within brackets. An opening tag will look like [ ] and a closing tag looks like [/ ]. Notice the slash in the closing bracket is the only thing that is different. If you forget the slash, the forum will interpret your closing bracket as an opening bracket.

The easiest way to format your text is usually to type it out first, then select the text you have typed and press the appropriate button on the editor toolbar. For example, if you wanted to make “some text” stand out bold you would type “some text”, select the text with your mouse, and then press the “B” icon in the toolbar (in the area above where you are composing your message). You will now see: [b]some text[/b]. When you preview or submit your message it will be displayed as some text. Alternatively, if you know them, you can type the tags right along with the rest of your text or you can use the buttons at the top of the editor to insert the tags the fill in your text.

Lists

There are two types of lists: ordered and unordered. An ordered list is a numerical list like you might use to list the finishing order of a race. An unordered list is a list you might use to list groceries. There are two different tags needed to create a list.

First, you use a tag that creates the kind of list you want.

[ul] [/ul] = unordered list [ol] [/ol] = ordered list

Second, you use a list tag for each item in the list

[li] [/li] = each list item.

So, the code for an ordered list would look like this:

[ol] [li] 1st place[/li] [li] 2nd place[/li] [li] 3rd place[/li] [/ol]

Videos

Embedding a video in your post is a feature of the forum and makes use of many video sharing websites on the web. This allows people to embed their videos with the means to play them in the forum. Once you have a video that you want to post you need to find the unique identifier in the URL to that video.

It’s difficult to provide detailed instructions or examples here, so this will be basic. Understand that each video sharing website uses a unique identifier for each video. For example, consider this video from YouTube whose URL is http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bqJE5TH5jhc. You need to know the video’s unique identifier (which differs depending on what site you visit); in this example, the unique identifier is bqJE5TH5jhc. Once you know what that unique identifier is you can embed that video in our forum by selecting the video hosting website from the “video” drop-down list in the editor tools or by typing the following:

[video type=] [/video]

If you were embedding a video from YouTube, for example, the bbcode would end up looking like this:

[video type=youtube]<insert_unique_identifier_here>[/video]

for example

[video type=youtube] bqJE5TH5jhc [/video]

It is always a good idea to preview your post to make sure the video is visible before submitting your completed post.

Confidentiality

Sometimes you might want to submit information to help provide assistance, by submitting URLs or user name and password combinations. The information that is so provided would only be visible to the submitter, forum moderators and administrators.

[confidential]<insert_confidential_information_here>[/confidential]

for example:

[confidential]Text cannot be seen except by author, forum moderator or administrator[/confidential]

Edit your own post

There will be times when you make a post and you don't notice a misspelled word, fix a broken link or something that will require you to edit you post. When you are looking at one of your own posts that you need to change you will find the Edit button at the bottom of your post. Simply press the edit button and you use the same editor you used to create your post populated with the actual post. Edit your post as you see fit and, when you are satisfied, press the Submit button at the bottom of the page. All done!

Saying “Thank You”

If you read something on our forum and you would like to show your appreciation for someone’s contribution, a really easy thing to do is to click the Thank You button located below the forum post. Occasionally it’s a welcome gesture when people give thanks for the efforts of others who may have helped solve a problem or if they have gone “above and beyond the call of duty” in a post they have written.

Subscriptions and favourite topics

Now that you have settled into your new community and everyone has met you, you want to be able to keep up with your favourite posts without checking in every five minutes to see if something new has posted. There a couple of ways that you can do that.

Subscribe

At the top and the bottom of every topic you will find a Subscribe button. Pressing this button subscribes you to that topic so that any responses to that topic will generate an email notification to your email address stating that a new post has been made along with a link directly to said post for your convenience. You will notice the button now reads “unsubscribe” indicating that you are subscribed and pressing the button again will remove your subscription to that thread. Remember that you can also manage your subscriptions in your profile. There is also a categorySubscribe button that will send you email notifications of any post made in any topic in that category.

Favourite topics

Another way of highlighting topics that wish to keep an eye on is to use the Favorite button. This will place an obvious indicator, such as a star, beside the topic name on the category index so that it will stand out in the list of topics. You will notice the button now reads “unfavorite” indicating that the topic is already one of your favourites; pressing the button again will remove it from your favourites. This is a great way to maintain your interest on certain topics without using the subscription feature. Remember that you can also manage your favourites in your profile.

Conclusion

Now that you know how to create your own posts, edit them, set notifications, etc, you are ready to explore the rest of the forum. Don’t be afraid. Go click things and see what they do. If something “breaks” or you don’t understand how to use something make a post in the forum and ask for help.

Language	Code	Name
Dutch (Netherlands)	nl_NL	Jan Koekepan
French (France)	fr_FR	Pierre D Romain Michelon
Germany (German)	de_DE	Klaus Gebhardt Ettore Atalan
Persion (Iran)	fa-IR	Ali Adineh
Portuguese (Brazilian)	pt_BR	Carlos Rodrigues de Souza
Portuguese (Portugal)	pt_PT	Paulo Pereira
Romanian (Romania)	ro_RO	Catalin Dragomirescu
Russian (Russia)	ru_RU	Merle Greenkey
Spanish (Mexico)	es_MX	Alexis Gustavo Valencia Valenzuela
Vietnamese	vi_VN	Phan Anh

 

Our apologies to anyone we may have unintentionally omitted from the above list.