Home 2023 › Forums › Official & Introductions › How to Use Forum Features
Tagged: @auburn
This is a visual guide for how to use the features on this forum.
Click on the links below to be taken to the right topic:
On this forum you have two names, the display name and user name. The display name is what shows up in all of your posts, and the user name is what you use to login. Since these are auto-generated from your checkout info, many will wish to change them.
To change the Display Name click on your user icon at the top right of the browser:
Then click Edit on the link right below your avatar:
^ And then enter in your new Display Name.
To change your user name (the one used at login), click on the gear icon on the top menu next to your user icon:
This will take you to your settings page. You can also get to this page by clicking the gear icon in your profile:
Once you've in your settings page, click "Change Username" as shown by the green arrows above. Afterwards, enter your new username in the field below. The User Name should only be changed once after registration.
To add images to your posts first make sure you're in the visual editor by clicking the "Visual" tab to the top-right corner of your message screen like so:
^ Then, click "Insert" in the menu and right below it click "Image."
You will now see a popup that looks like this:
You have two options here for inserting images.
- 1) You can drop an external image's URL directly into the field with the green arrow above ^
- 2) You can click the folder icon (in the green square above) which will allow you to upload the photo directly from your PC.
Afterwards click "Ok"
A size of 500px is good for photos. If they're too big, they won't fully show up in your post. If your photo is too big, you can scale it down by clicking and holding on one of the image's corners and then dragging your mouse further left until it has the right dimensions. Release the click and it'll maintain that size when you post it.
Troubleshooting: If for some reason your image shows up as links instead of photos, go back into your post by clicking "Edit" at the bottom of it, and re-add the photo. If you still have issues, contact me in PM and I'll see to the problem.
If you'd like to hide some content in a spoiler like this:
Hello this is a spoiler tag!
Manually type in [ spoiler ] at the start of where you want to begin the spoiler, and type [ /spoiler] where you want to end the spoiler.
^ but remove all the spaces inside the spoiler tags (which are added here just so it doesn't trigger the spoiler in the example).
To add GIF images to your post, particularly as they relate to visual signals, go to:
https://giphy.com/
And click "Create" at the top right corner:
On the next page, enter in the youtube URL of the video here: (this site will only work for videos under 15 minutes)
Next, select your START time for your GIF within the video by moving the slider:
You can also just type in the start time in the little timer box to the right.
And you can adjust how long the GIF goes on by moving the first slider.
Then click "Continue to Decorate":
Do nothing on this next page, and just hit "Continue to Upload" then "Upload to GIPHY"
Then on the next page click "Copy Link":
Grab the link from this field below and "copy":
Then paste the image URL address into the "Insert"--->"Image" Source field just like any other image:
Click "Ok" and it should add to your post.
To add youtube videos to your post, go to "Insert"-->"Media" on the posting window menu:
Next, paste the youtube URL in the Source field like so:
When you do this, it'll automatically select dimensions as 500 x 314. I would personally also recommend change the dimensions of the second number from 314 to 414 for a better fit and size on this forum.
Click "OK" and it will be added to your post.
Troubleshooting: If for some reason your video shows up as an iframe instead of a video, go back into your post by clicking “Edit” at the bottom of it, and re-add the video the same way. If you still have issues, contact me in PM and I’ll see to the problem.
To add an avatar to your profile, visit your profile by clicking on the icon to the top-right of your screen:
On the next page, hover over your avatar and click the pencil icon:
Then on the next page click "Select Your File":
After your file's been uploaded, it'll ask you to crop it. Drag the corners of the box until you're satisfied with the crop dimensions and click "Crop":
And you're done!
Thanks a lot ! Thats very helpful!
(Most interviews I have seen are longer than the allowed 15 min.... you said in another thread that there were some kind of trick?....)
Glad to help. 🙂
Yes. It's a longer process but basically one can download the video and cut it down to under 15 minutes using a video editing software. For simple stuff like a video split I like to use Windows Movie Maker.
Movie Maker is a very lightweight video editor that is unfortunately no longer being updated by Windows. But you can find it to download at sites such as this one:
https://www.topwin-movie-maker.com/tutorials_how_to_download_and_install_windows_movie_maker.html
(click the 2016 Free version)
Step 1 is to install Movie Maker. Once it's installed, we have to download the youtube video:
Drop the youtube URL link in one of these kinds of sites:
(navigate around Fair Use and Copyright at your own discretion)
After you've downloaded the video you, open up Movie Maker and drap-drop the file into the right-side window and wait for it to finish loading:
Once it's loaded you click on the video timeline where you wanna cut it, and right-click --> "Split"
Now your video is SPLIT into two clips. Delete the one you don't want by either right-clicking and hitting "Remove" on the clip, or just clicking "Delete" on your keyboard.
Then you export out your newly cropped video like so:
Hit "Save Movie" and select whatever format you want. "Feature Phone (large)" is usually fine for me. It'll ask you where on your PC you wanna save it, and then you're done!
Well, almost. Now you can just upload this clip to youtube, get the URL, and play with it in GIPHY. If you do this I'd recommend setting the video to Unlisted. Bear in mind this has the downside of possibly violating copyright. The approach below is safer in that regard:
If you don't want to upload a cropped video to your youtube channel, for copyright purposes or otherwise, you can do this:
^ Split the video down to the exact GIF you want. So for example, if there's a signal at 15:40-15:45 that you really want to show, just cut the video at 15:40 and after 15:45 and remove the starts and ends. You'll be left with a video clip that is 5 seconds long.
Save this 5 second video out:
And then go to GIPHY.com and hit "Upload" this time rather than "Create"
This will allow you to upload your 5 second clip directly to GIPHY which will make it into a 5 second GIF. Follow the same steps you did for the other GIFs and grab the URL just like before to post it on the forum or anywhere else.
Pros: In this method, you don't have to upload your video to Youtube, and are at lesser risk of getting a copyright infringement mark on your channel.
But this is not really a problem for older television clips. And most people don't mind it unless it's coming from a really picky magazine or studio. It's up to you. 🙂
If you guys want to make gifs with videos over 15 minutes use this website --------> https://gfycat.com
Just press "create" at the top and paste the link. It's pretty intuitive and you can also save gifs with audio.
Again, thanks.
Yes, the last bit with Windows Movie Maker seems complicated.
With longer videos I might want to try the site that I used when I made the hubbard post again. Its called Vibby (www.vibby.com) and it was simple to use, but the problem was that you dont get a gif shown directly on the forum site, and people have to click on a hyperlink which they might not see or if they do might find suspicious and not want to click on (in my case this was probably the case as the link was surrounded by HTML script, but that was something that happened while I was trying to make the hyperlink more visible. I dont know how to remove that...).
Beside this, I found Vibby very user friendly. One can pick clips from several different youtube videos, the audio remains on the clips and its easy to shift among the different clips when watching . Another thing is that it doesnt keep replay which can be confusing with the Giphy clips as one doesnt always know where it starts and ends.
But again, problem is that the clips does not show directly as gifs on the forum site. Any thoughts/solutions about this?
How do you tag people and how do you quote people?
heya! you can tag someone by using the @ sign followed by their username.
but a member's username is not necessarily their displayname (yea, forums are funny ).
you can find their username by either clicking on their name and going to their profile then checking the url address... or just hovering over them and checking the tooltip at the bottom of the browser window like so:
I hovered over sekundaer above, and it shows his link in the green box i drew ^
p.s. your username seems to be a long one leftover from your email, rather than fayest42. you can change this one too via the instructions upthread ^ to make it easier for people to tag you. 🙂
and welcome to the forums!
I would like there to be more advanced search options, or am i missing something? Is it possible to search for a subject with a specific word or combination of words in it? And all the other options that were in the old forum...
I second this request 🙂
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