Cookaholics Bulletin Board

Folks,

What follows are a set of HOW-TO posts on how to do various sophisticated things with the board. For more basic things, see the board FAQ.

Everyone is encouraged to post more HOWTOs here to help your fellow board members!

HOWTO deal with Cookies on FireFox and IE by Leena

FIREFOX:
For those having trouble with staying logged on (a cookie issue), I recently had similar problems with Google Toolbar (could not access my google bookmarks) even though I had Firefox set to allow cookies. Here is what solved it:

Go to Tools/Options/Privacy/Exceptions

Now in the "Address of web site" box, type in: cookaholics.org and then click the ALLOW button.

This should set it so it will always allow cookies for this site. I was suprised it was required to specify the site I was having trouble with as I thought all sites would be able to leave cookies unless they were blocked. Even the google tech guy was surprised when I found this solution because he didn't know about it either.

IE 7.0:
There is a similar setting for IE that I have used in the past to solve this kind of problem. Do this:

Click on Start/Control Panel/Security Center

Scroll down to Virus Protection. Here you should see Internet Options - click that.

Now, click the Privacy tab and then click Sites.

In the "Address of site" box, type in: cookaholics.org and then click ALLOW.

Further notes:
If you have a Firewall, you may have to do something similar to these types of ALLOW settings within your firewall depending on how much security has been set. Also, some anti-virus "suite" programs have these types of ALLOW settings too.

So don't give up until you've found all of them and set them all to ALLOW. On one computer I had, I had to set ALLOW in 2 different places regularly to get things to work properly. I pulled out a lot of hair until I figured that out.

Hope that helps someone.

HOWTO Post an Image Hosted on Another Site

1. Upload your image to Smugmug, Flickr, Photobucket, or other picture-hosting site.

2. Copy the URL of the image to your clipboard.

3. Make a post on Cookaholics.

4. Put your cursor to where you want the picture to be.

5. Click the Img button in the composer. What should appear is:



6. Paste the URL of the image between the two tags:



(note that the image URL must end in .JPG, .GIF, or .PNG)

7. Submit. What you should see is something like:



Good Practices for Posting Images:

• Don't post huge images. Some of the people on this board have slow Internet connections and it will take them forever to read the page, and you might even crash their browser. Learn to use a photo-editing tool like Photoshop, theGimp, MS Photo, Kodak, or similar so you can "shrink" pictures. 600x800 or smaller is a good size.
• To help the above, some services such as Photobucket and Smugmug will resize your photos for you.
• Don't post more than one or two images, for the same reasons. If you find yourself wanting to post a whole step-by-step series of 12, use a slideshow on Flickr or Smugmug, or talk to FuzzyChef about getting a blog.

HOWTO Create a Bulleted List

People will notice that a lot of my posts contain bulleted lists, and wonder how I do them. With the new board, it's easy.

1. Write out your list items



2. Put a bullet in front of each item by using the [*] button or just typing [*]



3. Highlight the whole list and click the List button to make it a list.



4. Result:

• Cheese mold
• Large pot
• Rennet
• Milk

Creating a Numbered List

If you want your list to have numbers rather than bullets, you use the List= button. Format your list the same as above, but put a "1" after the "List=".



Result:

1. Fuzzy
2. NTSC
3. Amy
4. EasyBake

HOWTO Give Yourself an Avatar (Icon)

Many of you will have noticed that Amy, I, Wino and others have cute pictures up by our posts. You need a cute picture too. Here's how you do it.

1. Find a picture of yourself which will shrink well, or a picture of something which you think says something about you ... and will look good small.

2. Shrink and/or crop this picture down to 90 pixels by 90 pixels. You can do this with Photoshop, the Gimp, and some online picture sites like Photobucket.

3. Go to the User Control Panel (top menu)

4. Select Profile --> Edit Avatar

5. Upload or Link the image you just shrank.

6. Save.

Alternately, icons / avatars you have from Facebook, Livejournal, or other sites may work here if you link them.

HOWTO Open a Link in a New Tab or Window

On Firefox:

There are two methods:

1) Click on the link while holding down the [CTRL] key (or the Apple key on Macs). It will open in a new tab.

2) Alternate-click (that's right-click, or click using the right button if you're right-handed) the link. You'll get a menu, which will include "open in new tab" and "open in new window".

Note: if you would prefer that links which are written to open in a new window open in a tab instead, you can set that in the Firefox preferences.

WANTED: someone to explain how to do this in IE.

IE6 (some of us are still there, on computers that we don't control):
Right click - "Open in New Window"
Shift + Left Click opens in a new window

IE8:
Right click - "Open in New Tab" or "Open in New Window"
Shift + Left Click opens in a new window
Ctrl + Left Click opens in a new tab

HOWTO Post an Image to the Board

1. Start a new thread, or reply to an existing one
2. Right below your post is a section called "upload attachment"
3. Click "choose file"
4. Browse to where you saved the picture
5. Select the picture file
6. Add comments in the comment area, if desired
7. Submit your post

Important: to save space on the server and save people's smartphones and iPads, I have limited the size of photos you can upload. You are currently limited to 1024x1024 pixels, or 100K, whichever is smaller. This does mean that you may need to shrink your picture before you can upload it.

If the picture submitted is large, the bulletin board will display a thumbnail of the picture. Click on the thumbnail to see the full-size picture.

HOWTO send a Private Message to Multiple People:

1. Click on "new messages" in the top menu.

2. Click "compose message"

3. Compose your message in the main message window.

3. On the left-hand side of the screen will be a smaller white text box, under the word "Usernames:".

4. Type the names of each of the other members you want to send a message to in this box, one to a line.

5. Click the "Add [To]" button.

6. All of the usernames you typed in should appear in the To: line of your message.

7. Make sure the words "Registered Users" do not appear in the To: line of your message. If they do, you will be sending a PM to all users of the Board.

8. Click [Submit] button.

HOWTO Get Notified By E-mail Of Replies to a Topic

1. Make sure your e-mail address in your board profile is correct. This is a good idea anyway; if you ever need to recover your password, you'll need it.
2. When you post the topic, or when you post a reply to the topic, you'll see a series of checkboxes below the composition window (only if using the Full Editor, not when using the Quick Reply).
3. One of these checkboxes is labelled "Notify me when a reply is posted". Check that box.
4. Hit "Submit"

That's it, now every time someone replies to that thread, you'll get a notification e-mail.

Of course, eventually you may want to stop getting notified. This requires a different set of actions.

1. Click "User Control Panel" in the top menu.
2. Click "Manage Subscriptions" in the upper left-hand menu.
3. You will see a list of all of the threads you are being notified of replies to. Check the box next to each one you want to stop being notified about.
4. Click the "Unwatch Marked" button.

Now you'll stop getting lots of e-mail from the board.