General Information and Registration
MIJC welcomes all participants to our discussion forum regardless of whether you are a member. To be able to post, you must first register an account on the forum, which we then activate. The most common question we get: “I registered for the forum but I never got activated.”
Here’s the deal: We get dozens and dozens of activation requests every day, and nearly all of them are from bots. These requests arrive in the form of automated e-mails from the forum to Jill and myself, and it is nearly impossible to tell the real ones from the fake ones. In fact, sometimes weeks and weeks will go by without an activation request from a real person in the whole bunch. “What’s a bot?” you say. A bot (short for robot) is a program that someone writes and sets loose on the web, similar to a virus but not as malevolent. The goal of this program is to search all websites, seek out a forum, register itself as a user, then automatically post advertisements or other spam according to the will of its creator. Obviously, we don’t want that junk on our forum.
So what does this mean to you? Well, if you’re a registered user who can already post, nothing. But if you’re new and you just registered, send me an e-mail with your real name, the username you registered with on the forum, and a little bit about yourself or your Jeep so I know you’re a real person. I’ll be happy to activate you. Otherwise, your activation request will probably get lost in a sea of bot-requests.
Posting Photos
Another frequently asked question about our forum is how to post a picture. There are several ways to post a picture. It all depends on whether the photo is on your computer or already online somewhere.
If your photo is online already (i.e. on the MIJC website, or a PhotoBucket account, for example), all you need is the URL, or web address of the file. The easiest way to get this is to right-click on the photo in your browser and select “Properties”. A window will appear. Firefox calls the address “location” and Internet Explorer calls it “address (URL)”. Highlight all of this address with your cursor and hit control-C (or apple-C on a Mac) to copy it to the clipboard. Some addresses are quite long, so make sure you get it all.
Back on the MIJC forum, create a new post or a reply. When you’re ready to insert your photo, click the IMG button above the text window. “[img][/img]” will appear in the body of the message, with the cursor between the brackets. Now hit ctrl-V (apple-V) to paste in the URL of your photo. To test and see if it worked, click the Preview button when you’re ready to post. This will show you what your post will look like (including the photo) without actually posting it. If the photo doesn’t show up, try again, and preview again. Make sure you copied the entire address of the photo.
If your photo resides as a file on your computer, you’ll need to upload it first. One way would be to upload it to PhotoBucket or Flickr, then use the method above. But you can also upload it directly to the forum.
First click to create a new post or reply. When you’re ready to insert your picture, scroll down to below the text window. You’ll see a blue area tabbed with Options and Upload Attachment. Click Upload Attachment. Next, click the Browse button. You’ll get a window asking you to find the file on your computer. Once you’ve located and selected it, click Open. Back on the browser window, click the “add the file” button. Depending on the speed of your connection, this might take a moment.
You’ll now be back at the text window again. Scroll down below it and you’ll see a new section called “posted attachments”. You should see your file listed there. Click “place inline” to automatically put the image code code into the text of your post. Preview your post first to make sure it worked!
Posting Videos
Right now we only support posting clips from YouTube. To embed a clip from YouTube in your post, click the “YouTube” button. “[youtube][/youtube]” will appear in your post, with the cursor in the middle. Paste in the URL (web address) of the YouTube video you’d like to post. Preview it first to make sure it works before submitting! You should see an embedded YouTube player.
Got more questions? Drop me a line and let me know how I can help.
