Following on from the revised list of Site Rules posted by Patrick, we thought it would be useful to consolidate all the "How To" hints and tips that have been posted by various people over the years into one place.
We hope you find them useful. If anyone has any questions or suggestions for this list, please get in touch.

How to create a new thread on the forum

1. First, check to see if there is an existing thread that covers what you want to ask or that answers your question.

3. Assuming no, decide which of the boards we have is the most appropriate for your thread, if you’re not sure ask one of the team for advice.

4. Scroll down to the bottom of the page and on the right-hand side there is the option for Start new topic. A new window opens up and you can fill in the details; make your subject relevant to what you want to share or know.

5. When you’re finished, click on Preview to see if the post is as you would like, and make edits if you need to, then once you’re happy click Post, and you’re done.


How to upload photos to the gallery

1. If you’re a new user, the first thing you need to do is to create an album from the Create / order my albums option.  You are free to call them what you want, but a brief description of what’s going to be in the album is best. You can create new albums or edit old ones as you see fit, there isn’t a limit to the amount of albums that you can have. Now you can carry on with uploading images.

2. From the top banner choose UPLOAD.

3. Select the appropriate option for what you want to upload, and attach the file. Repeat this step if you have more than one file to upload. Acceptable file formats are as follows - JPEG (JPG), GIF and PNG are the major ones, though we do allow the upload of PDF files as well. We recommend JPEG images at 70 – 80% compression having a width and height no more than 2460 pixels or thereabouts.

4. When you’re ready to continue, click on Continue, a new page will open up to let you know if the uploads have been successful, if you get an error message, go back and try and fix the error, otherwise click on continue to move to the next screen. If you’re having problems, contact one of the team and we will try and help.

5. You need to select an Album to put the file in, which is your personal album that you created earlier.

6. The file title is just that, a title. A brief description of the image is all that should be here.

7. File description is where you go into more detail about the picture. You can include up to four 'img' tags in this if you want, try and arrange them in a horizontal line if possible. These images will behave in exactly the same way as the main image in that they will enlarge to full size when clicked on.
If you wish, you can use the 'center' command so that they appear centrally when displayed, but please do not over-use this feature as some people do find it annoying.
[center]This text will be positioned centrally[/center]*Note: You can copy and paste the above example as an easy tool and edit it*

8. Select a category from the drop down menu, please choose carefully and if you’re not sure which one your picture falls into ask one of the team.

9. Fill in the rest of the fields if you have the information, other members appreciate seeing this, so please do if you can.

10. Click on continue, to start adding the next file and repeat steps 5 to 9. Then once all the files have been added, click continue again once you see the message telling you that the files have been uploaded successfully.

11. You can make ten uploads in any one 24 hour period, except that new users will be restricted to five uploads per day and will be subject to moderator approval until the team are satisfied that they meet our quality expectations.

12. If you’ve had any problems contact one of the team and they will try and help.


How to Reduce the size of files

Sometimes the size of files that you wish to upload are too big for the site to handle, so it is necessary to compress the size of them. There are various utilities out there that will do this for you, but the one at imagecompressor.com is very easy to use, you just have to follow the on screen instructions, choose how much compression you want and download the result back to your machine.


How to make links on the Forum

When you want to insert a link it is as simple as clicking on a button.
1. At the place where you want the link to appear click on the relevant button to bring up the url tags and type or paste the text of the link that you want, e.g. https://www.lighting-gallery.net
        a) More emphasis can be given by nesting underline/italic and bold tags before you insert the text, but in order for them to work properly you have to click on U or I first, then B.
           

How to make links on the Gallery

This is a bit more involved than making links on the forum and requires a bit more concentration. This method can be used in forum posts if you want to.

1. The link needs to be inside url tags and a simple link must be in the following format. To create the link https://www.lighting-gallery.net use:
   [url]https://www.lighting-gallery.net[/url]*Note: You can copy and paste the above example as an easy tool and edit it*

 
2. A more complex link where you want to display text must be in the following format. To create the link Lighting Gallery use:
    [url=https://www.lighting-gallery.net]Lighting Gallery[/url]*Note: You can copy and paste the above example as an easy tool and edit it*

3. More emphasis can be given by adding bold tags, as in this example - Lighting Gallery
   [url=https://www.lighting-gallery.net][b]Lighting Gallery[/b][/url]*Note: You can copy and paste the above example as an easy tool and edit it*


Reducing the Length of Links

Overly long links tend to break, we do not want to see a link that can run to several lines.
   
eBay auction links usually have a lot of extra information in them that is not needed to display the listing. So all of the extra information after the item number doesn’t need to be in the link that you paste into the comment or post.

Other links that need to be shortened can be done through websites like tinyurl.com, follow the on screen instructions to make the shortened URL, and you even have the option of creating a custom one.
           

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