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(In)Frequently Asked Questions

Yep, we're tired of answering the same questions over and over, so here's a FAQ. I call it a FAQ, but some of these questions will no-doubt never have been asked...

Auctions
Auctions? WTF?!...
Soo, how do I bid on these things?...
How do I make my own auctions then?...
OMFG!?! I won but didn't get a PM/The auction ended but I didnt get my money or PM!...
Can I send people REAL things?...

BTP Misc. Stuff
Why should I sign up to BTP?...
How do I sign up?...
I can't log in? I try but it just redirects to the index page without logging me in....
Why do I have to be logged in to submit most stuff?...
Who made BTP?...
What software was used to create BTP?...
What do these little torsos next to peoples names mean?...

Designs
I don't like the default design, I'm looking for something new... Any hints?...
Meh, I think I can make better designs than those ones on the change design page. Are you interested...

Forum Hosting
Why do I want a forum hosted, and why here?...
What does your forum hosting offer?...
How do I request a forum?...

Forum Questions
Do I have to be logged in to post?...
Can you tell me the square root of 2?...
What's a sig / signature?...
How do I edit my sig?...
So what's this pre-sig thing then?...
Am I allowed to use HTML in the forums?...
How do I put an image into my posts or my sig?...
How do I put a link in my post?...
How do I make text bold, italic, centred or underlined etc?...
What is the image underneath people's names, and how do I get one myself?...
Why does it say "statusless" underneath my name? How do I change my status?...
What are smilies / emoticons and how do I use them?...
How do I delete a thread or a post?...
How do I quote other people?...
Can I use php syntax highlighting or just plain html without it turning into html in my posts?...
What other interesting things are there?...

IRC / Java Chat
Do I need to sign up somewhere else to use chat?...
Do I have to use the java client that is on BTP...
I can't see the chat... What's wrong?...
I like this chat client... Where can I get my own?...

Money, Dosh, whatever you call it...
How do I get money?...
What? you don't use real money, do you?...
What can I do with my money?...
How do I donate money to someone else?...
Why do some people have a tax in their profile? What does it do?...
If I donate money to someone with a tax, is the tax still taken off?...
What's this house system all about?...
So how do I go about creating my own house?...

Page Comments
What's a page comment then?...
How do I post a page comment?...
The first page comment doesn't make much sense, it seems to be in response to a comment that doesn't...
Can I see what comments are new since I last visited?...
I posted a page comment on a specific user's profile, but it came out on all of them. why?...

Sig Scripts
Eh? What's a sig script?...
How do I create a sig script?...
Help! I forgot what I have to do to put it in my sig! How do you do it?...

Auctions

Question: Auctions? WTF?!

Answer: Yes, Indeed, we have auctions! You can sell random things (Nameplates, sigs, etc) and you get BTP money for it. You can bid too (duh) and you pay.. Like eBay only with BTP Money!

Question: Soo, how do I bid on these things?

Answer: Well, first you have to earn some money. If you already have some find something you want to bid on, click "Go" beside it and then click Place Bid and enter the amount you want to bid. You must bid higher than the previous bidder and have enough money to bid.

Question: How do I make my own auctions then?

Answer: Click "Make New Auction" on the BlameTheAuction page, from there its easy.

Question: OMFG!?! I won but didn't get a PM/The auction ended but I didnt get my money or PM!

Answer: Ah, the joys of cronjobs. The bid end check script thing runs ever hour, so it shouldn't take long till you get your money/item

Question: Can I send people REAL things?

Answer: Well, if you want but it's sorted between the auctioner and winner on their own. Don't send dodgy items or else.

BTP Misc. Stuff

Question: Why should I sign up to BTP?

Answer: To be a bit cliché, it's free and easy. Just about everything you can do on BTP, short of reading, requires a user account. This isn't because we're trying to get as many people to sign up as possible (well, we are, but that's not the point), it's because it's the best way to tell who did what without any questions about it.

Question: How do I sign up?

Answer: You really need me to tell you? just click sign-up on the left.

Question: I can't log in? I try but it just redirects to the index page without logging me in.

Answer: Well, to log in to BTP, you need to enable cookies in your browser. The chances are your using IE, so it will be in tools->internet options->privacy. Personally I would enable all cookies, people are far too paranoid about privacy, when really stealing someone's personal information stored in a cookie is almost impossible to most people, and besides, personal information is rarely stored in a cookie, BTP just stores your username and a number to verify that it's actually you viewing the site and not someone trying to hack into your account..

Question: Why do I have to be logged in to submit most stuff?

Answer: Simply because this is the best way to distinguish between who has posted what. It stops people from pretending to be others, and provides a good way of telling who did what so that these things can be edited again later.

Question: Who made BTP?

Answer: I did! (I being ZoGgEr!) But then, so did everyone here. Almost all of the coding was done by me, with the exception of a few little bits, like the auto-link code, the REGEX for the forum [code] tag, which was by readme, and the MySQL query that finds new forum posts, which was written by my brother ;). there may be a couple of other things, but I wrote the best part of the 15,000 and something lines of code at the current line count.

Anyway, apart from the self-promoting paragraph, the content was done by you user people. Stuff like files, proper excuses, forum posts, everything, basically. Without the users, BTP would be nothing. There's barely a page that doesn't involve something being submitted by the user. That's the way it was written :).

I owe big thanks, too, to the people that have made custom designs for btp, namely, at the moment, Bloopy, Thorask, Vahagn and C1.

Edit: The first paragraph is no longer as true as it was. There are now at least three of us working on the coding for BTP. See the staff page for more details.

The number of lines is now also at over 20,000

Question: What software was used to create BTP?

Answer: BTP is powered by PHP, if you've never heard of it, it's a very handy web (mainly) scripting / programming language. The database used being MySQL. I think this is probably the most popular combination for dynamic sites backed by databases. To start with I wrote the site with notepad, but changed over to SEdit, when my brother wrote it. I am currently the only person apart from him using it tho, so don't expect me to link you to a website ;).
In terms of designs, I personally used adobe photoshop for the images, but I can't speak for the creators of the other designs. Bloopy can speak for Bloopy, so Bloopy says Bloopy uses Ulead Photo Impact.

Question: What do these little torsos next to peoples names mean?

Answer: Yep, we've severed up the mini people that were wearing the right coloured jumpers so you can see who's who.
Different colour torsos mean different things. The green one () is the most common, and denotes a normal user. There is also the blue one () which shows a member of staff, a light blue one () for those normal users that have over 1000 posts, a red one () for the banned users (tut tut), a brown one () for people who post comments anonymously (sneaky) and a purple one () for a user that can't be found in the database. They could have been deleted or a mistype could have been made on the forum. Theres also the User-Admin torso () They are like spam police, they have full access to the forum options, can ban/edit users and can delete comments and shoutbox posts and word assocation posts.

Designs

Question: I don't like the default design, I'm looking for something new... Any hints?

Answer: Yep, you can change the design you use by going to the "change design" page on the left. There are quite a few different designs for BTP, so choosing could be hard. heh.

Question: Meh, I think I can make better designs than those ones on the change design page. Are you interested in what I can do?

Answer: Absolutely. Just make 2 sample page for your design, one using the index page as a template and the other using a forum thread page as a template, and send it to me. You can make the menu pretty much how you want, but the actual layout of the bar on the right hand side can't be changed. It helps if you know some CSS when you create your design, cause BTP uses it to stop fonts etc. being unreadable on different bg colours. Still, if you don't know CSS, just send what you can to me and I'll see what I can do.

This has all changed. Designs are now just a bunch of CSS, the change design page tells you more.

Forum Hosting

Question: Why do I want a forum hosted, and why here?

Answer: I don't know! Heh, you might want a forum for your website or clan. Whatever, we'll probably give one to you.
Why? well take a look at the next question.

Question: What does your forum hosting offer?

Answer: I'm not really trying to advertise to you, it doesn't actually matter to me where your forum is.

We can offer you a seperate category for your forums, with a custom design applied to the whole category if you want it. The forums have the basic functions, posting threads, replying, editing, deleting, new post markers, which work best when you're logged in. You can have as many moderators for your forum as you like, with poswers to edit other peoples posts, polls, check their IP address etc. You can also have a private forum if you want, moderators will have the ability to choose who can view the forum. You can also choose whether or not guests can post threads or replies in your forum.

What you don't get is a seperate user base. To sign up for your forum, people will sign up to BTP. This does also have advantages, of course. :)

Question: How do I request a forum?

Answer: Go to the forum index by clicking "Go there" underneath forum on the left.
Under the "Hosted Forums" category click "Help with them" forum and read the thread "Requesting forums here" at the top.

Or if you can't be bothered to do all that, click here and start a new thread in the forum.

Forum Questions

Question: Do I have to be logged in to post?

Answer: Depends on the forum, take a look at the permissions at the bottom of the forum, that tell you what status you have to have to have in order to start new threads or reply to them.

Question: Can you tell me the square root of 2?

Answer: No.

Question: What's a sig / signature?

Answer: This is the thing at the bottom of a user's post underneath a small line. In it you can put whatever you like. It will appear under all of your posts, and will automatically change on all of those posts when you edit it.

Question: How do I edit my sig?

Answer: Click edit profile on the left very near the bottom of the menu.

Question: So what's this pre-sig thing then?

Answer: That's something that as far as I have seen is unique to BTP. Maybe for a reason. It's the same as a sig except that it comes before anything you type in your post. It allows you to give your post some style. For examples of this see my (zogger's) posts or readme's posts. You can also put a message before your post, quite a few people have this, but often it is not done that well and the pre-sig becomes difficult to seperate from the sig. As such I urge you to differentiate your pre-sig from your post with a simple bit of bold text or center-alignment.

Question: Am I allowed to use HTML in the forums?

Answer: Yes, provided that you do not abuse this and start breaking the design or using scripts that are not suitable for a forum. If you do this we have the power to disallow your use of HTML.

Question: How do I put an image into my posts or my sig?

Answer: Two ways of doing this. Either you can use HTML, or the [img] tag.

First, though, the image has to be uploaded somewhere. You can upload it here, provided it is of the right type and small enough, by going to the Sig Uploader and selecting the image from your hard disk.

Once you have done this, you can link to it thru html like this:

<img src="http://imageurl">

or thru the [img] tag like this:

[img]http://imageurl[/img]

:)

Question: How do I put a link in my post?

Answer: If you put the URL directly into your post, it will automatically create a link that opens in a new window. Remember to include http:// here, otherwise it won't auto-link!.

If you want to give your link a description, for example a link that says "click me" pointing to blamethepixel.com, you would have to use HTML, like this:

<a href='http://yoururl' target='_blank'>

you can omit the target='_blank' if you don't want the link to open in a new window, but it's best for other people's convenience to include it. If you don't include the http://, then the link won't work.

Question: How do I make text bold, italic, centred or underlined etc?

Answer: BTP does not currently support the usual method of doing this to text when html is disabled, however, html isn't disabled, so you can use these methods:

<b>your text</b> makes it bold. use I instead of b for italic, u instead of b for underlined, s instead of b for strikethrough, and center instead of b for centered stuff.

Question: What is the image underneath people's names, and how do I get one myself?

Answer: That's what they call an avatar, although IMO most people don't use them for an 'avatar' as such. Anyway, to get your own, go into your profile, and in the avatar field give the url of the image you want to use for it. Remember, you must upload it before entering its url. You can do that by clicking upload sig on the left of this page, and copying the URL it gives you.

Question: Why does it say "statusless" underneath my name? How do I change my status?

Answer: It says statusless under your name because you haven't changed your custom status. You can change it to whatever you like, basically. Just go to edit profile on the left.

Question: What are smilies / emoticons and how do I use them?

Answer: If you've never heard of them (where have you been), these are little images, usually faces, that are automatically put in when you type a certain piece of text. They're used to show emotion, hence the name emoticons, not a very good name tho really :).

Anyway, there are a number of different ones, such as :) that becomes a smily face, ;) winks, :P is a sticking out tongue, etc. etc. The full list of them is on the change smilies page which you can reach on the left.

Question: How do I delete a thread or a post?

Answer: If the thread or post is yours, or you're a moderator, you can delete it.
For a thread, click edit by the thread title on the forum thread list, check the delete box and click go.
If it's a post, edit the post, check the delete box and click go.

Question: How do I quote other people?

Answer: You can either click the quote button at the bottom of someones post, and it will go to the post reply page with a quote from that person, or you can manually put in the [quote] tags. Just put

[quote]what the person says[/quote]
or
[quote=aname]what aname said[/quote]

Question: Can I use php syntax highlighting or just plain html without it turning into html in my posts?

Answer: Yep, use the [code] tags. If you have some php, surround it with [code] and [/code], and it will be syntax highlighted, provided that you have put <?php and ?> tags in - otherwise it doesn't highlight. You can also use it to put in html tags without having to escape them, it's quicker for longer bits of html / script

Question: What other interesting things are there?

Answer: Well, you can use /me to give a link to your own profile, [file]FileID[/file] to make a link to a specific file, and [user]UserName[/user] to make a link to a user's profile.

IRC / Java Chat

Question: Do I need to sign up somewhere else to use chat?

Answer: No, it will automatically log you on with your BTP username, but you may wish to register with nickserv, type "/msg nickserv help" for more info.

Question: Do I have to use the java client that is on BTP

Answer: Nope, you can use any IRC client you like. Such as mIRC or Trillian. Yes, okay Chatzilla too.
The server you need to connect to is irc.gumpy.org:6667, and the room is #blamethepixel.

Question: I can't see the chat... What's wrong?

Answer: If there's a grey box (I think it's grey, it might be a different colour depending on your computer / browser) and nothing loads at-all, then either you don't have java installed, or the website that hosts the java applet is down. If there is a login box and it just sits there with a message saying "connecting to...", then the IRC server is probably down. It is down every so often, just come back later and try again.

Question: I like this chat client... Where can I get my own?

Answer: Look up pjirc

Money, Dosh, whatever you call it...

Question: How do I get money?

Answer: There are a number of ways. At the moment you get £1.00 for a forum post, £2.00 for a thread, £0.10 for a word in word association and £3 for a submission. Note the pound symbol. Yeh, we use pounds as our fake currency.

Question: What? you don't use real money, do you?

Answer: No, we don't, it's just a number in your profile, nothing more.

Question: What can I do with my money?

Answer: At the time of writing, you can donate it to other people (click the D underneath someone's name in a forum post), and buy houses. Oh you can also play the lottery! However there will hopefully be more available soon.

Question: How do I donate money to someone else?

Answer: If you didn't read the last question. There is a D in brackets on every user's post, next to the bit that says how much money they have. Click it to donate your money to them.

Question: Why do some people have a tax in their profile? What does it do?

Answer: tut tut. naughty people. Taxes are one form of punishment for people that break the rules. Okay, alot of the time these rules aren't written, but it's common sense.

A tax basically takes that percentage off of anything that user receives in the form of money. So if the user receives £100, and they have a tax of 10%, it will take £10 off and leave them with £90. You may also see that readme has a tax of 100%. He's just trying to keep his money at a set level, he's not being that severely punished. heh.

Question: If I donate money to someone with a tax, is the tax still taken off?

Answer: Yes, so don't donate to people with 100% tax, they won't get any of it!

Question: What's this house system all about?

Answer: Houses are a place for you to "live" on BTP. Originally we had PixVille, the system we used didn't turn out too well, so now ther's PixVille II. You can visit it on the left.
You can buy an empty lot by clicking it on the map, then choosing to buy it. Lots cost £100. You can then add your own image.

Question: So how do I go about creating my own house?

Answer: visit this thread for more info on PixVille II:
http://www.blamethepixel.com/forumthread.php?id=1958&catid=18

Page Comments

Question: What's a page comment then?

Answer: Page comments are the comments that you see at the bottom fo most of the pages on BTP, anyone that is logged in can post them, and anyone that is not can see them. Scroll down to the bottom of the page and you will see an example or two.

Question: How do I post a page comment?

Answer: Simple. If the page has page comments enabled, then there will be a box at the bottom for you to submit your comment, provided you are logged in. You can do pretty much anything that you can normally do in a forum post in the page comments, except you can't use HTML.

Question: The first page comment doesn't make much sense, it seems to be in response to a comment that doesn't exist!

Answer: This is, if you read, because it only shows the last ten page comments for a page. Click "view all" above the comments to see all the comments for that page. It may also be that a previous comment was deleted by an admin, but then it may not too ;).

Question: Can I see what comments are new since I last visited?

Answer: Indeed you can. You may often find there's an interesting discussion going on on one page, it's easier to follow if you know when there are new comments to it. Click on "find new" on a page that has comments on it to see pages that have new comments in the last 24 hours. You can also find new comments for a different length of time by entering a number in the box at the top.

Question: I posted a page comment on a specific user's profile, but it came out on all of them. why?

Answer: Page comments are only specific to the php file you are on. What I mean by this is that because all of the rofiles are viewed through viewprofile.php, posting a comment there will put it on every profile, because it ignores everything in the filename after the ?. So whether it's viewprofile.php?name=ZoGgEr! or viewprofile.php?id=0001, the bit after the ? doesn't make any difference.

Sig Scripts

Question: Eh? What's a sig script?

Answer: Sig scripts are useful for - unsurprisingly - sigs. They are mainly used to give you a random image every time the page it is on is reloaded. What's the point? Well if you have created lots of sigs and can't decided which one to put in, you don't need to! just put them all in one script and they'll be randomly selected every time someone view it.

You can also use it for random quotes or other bits of text, but I feel I should point out that if BTP goes down, then the page that the script is on will slow down dramatically. this only happens with the text sigs, and the old versions of the image sigs, which if you haven't seen before, you don't need to worry about.

Anyway, a lot of people are confused by sig scripts, mainly by my explanation. I would get someone else to explain it if you don't understand. heh.

Question: How do I create a sig script?

Answer: If you're not logged in, do so and click "new sig" under "sig scripts" on the left. You need to enter the name of the script, for identification, and if you want an image script, the URL to each of the images you want to appear in your sig. A lot of people seem to find this confusing, so I'll give you an example.

Say you want your script to randomly choose between three images, located at http://www.mydomain.com/sig1.gif, http://www.mydomain.com/sig2.gif, and http://www.mydomain.com/sig3.gif.
Give the sig a name, anything you like, such as "my sig", it doesn't matter, it's just so you know which sig is which.
Now, just enter those 3 urls into the first three boxes on the sig script page, and leave the other ones blank. It is important that you remember to include the http:// otherwise it won't work. Click okay, and it's as simple as that.

The page then gives you information on how to use this sig.

Question: Help! I forgot what I have to do to put it in my sig! How do you do it?

Answer: The information you're looking for is on the "view a sig" page, just select the sig you want there, and on the page you will see the code you require.

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