Tips and Tricks of the Portal

News for this website will be posted here. Mostly Technical.
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This forum is for technical discussion regarding the portal and vore itself.

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Re: Tips and Tricks of the Portal

Postby tangent » Fri Nov 04, 2011 10:40 pm

I may just be looking over it, but I can't seem to find where to access drafts I've saved when on the forum.

ahem
so
How do I get to that....? xD
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Re: Tips and Tricks of the Portal

Postby Nerva » Sat Nov 05, 2011 2:46 am

You mean saved post drafts?

Go to the user control panel and then click the "Manage drafts" tab on the left sidebar. Or you can click this to go right to it.
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Re: Tips and Tricks of the Portal

Postby Nerva » Tue Dec 13, 2011 5:47 pm

Apologies for the consecutive post, but it's been over a month since the last post was made, and I wanted to write up an in-depth tutorial here.

That said, let's get on with it. Today's lesson?

Using Advanced Search for Fun and Profit
Or How to avoid needing to make a thread to find a post

Advanced Search. We've all seen the link, up there in the upper-right, just below the searchbar, right? Daunting, isn't it? Believe it or not, it's not as hard to use as it looks. Basically, it's a gigantic filter system, and once you learn how to use it, you can easily find nearly any post on this forum. I'll explain how.

STEP 1: Collect Info
Here, you want to collect as much information as you can get on the post that you want to find. Answer, as best as you can, the following questions:

  • What was it about?
  • Who wrote it?
  • What section of the forum was it in?
  • How long ago was it posted?
Don't be afraid if you can't answer all of these. Very rarely will you be able to answer all the questions about a post you'd like to find. You should, however, try to answer the first question and maybe the third. Every additional question you can answer will help to fine tune the search results.

STEP 2: Navigating the Advanced Search page
Once you have your information on the post, you need to fill out the Advanced Search page with that info. Here's how:

    2a. Keyword Line: The top line of the Advanced Search page is a keyword search. The search function will hunt for posts that contain any of the words you enter into the keyword search line. The more words you enter, the more results will be returned. As a result, you want to start simple, with just a few words, but start specific with words very unique to the topic.

    For instance, searching "soft vore" will return a lot of results. Searching "foxtaur rabbit" returns very few. Both are very simple, but the latter is far more specific, which is why it works better.

    You can further narrow down search results with anti-keywords. An anti-keyword is any keyword with a negative sign ( - ) in front of it. For instance, "soft vore -male -time" returns nearly 2,000 results less than simply "soft vore" If you know a certain word does not appear in a post, you can use it as an anti-keyword to remove any posts that do have it.

    The keyword line also supports exact phrase searching. Simply enclose the phrase in quotation marks, and it will attempt to search the entire phrase as written. For instance, searching "soft vore" returns about 7k results. Searching the same words with quotes returns about 4.6k - all the results will have "soft" followed immediately by "vore" - any post that doesn't have these terms immediately following one another, in the correct order, are omitted.

    Unfortunately, you cannot make anti-phrases. No combination of negative signs or quotations allows for it.
    2b. Author Search: If you know who wrote the post, put their username on this line. Simple as that. If you can't remember their username entirely, put the part you do remember, and surround it in asterisks ( * ). Asterisks are wildcards; they can stand for anything.

    For instance, let's say you're looking for one of my posts, but can't remember the last syllable of my name. No problem; just enter "Ner*" in the author line. You get this search as a result.
    2c. Forum Sections: If you know that a post occurs in a specific forum section, simply find it in this big list, and click it. If it could occur in one of several forums, and you're not sure which, hold CTRL and click all the forums that you think that it could appear in. Any posts that meet the criteria, but are not in the selected forum(s) are omitted.
    2d. Limit Results to Previous: Got an idea of how long ago that post was made? Here's where you can specify. Just click the dropdown box and select a time range. My advice? Start large, and if you get way too many results, decrease the amount gradually, one step at a time, until you hit the absolute limit and you know the post could not have been posted sooner.

STEP 3: Begin Searching
Okay, you've collected and entered all your info. Now it's just a matter of clicking the "Search" button to get your results. Note that, even in the best of occasions, you're probably gonna get several results. This is normal - if you didn't make any mistakes on the previous steps, one of those results is the post you want; you just have to look through the results until you find it. Of course, sifting through hundreds of posts is a pain in the neck; in this case you might want to try your search again, with a few more specific keywords, or perhaps with a narrower time range.

The more specific your search, the fewer results you'll have, but the easier it'll be to hunt through them for the correct post. Don't be afraid to search multiple times, refining your search each time.


STEP 4: Still can't find it?
Okay, you've searched three or four times, but you still get a couple hundred results, and can't sort through 'em all. Now may be the time to ask for help finding the post. When you open your thread, make sure you tell everyone as much info about the post as you possibly can. Maybe even mention the previous search methods you used (and what keywords or criteria you used). Any info you can provide will help, and demonstrating that you can and have used the search function on your own will earn you a lot more respect than simply asking without trying.

Who knows, maybe someone will be able to explain just where your own searching methods went wrong.
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Re: Tips and Tricks of the Portal

Postby FriendlyDemon » Fri Feb 24, 2012 5:43 pm

Hi I just made an account a couple weeks ago and still haven't figured out how to submit anything. I have some stories that I would like to share on this site, but I just don't know how. Could anyone tell me how or send me a link with direction? It would be most appreciated. :D
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Re: Tips and Tricks of the Portal

Postby Nerva » Fri Feb 24, 2012 8:55 pm

You need to get a gallery in order to submit pics or stories. PM Eka, and have a few samples of your work handy.
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Re: Tips and Tricks of the Portal

Postby tacorem » Tue Apr 17, 2012 4:33 pm

Is it my turn for a question? Okay!

I see occasionally that a member will have some sort of title below their username, i.e. "new to the forum" "somewhat familiar" "???" and such, but I see others, mostly the administrators a presume, who have more personal titles. I am curious if there is some way to make one for yourself or have it changed by request.
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Re: Tips and Tricks of the Portal

Postby Eupeptic » Wed Apr 18, 2012 3:46 am

tacorem wrote:I am curious if there is some way to make one for yourself or have it changed by request.

You can try asking Eka. More explanation in the replies to this post.

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Re: Tips and Tricks of the Portal

Postby tacorem » Thu Apr 19, 2012 10:34 am

Thanky very much. I guess I'll wait till I deserve it more (sometime way after getting Heavy User) before I ask x3
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Re: Tips and Tricks of the Portal

Postby psvorefan1520 » Mon May 21, 2012 4:32 am

ichbinich wrote:Got a question, how do you create an avatar link to people's userpage in the gallery decriptions, like in the example below?

http://aryion.com/g4/view/205861


I would like to do this, except with a few foreign images. Is there a way to directly display a separate image in the description, aside from people's avatars? Are there any limitations to such an action if it exists?
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Re: Tips and Tricks of the Portal

Postby CharlieC » Wed May 23, 2012 1:11 am

I have a question. Is there any way to re-organize anything you have in your gallery or your favorites? For example, if I wanted to sort my favorite stories alphabetically instead of by how long it's been since I added them to my favorites, can I do that? I tried dragging-and-dropping, but unless it simply doesn't work with my browser (Firefox), they just snap back to where they were.
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Re: Tips and Tricks of the Portal

Postby 4ofSwords » Wed May 23, 2012 7:40 am

lolno wrote:I have a question. Is there any way to re-organize anything you have in your gallery or your favorites? For example, if I wanted to sort my favorite stories alphabetically instead of by how long it's been since I added them to my favorites, can I do that? I tried dragging-and-dropping, but unless it simply doesn't work with my browser (Firefox), they just snap back to where they were.


You can organize the folders in your gallery by choosing "edit" when you're in the folder you want to reorganize, and choosing "sort by". To the best of my knowledge, those are now your only sort options. Also to the best of my knowledge (which is clearly limited), the only way you can organize your favorites is by Categorizing them.
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Re: Tips and Tricks of the Portal

Postby Nerva » Sun Aug 12, 2012 2:47 pm

Pop-Up PM Notifications
Little tip for anyone who has problems with missing PMs from people.

In your user control panel, under the board preferences tab (this link takes you right to it), you can turn on "pop up window on new private message" - this will make sure that you never miss a PM.

With this option active, you will recieve a pop-up window whenever you visit the forums, if there are new PMs in your inbox. It will prompt you to either go to your inbox, or you can simply close the pop-up and it won't bother you again until you recieve more new PMs.

Note that this option is different from "Notify me on new private message." The Notify Me option sends an e-mail to the inbox of the address you registered your account with.
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Re: Tips and Tricks of the Portal

Postby CharlieC » Wed Jan 30, 2013 1:19 am

Does anyone know if it's possible to blacklist not individual tags, but a combination of them?

For example, if I wanted to block the combination of "underage" and "sex", but keep both tags open?

Cause by themselves, I have no problem with these tags. But when literally the first sentence of a story is about a 10-year-old kid taking it up the ass? Then I have issues.
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Re: Tips and Tricks of the Portal

Postby Nerva » Tue Feb 12, 2013 8:47 am

I don't think it's possible to blacklist only certain combinations of tags while leaving individual tags free. The only real I can imagine is to create a tag specifically for the combination, then blacklist that (and hope people actually use it). However, I'll admit I'm not terribly familiar with the tag system, so if someone more knowledgeable than me wants to correct me, they can go right ahead.

Anwyay, since it's sometimes been a problem, I want to discuss...

Etiquette with Image Linking
Okay, anyone who's been on the internet for any length of time should know that there are a lot of different types of connections for internet browsing. There's also a lot of behind-the-scenes things that can go wrong for those various connections. To minimize these, there's a few simple practices you can adopt to avoid making life miserable for fellow browsers and the sites you link to or from.

1. Watch your attachments.
Every time you upload an attachment, it's hosted here on Eka's portal, requiring bandwidth both to upload, and to show. Bandwidth costs money, and Eka's funds aren't unlimited. As a result, you should use the attachment function sparingly, and only upload attachments that are vore-related. If there are attachments that aren't vore-related and are eating up Eka's bandwidth, the staff can delete them at any time.

2. Don't spam masses of images.
Image linking, which I've discussed previously, is a better option for sharing images that aren't attachment-worthy, but keep in mind, people still have to load those images. On a slow connection, or when using slower browsers, masses of images can make a thread unreadable, especially if they're large in file-size. This is why Bitmaps and animated images are eeevil, and you should avoid linking more than one of them in a single page of posts - and do not use them in your signatures! Static images are easier on people's browsers and connections. If you absolutely must link an animated image, keep it small and optimize the hell out of it.

Now there are a couple ways that, if you must link several large images, you can do so without breaking peoples' browsers. The first way is to avoid the IMG tag. Use a URL tag instead, that way if the picture doesn't interest them, they can just avoid clicking it. It's a lot easier to load a link than it is to load an image. The second method is to enclose image-dumps in the SPOILER tag. This way, the images are only loaded if someone clicks the spoiler.

3. Don't commit bandwidth theft.
Bandwidth theft occurs when you link directly to an image that you do not have permission to redistribute. Most sites are funded by advertisement revenue, and when you directly link to an image on a site, you're using up that site's bandwidth, but not allowing people to see that site's advertisements, which means they aren't getting paid for the bandwidth you are using. Hence, theft.

To avoid this, if you want to link an image, it's a good idea to link from webspace you own or have permission to link from, or do not link directly to the image; link to the page that the image is on instead. The latter method is the safest; the destination site appreciates the extra traffic and advertisement revenue, and you still get to share the image. But in a pinch, you can copy the image to your hard drive, go to an image-hosting site like imgur, imageshack, or photobucket, upload the picture there, and then link from it.

Since you are linking from webspace that has given you permission to link, there's no problem with theft, and the owner of the image isn't getting their bandwidth stolen, so usually they won't mind so long as you don't try to claim credit for the image or try to remove any watermarks/signatures on it.

4. Optimize your images
I touched on this before, but it's a good idea to optimize and compress your images before linking them. Keep in mind the file extension, since they're not all the same - GIF is okay but not great; JPEG is better, but the best format to use for image-linking is PNG. Great image quality with excellent compressability and low file sizes. You can even make animated PNGs with better color depths and smaller file sizes than GIFs. Do not link a BMP under any circumstances; not even if the Devil himself is holding a gun to your head. Other image types are not designed for Internet usage, and so shouldn't even be considered - most browsers won't even properly recognize them and display them as images.

Animated .GIF images are the most frequent offenders when it comes to lagging peoples' browsers. .GIF has poor compression and redraws the entire image with each frame instead of reusing unchanged pixels, meaning that every pixel of every frame needs to be saved. As a result, an animated .GIF is basically the same as saving a bunch of low-color-depth bitmaps, and as I explained, bitmaps are evil.

If you must use a .GIF, keep a couple simple rules in mind:
  1. Keep it small - the fewer pixels in each frame, the less that needs to be saved. Crop out any blank edges.
  2. Keep it simple - strip out every last unnecessary frame of animation. We don't need to watch a whole movie.
  3. Compress, compress, compress - .GIFs don't support a very large color depth to begin with, but if not all of those colors are being used, compress them out. A black-and-white pic does not need hundreds of shades of gray.
  4. One at a time - Don't use more than one animated .GIF per page of posts. This way, peoples' browsers don't get overloaded by trying to load fifty animated .GIFs on one page. Do not use animated .GIFs in you signatures, no matter how tempting it might be.

If you follow these guidelines, browsing image-heavy threads on Eka's should be a lot easier to deal with for all of us. Thanks for your time.
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Re: Tips and Tricks of the Portal

Postby psvorefan1520 » Tue Feb 12, 2013 4:20 pm

Nerva wrote:I touched on this before, but it's a good idea to optimize and compress your images before linking them. Keep in mind the file extension, since they're not all the same - GIF is okay but not great; JPEG is better, but the best format to use for image-linking is PNG. Great image quality with excellent compressability and low file sizes. You can even make animated PNGs with better color depths and smaller file sizes than GIFs. Do not link a BMP under any circumstances; not even if the Devil himself is holding a gun to your head. Other image types are not designed for Internet usage, and so shouldn't even be considered - most browsers won't even properly recognize them and display them as images.

Animated .GIF images are the most frequent offenders when it comes to lagging peoples' browsers. .GIF has poor compression and redraws the entire image with each frame instead of reusing unchanged pixels, meaning that every pixel of every frame needs to be saved. As a result, an animated .GIF is basically the same as saving a bunch of low-color-depth bitmaps, and as I explained, bitmaps are evil.


Hmm... I must look into these... "Animated PNGs." This is something I've never heard of before.
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Re: Tips and Tricks of the Portal

Postby Nerva » Tue Feb 12, 2013 4:29 pm

psvorefan1520 wrote:Hmm... I must look into these... "Animated PNGs." This is something I've never heard of before.

Well, I'm no expert, but this ain't a bad start.

Just be aware - Safari and Internet Explorer do not support APNGs. Opera and Firefox support them out of the box, and Chrome can support them with a plugin.
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Re: Tips and Tricks of the Portal

Postby Eupeptic » Fri Feb 15, 2013 2:24 am

psvorefan1520 wrote:This is something I've never heard of before.
And this...
Nerva wrote:Just be aware - Safari and Internet Explorer do not support APNGs. Opera and Firefox support them out of the box, and Chrome can support them with a plugin.

is why. For better or for worse, IE has a large market share. For the other browsers, in 2013, nobody will install a plugin just to view an image; they will assume it's malware.

The general rules I use are:

JPEG for photographs or anything like a photograph. If bandwidth is a concern, turn down the JPEG quality in your favorite image editing program.
PNG for line art, cartoons, and similar work. If bandwidth is a concern, and there are only a few colors, an indexed PNG will be slightly smaller.
GIF only for animations. Nerva covered the optimization for these well.

(Yes, it sucks that in 2013, the most cross-platform video format available is animated GIF, but that's the world we live in.)

Eupeptic

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Re: Tips and Tricks of the Portal

Postby psvorefan1520 » Fri Feb 15, 2013 3:01 am

Eupeptic wrote:is why. For better or for worse, IE has a large market share. For the other browsers, in 2013, nobody will install a plugin just to view an image; they will assume it's malware.


Was thinking I could use it to reduce the size of the larger animated sprites in my game ventures, actually... >.>

But the Paint.NET plugin doesn't want to seem to work on my computer, so meh. Guess I get the normal 2.8-105 KB each.
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Re: Tips and Tricks of the Portal

Postby Pokemon144 » Sat Oct 12, 2013 8:53 pm

Okay so im probably going to sound stupid but when you use img it asks for dimensions. I know what my images dimensions are, but I dont know where to put them.
It keeps me from posting it because "It was not possible to determine the dimensions of the image."
http://i891.photobucket.com/albums/ac112/samikolon/dxfgvhbjnkm_128_zpsaf024b88.gif
im also open for private roleplaying, as long as I get to be a pokemon
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Re: Tips and Tricks of the Portal

Postby Nerva » Sat Oct 12, 2013 9:46 pm

If you enclose the image in image tags, it should work without asking you the dimensions of the image.

I'm going to link an image here and see if it asks me for dimensions. It's something I've used before in this thread.

Image

I'm not being asked for dimensions when posting this. Here's the exact BBcode.

Code: Select all
[img]http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v236/Xanathar/InsaneCultist.gif[/img]


What is the URL of the image you're trying to post?
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