| kemosabe |
The first topic that will be covered will be what an avatar is and how to add/change it. I've seen quite a few people ask about this so why not have a thread to refer to the next time someone asks?
The avatar is the little graphical image (either GIF or JPG format) that can be displayed underneath your username and optional title (if you choose to have one) when you have made a post in a thread on a forum. These same steps apply whether you want to add an avatar or change your existing one. The step-by-step instructions below demonstrate changing my existing avatar, but they hold true even if you don't have one and are just adding a new one.
In this partiicular example, we show kemosabe's avatar as some masked man riding a horse named Silver out in the wild west: |
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| kemosabe |
Step 1
Of course, you need to point your favorite web browser to the honda-pilot.org site and log on with your username & password first... |
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| kemosabe |
Step 2
After you have logged on, click on the control panel link... |
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| kemosabe |
Step 3
Next, click on the Edit Options link... |
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| kemosabe |
Step 4
Then, scroll down to the bottom of the page and click on the Change Avatar button... |
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| kemosabe |
Step 5A
On the next page, you can choose from an available list of 254 existing avatars (spanning 11 pages) by checking the button next to the one you like.
Here is a link to a page that shows all the pre-loaded avatars on one page!
In this example, we chose Barney Rubble as our new avatar... |
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| kemosabe |
Step 5B
Or you could choose to use a custom avatar that can be loaded from your computer's hard drive by clicking on the Browse... button and retrieving your image from the popup dialog box. Make sure the box next to yes is selected!
In this example, we chose a JPG image called "pict.jpg" located in our temp folder on our C: drive...
NOTE: Images are best if they are no larger than 100 x 100 pixels and should be in either GIF or JPG format.
Step 6
Don't forget to click on the Submit Modifications button to save your changes!!! |
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| kemosabe |
Step 7
On the Edit Options page (from Step 3 above), you need to make sure that you select the yes option for the "Show user's avatar in their posts?" question in order for your avatar, along with everyone else who has one, to be displayed... |
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| kemosabe |
| And that's it, you're all done... You should now have a brand new avatar saved to your profile which will show up next to all of your posts -- congratulations!!! :29: |
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| kemosabe |
The next common topic that will be discussed is signature blocks. I see this question in a number of posts and I've received my fair share of PMs and e-mails about this subject over the course of my tenure here on honda-pilot.org, too.
You can have an optional signature block appear underneath all of your posts. It saves you from having to type a custom signature block each time you would like to add to a thread. Plus, it gives the other readers & members a glimpse into what options you have on your Pilot, color, other vehicles, and whatever else you decide to put there to enlighten the masses.
Below is an example (taken from kemosabe) of a signature block -- they can be plain vanilla simple, or they can be pretty elaborate -- it's all up to you! :) |
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| kemosabe |
| Step 1 AND Step 2 are identical to the first two steps covered in the avatar section above -- please refer to the above 2 steps if you haven't already... |
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| kemosabe |
Step 3
Next, click on the Edit Profile link... |
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| kemosabe |
Step 4
Scroll down to where you see the Signature: section and the corresponding text area where you can put your custom information for your signature block. Note that if HTML code is ON, then you can get quite fancy with HTML tags (tables, image links, hyperlinks, fonts, colors, etc...) and even applets!!!
NOTE: If you use HTML tags (especially tables), then you have to ensure that all of the carriage return/line feeds are stripped out because the vBulletin software has a bug in it that adds a bunch of empty lines to your displayed HTML code in the web browser, thus making the format look much different than what you had originally intended... |
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| kemosabe |
Step 5
When you are done, scroll down to the bottom of that page and click on the Submit Modifications button to save your changes!!! |
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| kemosabe |
Step 6
Similar to Step 7 for the avatar instructions, on the Edit Options page, you need to make sure that you select the yes option for the "Show user's signatures in their posts?" question in order for your signature, along with everyone else who has one, to be displayed... |
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| kemosabe |
| Once again, if all goes well (you can always check by viewing one of your old posts from an existing thread, or posting something new), then your new signature block should appear (tweak it as needed) at the bottom of your post(s) -- enjoy!!! |
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| kemosabe |
Recently, I've been getting PM'ed and e-mailed from honda-pilot.org members on how to attach pictures to a new/replied post. So, the next lesson will address that issue.
First, your image(s) must be in one of the following three formats in order for them to be viewed inline via the web browser:
1. JPEG (Joint Photographic Experts Group)
2. GIF (Graphic Interchange Format)
3. PNG (Portable Network Graphics)
BMP (Bitmap) images can also be uploaded, but they need subsequent downloading by the reader in order to view them.
Second, your image(s) must be less than 200,000 bytes. Two online image utilities that I've used are GIFWorks and JPEG Wizard when I don't have easy access to my Paint Shop Pro and/or Adobe PhotoShop software.
Third, if you keep your image size to be around 640 pixels (wide) by 480 pixels (height), then it should fit nicely on most monitors with minimal horizontal/vertical scrolling needed (since not everyone is running on 21" monitors with 1600x1200 resolution). |
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| kemosabe |
| After you're done typing your post, click on the Browse... button that's located below the text area where you've just finished typing... |
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| kemosabe |
For the many flavors of the Micro$oft Windoze operating system, a dialog window should pop up that will allow you to navigate to the location (directory/folder) on your hard drive that contains the image(s) that you'd like to include in your post.
Once you find that image, clicking on it will fill in the "File name:" text field and then click on the Open button.
For the Linux/Macintosh/Whatever operating system users, sorry, but I can't provide any further info... :( |
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| kemosabe |
| This should place you back on the page where you were typing your post, with the path to the image file filled in for you on the "Attach file:" text field. |
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| kemosabe |
| Now, just click on the Submit Reply button to send your post, along with the selected image file, to the honda-pilot.org server! |
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| kemosabe |
| :awais: NOTE: The one gotcha that might occur is this: if you happen to click on the Preview Reply button before you submit the post to the server, then for some strange reason (i.e., software bug), the image file gets lost from the "Attach file:" text field and you'll need to attach it again by repeating the above steps!!! :8: :ucrazy: |
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| florida_guy |
quote:
Originally posted by kemosabe
First, your image(s) must be in one of the following three formats in order for them to be viewed inline via the web browser:
1. JPEG (Joint Photographic Experts Group)
2. GIF (Graphic Interchange Format)
3. PNG (Portable Network Graphics)
A potential point of confusion the JPEG images will have a .jpg extension creating a file name such as sunset.jpg |
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