Welcome to another edition of MHR Tech Tips!

In the third installment of the series, we will learn how to make your post look good by learning how to put pictures in your posts!

Note how I have a picture at the top of my article. I'm not an artist. MHR staff member Sirsam (our resident artistic/graphics professional) designed it. But how did I get it on my post? How do I get pictures of players or illustrations of football formations on a post?

It's not a secret. I'm a computer illiterate, and I can do it. I'm going to help you be able to do it to. If you get stuck, or have problems, this is the place to experiment and ask questions. All of the members here are glad to help anyone who wants it. Let's get started!

Click the button that invites you to read more of the story so you can read the rest...

Continue reading this post »

     A Fanpost is like a good meal.  And what's important with a good meal?  If you said taste, you're halfway there.  A good chef not only makes food taste good, he makes it look good too.  With a fanpost you can write great stuff, and people will like what you are doing.  Use a little bit of MHR 2.0 Tech, and your fanpost becomes a work of art.  Not only is the fan post easier to read, not only can you highlight certain points with certain tools, but the post just looks good.

     There are so many features you can use that we are only going to look at a few today.  Look for the MHR Tech Tips series here to cover more features in the weeks ahead.  For today we'll cover the following.

1. The flag tool
2. The bold feature
3. The italic feature
4. The link feature
5. The blockquote feature

     FLAGS

     What can you do if someone is being innapropriate on the site?  We have a family friendly site, and it will stay that way.  Part of sports culture is trash talk, and trash talk is fun.  But certain things don't go over well at MHR.  Some language may be questionable, but language that is clearly over the top is not tolerated.  More so, comments that are personal in nature are not tolerated, and there is no room for threats of any kind.  Most MHR members follow the rules very well.  Sometimes someone comes to the site to cause trouble (we call such a person a "troll").  If they start a war in the comments section of an article we call that a "flame war".

     Problems like these are rare at MHR, thanks to a great community.  Our members have a lot of class, and your staff keeps on top of the site closely.  If you see something that is clearly over the top you can alert the staff.

      At the bottom of each comment under an article (article means story, fanpost, or fanshot), you will find a little picture of a yellow exclamtion point "!" and the word "flag".  Go to the offending comment (or article) and clik the flag icon.  Help will be on the way shortly.

     BOLD

     Want to make a word or sentence have the dark look like it does just above?  While writing a fanpost, go to the top of the window you are writing in and you'll see the letter "B".  Click it, then start typing.  When you want to end the bolding, just click bold again.  You can also use the left click on your mouse, drag the cursor over a section of your article, click again (now you've highlighted a section of your article), and click "B" to enbolden the section you highlighted.  Use the preview button at the bottom of the window to see if it worked the way you wanted it to.

     Go try it out!  Play around with the fanpost creator and use preview to see if these tools are helping you out!

     Italics 

     Do you want that effect?  Follow the instructions for bold, but use the icon that looks like a slanted letter "I" (it's next to the letter "B" that we used in the last paragraph).  Now you can get this kind of effect.

     LINK

     Would you like for folks to click on a word or phrase, and have them magicaly transported to another web page that you were talking about?  For example, I want you to click on this to read some NFL news.   When you click on the word "this" you get sent to another page (don't worry, you can come right back).

     How did I do that?  I opened another window besides the window I'm typing in now.  It was the NFL homepage.  I highlighted (that left mouse button trick) the name of the page, which was http://www.nfl.com/ and was at the top of that page.  I then right clicked to open a small window and selected "copy" from my choices.

     Then I went back to my article, highlighted the word "this", and clicked on the tool at the top of the article that looks like a chain (it says "insert link" if you move the cursor over it).  When the box opened and asked for the address, I made sure the box was empty (I erased the http stuff), left clicked in the box so I could type there, then right clicked to open the choices I had earlier.  Instead of clicking "copy" I clicked "paste" this time.  Then I clicked "ok".  Done!

     It sounds complicated, but this old dog got it done in about 10 seconds or less.  You can do it with little practice.  Again, try creating a fanpost and experiment.  Remember to click preview to see if it worked like you wanted it to.

     Sometimes you might want to do a little trick like this.  At MHR, we want you to use this feature when quoting an article from another site.  You can also use it for other purposes.

     Simply highlight whatever text you want to appear as above, then click on the " symbol (quotes symbol).  It is found at the top of the fanpost window, and is next to the ABC with a line through it.

~~~~~~~~~~

     Well I hope that helped some folks who may be a little confused by the fancy stuff they see on the pages.  If you have a question about these tools or any other Tech features, feel free to ask in the comments section below.  We're all here to help, and we're all looking forward to seeing your fanpost so we can check out what you've learned!

     Have fun!

A quick word on MHR Tech help and tips before we get to using the "Tags" and "Recommend" features...

There are a lot of features at MHR that a member can use to make his or her fanposts look better. There are also tools to help make your work easier to use by others. Many of these are "easy" to figure out, and many feautures are explained by clicking for help on the right side of the page when you are putting your fanpost together (by clicking on the question mark).

But I'm an older guy who didn't grow up around computers, and I understand the frustration that can come from not understanding computers. In fact, I'm the only editor at MHR that doesn't have an impressive background in computer technology. No fear my friends. If I can learn it, we all can learn it.

If you ever need help, here are some tips:

1. You can comment under someone's story or fanpost to ask for help. Almost every MHR member is friendly, helpful, and patient. You won't find a lot of the negative remarks on MHR that you find on some sports sites and blogs. The advantage to this is that you likely get more answers and get them pretty quickly. The disadvantage is that you might be "thread jacking", which means you are using someone's post to discuss an issue other than what the author of the post wanted to discuss. In the case of a member asking for help, there is no "foul" involved. (See Etiquette rule number 5,604).

2. You can e-mail an editor. Go to the bottom of the main page where you see the MHR "coaching" staff, and click the little envelope icon to contact an editor or contributor. You can also try going to the right on the main page and finding the list of MHR staff. Click on one of the editors or contributors. You will get info on the staff member (including an e-mail address if applicable). The reply may be within minutes, or less than 24 hours in most cases. Sometimes a staff member is out of town, so be patient. The advantage to this method is that you will get individualized help, and if the problem is more complex the staff member may be able to use some tools not available in a comments section (instant message, phone, e-mailing a pictorial help, etc).

3. Wait for an "MHR Tech Tips" article to appear on the front page and put a question in the comments section. These will be coming out on a regular basis, and all questions dealing with help are welcomed and encouraged (not limited to the subject in the title). If you have a question, this is a terrific place to ask it! The MHR staff will read the comments sections in an MHR Tech Tips story that still appears on the front page carefully to find members needing help. That's what the staff is here for. Of course, our many wonderful members will be there to help out too (right gang?)

Now simply click below on the blue writting that says, "Continue reading this post" so that you can learn about "Tags" and "Recommend".

Continue reading this post »