BREWERFAN.NET USABILITY FAQ
Contents
- Why does Brewerfan.net have two logins?
- How do I gain access to post on Brewerfan's forums?
- How do I access my Yuku forum member controls?
- How do I view or adjust my message board profile?
- How do I change the way I view the forums?
- What are the RSS icons for throughout the site?
- How can I receive Brewerfan.net e-mail notifications?
- How can I receive message board e-mail notifications?
- What am I allowed to post on the message boards?
- How do I format a message?
- How do I quote other posts?
- What guidelines should I follow when I quote other posts?
- How do I find an individual message's direct URL?
- How do I post an image?
- How do I avoid funky results when I resize fonts in my posts?
- How do I post using the Quick Reply box?
- How do I link or unlink a Photobucket account?How do I create and manage photo albums?
- How do I add a signature?
- How do I make my signature conform to site guidelines?
- How do I put an icon/picture/avatar next to my name?
- How do I send a private message?
- How do I send a private message to group of members?
- How do I know if I've received a private message?
- What do I gain by using Yuku's Firefox extension?
- Why is forum functionality different for Safari users?
- Why might I find a slightly different forum appearance in Internet Explorer 6?
- How much does the fan forum cost?
- What else should I know about Yuku?
- Where can I ask questions?
Why does Brewerfan.net have two logins?
The Brewerfan.net portion of this site is hosted on its own server space under the www.brewerfan.net domain. The forum portion of this site is hosted by a third-party service (Yuku) under the brewersfandemonium.yuku.com domain.
The login link at the very top of each www.brewerfan.net page is for the Brewerfan.net portion of the site. The Brewerfan login allows you to set preferences for e-mail notifications.
The Yuku login allows you to post on the forums. Log in via the text fields at the top left of any Yuku page. You may use either your forum username or e-mail address.
How do I gain access to post on Brewerfan's forums?
To be allowed to post, you need to do two things:
- Create a Yuku account.
- Obtain approval from Brewerfan staff to be able to post.
You may sign up for a Yuku account by clicking the "SIGN UP" button at the top of any Yuku page.
Keep in mind that there are two types of Yuku accounts: global and local. Both account types allow members to post on any Yuku forum. However, members with local accounts will have the name of the forum from which they signed up appended to their usernames. Example: if Doug Melvin signs up via this site, his full username would be Doug Melvin.brewersfandemonium.
"brewersfandemonium" will only be displayed behind a member's username if s/he posts at forums other than this one. To obtain a global account, register through Yuku's home page. If you'd like to have more flexibility in choosing a username, sign up via a Brewerfan.net Yuku page.
If you need to be walked through the registration process, Chris W962 offers this tutorial: Creating an account with yuku. One important thing to note is that you're required enter your real name on page 1 of the sign-up process. Your preferred username is entered on page 2.
If you want to be doubly safe in protecting your identity, enter a 'fake' real name. (This isn't cheating. Yuku staff suggests this.) If you'd subsequently like to display your real name in your profile, you can change your real name later in your member controls. (See the member controls and profile sections immediately below.)
Once you're signed up and logged in, hitting "Reply" in any post will bring up a membership application.
How do I access my Yuku forum member controls?
While logged in, click on the "Navigation" button at the top right of any Yuku page: 
How do I view or adjust my message board profile?
Clicking on your username anywhere it might appear on the forums will take you to your profile. Within your profile, you'll see "Edit" links in various places. They take you to pages where you can change specific parts of your profile.
You may change the layout of your profile by using the "Edit Layout" link in the member controls. You may change your profile's skin by following the "Edit Skins" link.
How do I change the way I view the forums?
Brewerfan's Yuku forum font sizes are set render according to your browser's default. If you feel the forum fonts are too large or too small, adjust the font size in your browser's preferences (options) panel.
The width of the forums is set to use 95% of your browser window. Simply widen or narrow your window if you feel more comfortable reading posts at a different width.
Yuku's modern design makes it easy to make very specific end-user skin adjustments in Opera and in the Gecko browsers (Firefox, SeaMonkey, Camino, Flock, and K-Meleon). More information on this will be forthcoming.
What are the RSS icons for throughout the site?
Brewerfan.net and Yuku offer the ability to use Really Simple Syndication (RSS) formatted information to integrate with your feed reader of choice. RSS offers the ability to collect news information from various sites and aggregate it into one central location for you to read. Google Reader is one of the more popular examples of a feed reader.
Brewerfan.net feeds are available for News, Features, and the Daily Brew. They're denoted by this icon: 
Message board feeds are available at the community, forum, and individual thread level. They're denoted by this
icon: 
How can I receive Brewerfan.net e-mail notifications?
Brewerfan.net offers e-mail notifications of Site Updates, News, Features, Daily Brews, Power 50s, and Team Transactions (Brewers and all farm clubs.) To subscribe or adjust your notifications:
- From any page in the brewerfan.net portion of the site, follow the Login link in the top navigation bar.
- Log in with your username or create a new account.
- One you've logged in, the navigation area at top of page will contain "Logout" and "Profile"
links in place of "Login". Click on Profile.
- You'll be given choices to change your password or change your notifications. Follow notifications link and check the boxes that interest you. Click the Submit button.
How can I receive message board e-mail notifications?
Like the RSS feeds, message board e-mail notifications are available at the community, forum, and individual thread
level. To be informed of new posts, click on this icon: 
E-mail notifications can be set in your member controls to come individually or in 'Daily Digest' form. To manage your subscriptions, follow these links: Settings » Notifications » Options. On the subscription page, you may also opt to receive e-mails notifying you of private messages, friend requests, and new image comments. By following the Subscriptions link from that page, you can remove individual subscriptions.
What am I allowed to post on the message boards?
Reading the Brewerfan.net Fan Forum Rules of Conduct is required before posting on the message boards. Also, several forums have FAQs with additional guidelines.
How do I format a message?
Chris W962 has provided a tutorial for using Yuku's WYSIWYG post
editor. If you know HTML, you may directly paste or edit code by clicking on the "html-view" button: 
Note that HTML entered or pasted in the WYSIWYG view won't render: it'll display the actual code. For those
who prefer this route, BBCode can be entered directly into the post editor. Chris (a different Chris 
) provides a list of supported BBCodes.
How do I quote other posts?
- Hit the Quote link in the post you'd like to quote.
- In the now segmented portion containing the quote, delete whichever lines that aren't going to direct your response
to.
-or-
Before hitting the Quote link, have your shortened quote copied and ready to paste over the material in the quotation box.
- Type your response below the quote window.
- Preview your response (if you'd like).
- Hit Post.
If you prefer to quote messages another way, that's fine. Simply offset your quotation with italics or bold so it stands out from the rest of the message.
What guidelines should I follow when I quote other posts?
- Quoting multi-paragraph blocks is not reader friendly. Neither is quoting a string of a multiple nested replies.
- Editing quotes is simple and easy, so please try and make an attempt to better illustrate your point. Try to limit your quote to the specific line that you want to quote. If you choose the part of the message that best leads into your topic sentence, you're likely to make sense. Quoting entire paragraphs is redundant and cumbersome for a reader and may muddle the point you are trying to make.
- If, within your message, you feel you need to refer to more than one part of a post, quote small sections, then respond underneath each one.
- There is generally no need to nest quotes deeper than two replies.
- There is no need to quote a picture or any other media file. A simple reference will do just fine. We've all seen the picture (or whatever) and we all know what you're talking about. There is no need to quote it eight more times on the same page. Again, it's not reader friendly.
- Remember that Yuku places a number on each reply. This can be used in addition to the quote feature. The two work hand in hand quite well. Also, each reply has its own URL available if you'd like to create a link.
- Please remember that the quote is actually part of your message. Choosing what to quote and how to present it should require the same thought and care as composing the message itself.
How do I find an individual message's direct URL?
- Hit the [url] link at at the top right corner of any reply.
- A box with two links will pop up:
- Choose "Single post view" to show only a single reply in a window. Choose "Link to reply in the thread" to link to the reply and offer easy access to messages above and below it.
- Choose the URL you'd like and create a link.
How do I post an image?
See Chris W962's Adding images to posts tutorial for adding images from Yuku albums, your Photobucket account, or from URLs.
The image you use must be available on the Internet (not just your own computer). In other words, it must have a web address. If there's a graphic on your computer that you'd like to share, Yuku, Photobucket, and ImageShack all offer free online image hosting.
As Chris W962 mentions, images stored in your Photobucket and Yuku accounts may be added directly from Yuku's post editor. See the section below (How do I link or unlink a Photobucket account?) for instructions for linking your Photobucket account.
When posting an image, keep its file size in mind. While it isn't a hard cap, 100 K is probably a good threshold for deciding to put an image behind a link rather than posting it inline. Consider that there may be more than one image posted on a page and that even 100 K makes a difference to dial-up users.
If you're going to be posting several images in the same message, definitely use links instead. Of course, there are occasional message board threads whose main purpose is to "feature" images. In those cases, post away.
Finally, please keep in the site rules regarding images in mind:
Please keep images tasteful. If an image is not suitable for work or family viewing, post the link with a warning instead of the image itself.
If your image is large, post a link instead of the image itself, or reduce the size before you post it, so that readers don't have to scroll sideways to see it or other posts on the page.
How do I avoid funky results when I resize fonts in my posts?
Simply put, this feature needs improvement, so you probably won't completely avoid unexpected results. Brewerfan has made Yuku aware if its concerns about this.
The most practical advice is to use the font resize feature sparingly. It works best if you type your post in the default font first, then go back and selectively resize the fonts you'd like to have larger or smaller. (Actually, you can type a character or two ahead, then go back and resize. The issue is that returning to the default font size is very difficult.)
How do I post using the Quick Reply box?
Type away, then click on the "QUICK REPLY" button. Plain text, HTML, and supported BBCodes can be mixed and matched. If you begin a message in the Quick Reply box, then decide you want to continue your work in the WYSIWYG post editor, check the "Preview" box, then click on "QUICK REPLY".
How do I link or unlink a Photobucket account?
In the post editor, click on the Photobucket icon: 
If you haven't yet linked to a Photobucket account, this message will pop up:
To unlink your Photobucket account, go to Settings » Photobucket in your member controls. If you haven't yet linked a Photobucket account, you may also link one on this page.
How do I create and manage photo albums?
See Chris W962's albums tutorial.
How do I add a signature?
Yuku allows members to have five signatures. To create a signature or change signature preferences:
- Click on the Navigation button at upper right of corner of any Yuku page.
- Click on the Edit Signature link on the left-hand side of the controls that appear. On the page that loads, you
may:
- Edit or delete current signatures by hitting buttons in the Action column.
- Choose a Default signature by hitting the appropriate radio button in the Default column.
- Add a signature by hitting the add signature » button underneath the signature list.
- Click the "SAVE" button when you're done.
How do I make my signature conform to site guidelines?
Please note Brewerfan's signature rules:
Ideally, signatures should not be longer than your posts, nor should they distract from the content of your post. A good rule of thumb is that if your signature is longer than 3 lines (including paragraph breaks), it may be distracting.
It also is easier to tell where your post ends and your signature begins if your signature is written in italics or bold.
Please do not include images in your signature; and note that site language rules also apply to signatures. Feel free to advertise your personal site or blog in your signature, but try to keep it tasteful.
How do I put an icon/picture/avatar next to my name?
- Load your profile. You can get there quickly by clicking on your username at the top of any forum page or in any of your posts.
- Click the edit button in the 'mini-profile': that's where you see your username, gender, location, etc.
- You'll be taken to the "Edit Miniprofile" page. Click on the actual avatar (or avatar placeholder) in the "Change Avatar" area. You'll be taken to a page showing any avatars you might have uploaded. If your preferred avatar isn't there, an interface to upload your avatar from your hard drive is provided.
- Choose your preferred avatar by clicking on it. You'll be brought back to the "Edit Miniprofile" page.
- While you're on the Edit page, if you'd like, you may make other profile adjustments. When you're done, make sure you hit the save button at the bottom
The maximum displayable size of your photo when used on our forum is 100x100. Try to select a photo that's roughly that size, as the larger your photo is, the longer it will take people to download it.
Like all images, your avatar must be available on the Internet (not just your own computer). Because webmasters get crabby when their bandwidth is 'borrowed' to constantly display their images on other sites, your avatar should be stored in 'your own space' online. Again, Yuku, Photobucket, and ImageShack all offer free online image hosting.
Like signatures, you shouldn't need to post to test your avatar. The Preview function should suffice.
How do I send a private message?
There are several ways members can send private messages:
- Click on the Inbox link in the Yuku navigation bar, then click the Compose New Message button. Type the username of the member you with to contact in the To field.
- Click on the Navigation button, then click on the Write Message link on the left-hand side of the controls that appear. Type the username of the member you wish to contact in the To field.
- Choose the Message > Compose submenu item in the Yuku's Firefox extension menu. Type the username of the member you with to contact in the To field.
- Click on a member's name from wherever it might appear on the forum. In his/her profile, click on the Message button. The To field will be filled in for you.
- Left or right-click on Message Me in the Interact menu in the member information next to any of his/her posts. The To field will be filled in for you.
How do I send a private message to group of members?
See Chris W962's tutorial: Private messaging: groups.
How do I know if I've received a private message?
Yuku's new message notification isn't very clear. A Yuku staff member is working on a better alternative, but no rollout timetable seems to be set. Here's what to look for...
If you have no new messages, your navigation button remains gray:
If you have new messages, the button turns bright pale blue:
As an option, you may wish to receive e-mail notifications for private messages. This preference can be toggled in your member controls by following the Settings » Notifications » Options links.
Yuku's Firefox extension is a big help for managing messages. It places an icon and new message indicator in the browser's status bar. If a member has new messages, the "light" will blink. What's really cool is that this works even if a member isn't visiting a Yuku page.
What do I gain by using Yuku's Firefox extension?
In addition to easy access to private messages, Yuku's Firefox extension notifies members of friend requests and comments, allows members to set keyboard shortcuts, and makes it possible to log in/out or access signature and preference settings without visiting a Yuku page.
Here are pictures of the Yuku extension menu and its Messages submenu.
Why is forum functionality different for Safari users?
While Safari is definitely a standards-compliant browser, it doesn't support the features provided in the WYSIWYG post editor. An alternative post editor, with functionality similar to the Quick Reply box, is provided instead.
Additionally, Safari doesn't currently have the ability to scroll (or, in some cases, hide) information that overflows the size of its containing box (example: wide pictures in messages). The next version of Safari will support the CSS overflow property.
Why might I find a slightly different forum appearance in Internet Explorer 6?
Internet Explorer 6 is not a standards-compliant browser. However, every effort has been made to accommodate IE 6's quirks and bugs in Brewerfan's Yuku skin. There may be a handful of skin enhancements that are only viewable in modern browsers. These will be safely be ignored by IE 6 and won't affect forum functionality.
How much does the fan forum cost?
Brewerfan's most recent fan forum renewal occurred in January, 2007. It was for six months and cost $965. As part
of the deal, we were given an additional six months free for committing to an early migration to Yuku. Additionally, because Yuku was still in beta and all
forums were temporarily free, Brewerfan wasn't charged between August 1, 2007, and January, 2008. Our next forum renewal date is August 5th, 2008.
What else should I know about Yuku?
Yuku is pronounced "You coo". It comes from the aboriginal word for "tree".
Where can I ask questions?
Feel free to ask questions about usability issues in the Brewerfan.net Issues & Events forum. If you can't find an existing thread on your question, feel free to start a new one. Some existing threads:
