Featured FAQ, Special Features and Guide to Posting in The Cantina.

Everything you need to know about The Cantina is explained in this thread. From "how to" guides, to explanations of all the forum features.

I. Account Settings

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Most of them are self explanatory. Here are some of the more important features.


1. Personal Details - You can set your gender, date of birth (shown or hidden), location, occupation, and even some more info about yourself. From here you can change your avatar and update your status message (aka Profile Post). Also you can update your status from the forum's home page.

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And you can check all profile posts by clicking on the "New Profile Posts" link above.


2. Contact Details - You can set social networks that you use here. Also here you can set the settings from whom you can receive personal conversations and if to receive an email when you do. Conversations are personal messages that you can start with other member/s. Only the participants in the conversation can see its content. You can start a conversation by clicking the envelope icon in the upper right corner of your screen. Then choose "start new conversation".


3. Preferences - By default you automatically watch threads that you create or when you reply. Turn off this option if you don't want to receive emails for every comment posted in the thread.

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Every forum and thread has the "watch forum/thread" button in the thread's/forum's upper right corner.
For Watch Forum - you can choose if and how to receive notifications. You may choose via emails or alerts, both or none. If you choose none the forum will still be listed on the watched forums page.
For Watch Thread - you can choose to "receive email notifications" or "without receiving email notifications" (only forum alerts).

You can check the forums and threads you watch from here:

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Only the threads/forums you watch that have unread posts will be displayed here.
The "Featured Threads" button displays the threads that we think are important. An excerpt of a random featured thread is also displayed on the forum's home page.
The "New Posts" button displays the unread threads from the whole message board.


4. Alert Preferences - Set up when you want to receive alerts.


5. External Accounts - from here you can integrate your Facebook, Twitter or G+ account to be used in the forum. Once you do that, you will be able to log in with your social account.


6. Ignore and Follow people. From the account setting you can choose people to follow or ignore. When you ignore someone, his posts won't be visible for you (even if someone quotes him/her). When you follow someone, you will receive his/her activity in your News Feed.

 

II. Ratings, Trophies and Credits.


1. Post Ratings

TO BE ABLE TO RATE POSTS YOU NEED TO HAVE AT LEAST 30 POSTS IN THE CANTINA!

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Here at "THE CANTINA" we have a fun post rating system. The post rating system has been designed to ensure two things:

1- There is an actual conversation taking place with minimal, monosyllabic responses for "post padding" and

2- To ensure that "Trolls" are dealt with swiftly and decisively.

ALL forums and threads will be moderated, of course. However, your fellow posters will have the ability to rate posts and should posts be deemed "unworthy", IE "Trollish" or otherwise inflammatory, they can and will be rated as such. Troll-like ratings will shut down that specific post after 10 negative ratings. This encourages "peer moderation," so be sure to speak your mind, but make sure you do it civilly.

Should abuse of the systems occur -- ganging-up or otherwise harassing posters who may be "unpopular" but within our rules -- then the respective users will be dealt with. The rating system is intended to be a FUN way of encouraging fellow posters and, as with any other rule here, abuse of the intentions and/or rules will be dealt with, possibly up to and including banishment. The MODS can see who gave what rating at any time, and they can remove unfair ratings if they decide so.

The Post Rating System allows you to "like" or "dislike" posts as well as give and get "positive," "neutral," or "negative" ratings. However, if you give a rating and want to change it you always can, especially if there's been an honest mistake.


2. Trophy Points

You receive trophy points when you're awarded a Trophy Badge. Trophy Badges are awarded when you reach a certain amount of:

1. Posts
2. Likes
3. Positives
4. Ratio of posts to likes

There are also other occasions when you might be awarded a Trophy Badge - special forum events, games etc.

Trophy Icons - the trophy icons displayed below your avatar are the highest trophy you received in a certain category. There are 6 trophy categories for now.

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Progress Bar - shows how close you are from promoting to the next level. This depends on the number of trophy points you received. You start from Clone and progress through 20 different levels until you become "One With the Force" (which is really hard).

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Earn enough trophy points and you will rank-up faster. In order to see your earned trophies just click on the number next to "Trophy Points" in your user card to the left. You can see the full list of Trophies in the Help menu HERE.


3. Credits

Credits are a non-monetary system of "cyber-currency" that has absolutely ZERO VALUE. We do NOT promise that credits have value, nor do we promise payment to the members of the board any kind of monetary denomination for your participation in "THE CANTINA" forum & message board. It is strictly a "cyber-unit of currency" for FUN that may be used within "THE CANTINA" forum ONLY. Credits may play a larger role in the future for some ideas we have OR may be eliminated completely. Like all other elements of the board, abuse of the system may lead to banishment.

Like the Trophy Point system, you will receive credits based upon your level of participation. Some ways to earn credits include: Logging-in, creating threads, making polls, vote in polls, update status and profile etc. Conversely, IF you should violate the rules and/or become a bad poster, credits can and will be taken away.

Who do I transfer credits to for games & contests?

You'll transfer your credits for game or contest participation to Wuher the Cantina Barkeep of course. Wuher is a "proxy" agent who represents "THE CANTINA," thus ensuring that the staff is NOT being paid your credits for the game.

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In order to view your credit account, simply click on the number next to your credits. This will take you to your account page where you can view everything related to credits as well as perform a "Transfer" of credits, a "buy in," which may be necessary to participate in some contests and games:

1- Click "Transfer".
2- Type Wuher into the "Receiver" field.
3- Set the amount of credits for transfer
4- Note what the credits are being transferred for. (Please be sure to fill this field in as it will help the staff monitor the various games on the board.)

 

III. Guide to Posting in The Cantina + Special Features.

TO BE ABLE TO CREATE NEW THREADS YOU NEED TO HAVE AT LEAST 30 POSTS IN THE CANTINA!

Pay attention to the areas surrounded by the red rectangles in the images below.


1. Posting Images.

The easiest way is to use the "Upload a File" button:

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Then you may choose if to insert only a thumbnail of the image or the full image:

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The other option is to insert a URL of the image where you have uploaded it. For this click the image icon:

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2. Posting Videos, Tweets, Instagram posts etc.

We have an add-on that recognizes most of the popular video sites and channels. So most of the time it's enough to just paste the URL of the video, tweet, instagram, etc. straight into your post.

The other way is to use the "Insert Media" button. When you click it you can see the list of supported sites. Just paste the URL of the video, tweet, instagram, etc. there:

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3. Multi Quote Posts

There's a multi quote button in the lower right corner of every post:

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When you press it the post is added to a list of multi quotes. When you're done adding posts with this button and you go to your reply message you will see a new button appear - "Insert Quotes". This will insert all selected posts in your reply as quotes:

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There's another cool feature. You can quickly multi-quote passages from a post. Just highlight with the mouse the section you want to add to the multi-quote list and a pop-up window will appear. Choose one of the options (to reply quoting that selection or to add it to the multi-quote list).

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4. Direct link to a forum post

If you want to share a particular post from one of the threads, click on the #number in the bottom right corner of the post. From the opened window you can copy the direct url link to that post and paste it wherever you want. Also from the opened window you can share this link to various social networks.

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5. Posting Spoilers

When you're posting spoilers it's highly recommended that you insert a spoiler wrap around it. You can do this by first clicking the insert icon and then spoiler.

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Then you will be asked to name the spoiler. You can either name it or leave it empty. Then press "continue" and write the spoiler between the "spoiler" tags. Click preview to see how it looks.

In the same way you can put quotes around a certain text. Click the "insert" icon then "quote" and then type in the text. Or you can highlight a passage of the text and while highlighted click "insert" - "quote".

The same way you can add HTML and PHP codes and strike-through.


Finally here are some cool features that you might have overlooked.


6. Quick Navigation Icon - let's you quickly navigate through the forum list as well as some important general links:

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7. Go to the Top of the Page - quickly scrolls up to the top of the page:

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8. Rating Threads - you can rate threads by giving them stars (upper right corner of the thread):

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9. Who is Online? - The pulsating green dot on the avatar shows if the member is online.

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10. Unread posts - If there are posts in a thread that you haven't read, then you will see a small blue dot on this thread.

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In this case, when you click on the thread's title, you will immediately be taken to the page with the first unread post. There's no need to press on the page numbers of the thread.


11. Tagging a fellow forum member - there are two ways to get the attention of a fellow member to a certain post you make. To quote him or to tag him. To tag a member just put @ before his name (i.e. @Viral Hide). Then the user will receive an alert that he's been tagged. Of course if the user had turned off the alerts for tagging he won't receive anything.

 

If you have further questions, send me a direct conversation.