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- Jun 15, 2014
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Every once in a while we get an email from a newcomer about some aspect of using BuSo. A lot of us take it for granted that all internet marketers have used forums, because we're all old timers. But a lot of the new crowd has only used social media and aren't completely familiar with the conventions of a forum.
So this thread is a living and breathing document to help you new members find your way. It's in Q&A format, and if you have a question the answer is likely here, so it's worth skimming it all.
1) Why Can I Only Post in the Orientation Section?
We've gone to great lengths to make BuSo the highest quality forum online in any industry. One of our many layers of defense from idiots and spammers is to start users off in one section. If you're new, there's a big colorful banner on the homepage, but some people still don't read that:
(By popular demand, the threshold has been reduced to 2 posts & 2 likes!)
It says that you can only post in this section until you make 2 quality posts and get 2 likes on these posts. This can be done in about 5 minutes and is a tiny barrier, but in combination with other methods we have stopped 99.9% of spam and morons from flooding the forum. A good way to get this done is to post an introduction in the Introductions Thread and tell us about your current and past projects, ambitions, or whatever. Make it good!
2) Why Are My Posts Being Deleted?
Because you're breaking one of our basic Rules (read those, please):
3) Why Can't I Send a Private Message?
You need to make 3 high quality posts and receive 3 likes. If we let anyone create an account and send messages immediately, there'd be so much spam flying out it'd make your head spin. If you're a lurker or new member and want to message a Marketplace vendor, they (and you) have a set of marketplace guidelines that tells them to include an email address or Skype handle, for instance, so you can still reach them.
4) Why Did My Post Go Into Moderation?
We only moderate posts in the Digital Strategy Crash Course and for newcomers with less than 10 posts, and that only happens when they've included a link in their post. It doesn't mean you did anything wrong and we tend to approve the comments within an hour if it's waking hours. It's just another way to stop spammers.
5) Why Can't I Post an Image?
You can. Everyone can. And it's the simplest thing to do, yet supposed webmasters can't figure it out. I blame this on the REST API and social media and everybody embedding everything these days. You young whippersnappers...
You don't want to insert an image. You don't want to upload an image. You don't want to embed an image. All you want to do is click the stand-alone image button on the post editor and paste a direct URL to the image file.
Please note, I said "image file", not HTML page that the image exists on, which seems to be a common mistake. If you upload an image to Imgur, for example, don't paste in the URL to the Imgur page. You need to right click the image and copy the actual image address that ends in
Always include the image in your post in this manner. Don't create a text link to an image or a page that an image exists on. Just include the image by copy and pasting the URL to the direct image in that little box. Another option is to simply wrap it in "image tags" like this:
You should resize any giant images or they won't show. There is a size limit that you shouldn't ever reach if you aren't doing anything silly. Beyond image posting, you can also embed YouTube, Vimeo, Twitter, and Instagram URLs through the "Insert > Media" button.
6) Tips for Clean Posting
There are two pieces of BBCode (bulletin board code) that you should know about. Those are:
"icode" mean "inline code" and
"code" is used to create a big code block where you need to maintain indents and line breaks and things of that nature. It's used to share actual code on the forum like:
There's also another fun one (click the fuzzy part): You can use "ispoiler" to create inline spoilers like this and "spoiler" to create a block level one with a button to reveal it..
7) Why Can't I "Like" a Post in the Water Cooler?
I turned that feature off in the Water Cooler for the time being. Likes are meant to be a measure of a members contributions to the forum on the business side of discussion, not for raking in the Likes for being funny or posting memes.
8) How Can I Change My Username?
There is no way for users to change their usernames themselves. We have to do it and we get asked to change usernames every day, usually for silly reasons with no real consequences in reality. We have better things to do with our time then respond to all these messages.
If your account is new enough and you simply want a different username, then just start a new account. If you need to change your username for privacy reasons or anything else that actually matters, please visit the Upgrades tab at the top of the forum and select the "Username Change" option and then PM me your new desired username.
9) Don't Try to Attract Attention Through Formatting
Attract attention with the quality of your words, not how you format them. Word about us has spread to some of the more ridiculous areas of the SEO community and, while we invite high quality members to join us, this is a forum for adults and professionals. Please follow our culture for posting.
That means that we don't need you to put every 5 word sentence on a new line with a blank line between them. We don't want you to make every one of your posts have text that's twice as big as everyone else's with purple colored letters. Just be normal and do it like everyone else is doing.
We value the quality and content of your contributions. Thank you for posting with us. What we don't want is to read 32px font-sized center-aligned bright pink text where every 3 words is in a new paragraph.
So this thread is a living and breathing document to help you new members find your way. It's in Q&A format, and if you have a question the answer is likely here, so it's worth skimming it all.
1) Why Can I Only Post in the Orientation Section?
We've gone to great lengths to make BuSo the highest quality forum online in any industry. One of our many layers of defense from idiots and spammers is to start users off in one section. If you're new, there's a big colorful banner on the homepage, but some people still don't read that:
(By popular demand, the threshold has been reduced to 2 posts & 2 likes!)
It says that you can only post in this section until you make 2 quality posts and get 2 likes on these posts. This can be done in about 5 minutes and is a tiny barrier, but in combination with other methods we have stopped 99.9% of spam and morons from flooding the forum. A good way to get this done is to post an introduction in the Introductions Thread and tell us about your current and past projects, ambitions, or whatever. Make it good!
2) Why Are My Posts Being Deleted?
Because you're breaking one of our basic Rules (read those, please):
- Asking for likes
- Posting some variation of "thanks" or any message that doesn't contain substance
- You can't speak coherent English
- You're not being civil, you're using personal attacks, or using overly emotionally charged language meant to incite and disrupt conversation.
3) Why Can't I Send a Private Message?
You need to make 3 high quality posts and receive 3 likes. If we let anyone create an account and send messages immediately, there'd be so much spam flying out it'd make your head spin. If you're a lurker or new member and want to message a Marketplace vendor, they (and you) have a set of marketplace guidelines that tells them to include an email address or Skype handle, for instance, so you can still reach them.
4) Why Did My Post Go Into Moderation?
We only moderate posts in the Digital Strategy Crash Course and for newcomers with less than 10 posts, and that only happens when they've included a link in their post. It doesn't mean you did anything wrong and we tend to approve the comments within an hour if it's waking hours. It's just another way to stop spammers.
5) Why Can't I Post an Image?
You can. Everyone can. And it's the simplest thing to do, yet supposed webmasters can't figure it out. I blame this on the REST API and social media and everybody embedding everything these days. You young whippersnappers...
Please note, I said "image file", not HTML page that the image exists on, which seems to be a common mistake. If you upload an image to Imgur, for example, don't paste in the URL to the Imgur page. You need to right click the image and copy the actual image address that ends in
.gif / .jpg / .png / etc..Always include the image in your post in this manner. Don't create a text link to an image or a page that an image exists on. Just include the image by copy and pasting the URL to the direct image in that little box. Another option is to simply wrap it in "image tags" like this:
[img]https://www.example.com/image.jpg[/img].You should resize any giant images or they won't show. There is a size limit that you shouldn't ever reach if you aren't doing anything silly. Beyond image posting, you can also embed YouTube, Vimeo, Twitter, and Instagram URLs through the "Insert > Media" button.
6) Tips for Clean Posting
There are two pieces of BBCode (bulletin board code) that you should know about. Those are:
does this. You should use this if you want to mention an example URL like https://www.site.com/example-url or an example email address like contact@example.net. URLs and email addresses do create automatic hyperlinks, and we ask you to not litter the forum up with broken links that lead nowhere. You can also wrap short pieces of code in "icode" BBCode to make it more readable, like <?php the_content(); ?>."code" is used to create a big code block where you need to maintain indents and line breaks and things of that nature. It's used to share actual code on the forum like:
7) Why Can't I "Like" a Post in the Water Cooler?
I turned that feature off in the Water Cooler for the time being. Likes are meant to be a measure of a members contributions to the forum on the business side of discussion, not for raking in the Likes for being funny or posting memes.
8) How Can I Change My Username?
There is no way for users to change their usernames themselves. We have to do it and we get asked to change usernames every day, usually for silly reasons with no real consequences in reality. We have better things to do with our time then respond to all these messages.
If your account is new enough and you simply want a different username, then just start a new account. If you need to change your username for privacy reasons or anything else that actually matters, please visit the Upgrades tab at the top of the forum and select the "Username Change" option and then PM me your new desired username.
9) Don't Try to Attract Attention Through Formatting
Attract attention with the quality of your words, not how you format them. Word about us has spread to some of the more ridiculous areas of the SEO community and, while we invite high quality members to join us, this is a forum for adults and professionals. Please follow our culture for posting.
That means that we don't need you to put every 5 word sentence on a new line with a blank line between them. We don't want you to make every one of your posts have text that's twice as big as everyone else's with purple colored letters. Just be normal and do it like everyone else is doing.
We value the quality and content of your contributions. Thank you for posting with us. What we don't want is to read 32px font-sized center-aligned bright pink text where every 3 words is in a new paragraph.
Last edited:
and I didn't know about the 
