I am obviously being dim because others have managed it!

05/19/2009 - 04:23

but how can I join this group- being a bit of a technophobe I've just got over the trauma of having to rejoin the forum but now can't seem to do a blessed thing! (I can't even add a smiley cos I'm not sure which part of the " Textual" smiley I need to use!)

Comment

Hi HelenMW, thanks for taking the leap. First thing I would say is just try various things and see what happens - don't worry about the consequences we can sort things afterwards :)Secondly if you want to inset a smiley just click on smileys and click on the one you like - you will see some text pop upin this area which once you hit save will be translated into a nice image for you.Hope this helps!

Helen, good to see you here. Don't worry, it takes a bit of time to get used but we will all make it. :)

Hi allLIke a lot of you I'm still finding my way round this new site but I daresay we will all get there in the end.Just managed to load my piccie so I must be doing something right (fingers crossed!) H)

Great butterfly Lorraine - is it English or Italian? Looks like one on my Italian lavender that I spent all day trying to get a good piccie of

Italian - took it last year at Carpinetti.I know what you mean about spending time trying to get good piccies but fortunately this one was clicked in a flash.

Ooh heck - innit different. Ah well. bash on regardless

Why should anyone bother?Frankly, this "community" looks to me like something cooked up by a techie desperate to justify his salary in difficult times.Maybe that's just me being all too cynical as I am wont to be. Or perhaps I'm too dim to recognise a profound new paradigm at work. Or just maybe I have enough of a life outside the confines of the Italy Mag forum... sorry, "community"... to be annoyed that I'm expected to jump through hoops and spend time trying to learn how to use supposedly wonderful new features which are not immediately obvious.What is immediately obvious is that I can't see much discussion going on and some of the "features" are clearly screwed up. For example, has anyone actually tried to position a marker on the map? The best I could manage was positioning my marker somewhere in the middle of the Adriatic on on the outskirts of Zagreb.I've belonged to numerous forums over the years; none of them looked anything like this. Some may well think such novelty is wonderful. I see it as an indicative of someone trying to fix something that was never broke. Whatever the motivations of those behind what we all see here, I see the new modes of accomplishing simple tasks and the new "features" as barriers and I just can't be bothered to try to get over them.Oh, but I've forgotten: this is a COMMUNITY, not merely forum, so obviously it's silly of me to expect it to look like an internet forum and fulfil the useful functions of a normal internet forum. (By the way, I would have used bold and italics there rather than CAPS, but the standard MS shortcuts [alt-b and alt-i] don't work here, there's no convenient button and I can't be arsed to go off and read about BBCode [whatever that is] or click on the link below promising "More information about formatting options")My immediate impression is that this is a techie's dog's dinner – and a half baked one at that. I may come back in a while to see if sanity has prevailed, but given that The Powers That Be are apparently heavily invested in this, I have little hope of that, so I won't be returning any time soon.Bye all.Al

Hi Alan,thanks for the feedback - as I mentioned there are some kinks to iron out but the most important thing to keep in mind is that you can keep it as simple as you like (so for example simply ignore BBCode if you want to - and by the way we will be adding a graphical text editor soon but we need to make sure it is one that works for everyone).This is not about some "techie" (I am guessing you are referring to me) that is trying to justify his salary. I assume you are saying this because you don't know what the setup in ITALY Magazine is. Just to clarify my salary is safe whether there is a community site or not :) I would have considerably more free time without the community but believe it or not I actually enjoy this.It is an attempt to create something different - something that will really work for people that are trying to share information about Italy and will allow us to easily find the information. I realise that the fact that this is not in familiar forum style is off-putting. It seems hard and complicated. However, take a pause for a minute and really look around without having the forums in mind. It is actually much simpler because, for starters, there are actually far less things to do here. You want to say something click on "Create Content" and add a post. Choose your topic and location if they apply - no topic you like? add a topic through the tags yourself. Instant "sub-forum"! You want to comment on something find the post and add your comment - click on save and you are done. You can look at recently created posts, recently updated posts from the menu bar on the top. You can also look at topics and see if there are posts under a topic that interest you.Want to add some pictures - create a gallery. Talk about a restaurant - create a restaurant review. We will be adding more types of the sort soon.Want to share and develop knowledge with friends? - create a group, work on a wiki, Don't really care for all this strange things? Just do posts and ignore all the rest.The maps seem to work for quite a few people as there are plenty of markers there:http://www.italymag.co.uk/community/map/userbut I understand that they might not behave the same on every setup.Important thing is try to keep it calm and positive.

Geez Al, As a new member looking with fresh eyes, I like this site which I think is supposed to be about things Italian not one's techie skills . It's very kind that theadministrators are patient with those of my ilk. Regards, Catherine

I'm lost. It's taken two days to find out where the smilies are and how to post. I went to get a smiley and my typing disappeared so I did it again and copied the smiley and the typing disappeared again. Here's the smiley and if it doesn't work this time... :cry:

Hi Lollita - thanks for being patient. Just click on a smily and some text will appear in your text box which is where the smiley will be once you are done.We are working on incorporating a text editor which should solve these problems for you

Please, please can somebody tell me how I add photo's to my text?Lynda

Ciao Lynda,to add a photo you have up to 3 possibilities:1. Create a Post and upload a photo from your computer - click in the tab "external images" under the text box2. Comment on someone's else post and add a photo from an URL - click on the images icon (mountain with sun)3. Create a Photo Gallery - you can upload files from your computerLooking forward to seeing your images!

Just done it! Got rid of that awful green schoolboy, here I am in typical post on Fornillo beach at Postano about three weeks ago.... sigh.....Now I will try to find a smiley and see if that works... ???? no can't even see where they are ??

Where's the tab "external images"? I can't find it unde the text box. I have clicked on the images icon (mountain with sun) and it's in Italian and so I can't understand what I have to do! Sorry for being so stupid. Lynda

Look at the toolbar above the Comment box. 2nd icon from the right is a Smiley. Click on that.

I think that's Latin.Just paste the URL of the image in the URL box and click on OK.

toolbar above comment box, now where is that..... found it!! Thank you !!!

Am I alone in feeling it was much nicer before, why did it have to change and where has everyone I used to recognise gone? This isn't the same group of people, is it?

I am having trouble understanding the need for smilies, anywhere, not just on this site. What do they add that words cannot? Can we not say what we want, within the rules, without resorting to peculiar little images? I am a bit of a technophobe so maybe I am not typical, but I really wish they weren't there at all. Pictures are great, words are wonderful, use them.Liz

I do so agree with you Liz, for me they are very irritating, and in some way childish, especially the ones that jump up and down. Its abit like the people that instead of dotting the i draw a big circle above it....Ok so now I sound grumpy!A