MEMBERS SPECIAL FEATURES – HELP AND INFORMATION

and to the Members Special Features and Information Page.
I've started this page in order help all those that may need some assistance in setting up their own Page, Smilies, Avatars, or any other new features that Gath will provide us.
Please feel free to ask any question you have, and I hope that one of our members will be able to help you.

Instructions

1 Find your video on Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/

2. On the right hand side of the screen you will see a URL addy and a EMBED addy.

3. Copy the embed addy, you can just right click over the addy (it should then be highlighted)

4. Now go to your SM page and click on Update details.

5. You should see a place to paste the link in.

6 Once pasted, click on check your link, and it should be accepted.

7. Once accepted just click on Update details again.

8.woooo hoooo your done!

9.Post on site so we can all visit you!

WELCOME TO THE YOUTUBE CLUB!
Please note that some of the Youtube clips don’t show an Embed addy, unfortunately you

INSTRUCTIONS

1.Find an image and save it to Picture File
2.Right click on the image
3.send it to Open With->
4.Paint
5.save Image as (place a name in there) AND THEN
6.Change the SAVE TYPE AS: to JPEG FORMAT.

Remember Gath has set guide lines on the size of the image, try sending it to Gath First and if it is not accepted, just go back to the Paint section and you are able to change the size of the image by clicking on the image and Ctrl+W keys

Avatar Instuctions

1. Find your image
2. copy and save your image to Picture file or what every file you choose
3. This is the site I use to reduce my pictures: http://www.shrinkpictures.com/create-avatar/
4. click on Bowse on the above site
5. search for your picture and click on it
6. now change the avatar size to 50
7. now click on re-size

you should now have your avatar.
Note: If your avatar has appeared as a black box, then the image you have tried to use is either a) has some sort of copy right protection on it, or b) to big to use. You will need to find another image.

Thanks, Angie! This is a great idea. Now, if I can just get these instructions to work . . .

A N G I E
Many thanks for this Idea which help us to get an answer for our questions.
I would like to know .I am leaving Cairo for a long visit to my Son's family in CA / USA for 3 month as of June 26th .Can i use all my facilitis (photos,Avator,submit pictures and You tube etc...) and keep every thing running as Iam in Cairo.
Thanks for your help.

as long as you remember to sign out of site, before you leave Cairo, once you get to the USA, all you need to do is sign back onto the site again, put in your password etc., and you should have no problems using all your facilities.

Hi Wagdy,

You can definitely use all your avatars/youtube etc once you get to Cairo.

All you need to do is remember your Username,From and Password. You can try it before you leave Cairo by going to another computer and logging in there. Also, you do not need to log out before you log in using another computer.


Gath

Hey are you saying that we are able to be logged in and stay logged in, in more than one computer? Meaning If I'm logged in at home, I can then go to work (hehe) and log in there also?

Angie - Yes.

Hi A N G I E . Hi G A T H .
Hi G A T H . Hi A N G I E .
Many thanks to both of You for the kind informations you posted to me.
Have a nice time.

Thanks for info Angie, I'll try using it later in the week when I have some spare time. I'm usually signed in at home and at work at the same time, haven't had any problems.

Great idea this, but my question to all you people with the great smilies is what sort of sites do you get them from? I don't want to copy other people's smilies necessarily, but all the sites I have found when googling are not as exciting as some of the smilies I've seen here. The only ones I've been inclined to copy are these:
These are a bit limited. Cheers everyone

Jen, I was speaking to Rola yesterday and she was using moving smilies! She said mamacita gave her one and her son gave her the others. Ask her, she may be able to help you that way.

Jen, the big . smilies are all animated Emoticons. Google - images - Emoticions and see what comes up, there are 1000's of them.
As for all the individual pictures such as this one, I googled images, good day nite, and found what I wanted to use. Then I added the wording in paint.
Hope this help you, and I will get around to actually posting some of the site addy's I use.

I do the name avatars and word smilies, like

in a card shop program. Mine happens to be Print Shop 15, but most any card shop program would do. I create them on a 1/4 page greeting card, and export them as Jpg to a file folder I have for all graphics and photos.

THEN I can find them and take them to PAINT, by right clicking on them, and choosing EDIT. In PAINT I can resize them, and save them, and if I am making for others, copy and paste them into e-mail.

The USA and AUSSIE map avatars come from print shop, and the jukebox, and Oldies but goodies, almost anything I want I find in my 2 CDs of graphics. Only if I cannot find anything there do I go to the web by googling for what graphics I want. My print shop graphics always survive the shrink process, do not turn black if copy protected or too big. I use the skew/stretch function of the PAINT to resize them, even the avatars. I had to play with the math till I got it right sized, but checking ATRIBUTES will tell me what size they are, and the program does not mind if I shrink them several times till I get them right.

I think there are as many ways to make a smilie as there are us who make them.

YES, I have copied some of the yellow faced smilies from animated smilies from smilie sites. If you right click, copy and save as JPG, you stop the action. My watering can was one of those, and in PAINT, I added my name. .
the crying smilie was another that was animated.

That is just great, Angie, thanks. I had always been googling smilies & although there are lots of them, none of them were what I wanted. I will have much more success doing your suggestion

MizT thanks for the info -- you're giving away all your 'trade secrets'

Angie, Thanks for this site. It is a great idea. I will try it on a different day, now that I know where to find it.

A word of caution, do not copy an image without permission, most/many images are copyright.
If you like an image someone has, ask them if it is OK to copy it, this is not only common courtesy it is the law!

Hi Everyone,

I have made a program which will make it easier to create avatars & smilies. It automatically shrinks images to whatever size you want and you can convert gifs, tiffs etc to jpgs.

http://gathadams.com/2007/04/16/batch-image-process ing
or
http://tinyurl.com/2rbqtb


Gath

Slight typo Gath, should be

http://gathadams.com/2007/04/16/batch-image-processing

I'm having a real hard time with the natch image processing program. I downoad it, but when I try to use it, it will not initialize properly. Can anyone help?

Cyndi, it did not work for me either! And hubby the computer geek tried, nope, not for him either, same thing, it would not inatilize. maybe you should ask on the EASY board if anyone got it to work and how. My camera is not huge files, (it is old) so I do not have a problem uploading photos and have not tried again.

and MizT
I had the same problem the other day, hubby said something about not having winzip installed. Not sure if this is the problem, however I have sent a message to Gath to ask for his assistance on this.

Hi Everyone,

A few people have reported the issue that the program will not initialise properly. It is a pretty cryptic and generic error message, so it doesn't tell me much. I will have a look into it over the weekend & hopefully come up with an answer for you.


Gath

To make it easier to track down the problem, can everyone list these things:

1. What operating system are you using? (Eg Windows XP, Vista, OS X).

2. Did you unzip the file before you got the error (the file MUST be unzipped before you can run it).

3. At what point do you get the error? Do you enter the details of the batch, press the 'process' button & then the error appears? Or does the error appear as soon as you try to run the program?


Gath

If you do not have a flicker file set up, but do have a photo gallery, is there anyway to use a photo from the gallery for the main photo on your page?

Hi Eve,

Not at the moment, but I will be making changes like this in the next few weeks.


Gath

PS - Anyone going t answer my previous questions about your computers?

The Image Processor is Windows-Only. Is that the cause of the problem?

OOOPs sorry Gath, been to busy to answer your questions. Think I will leave that up to Anvil to replay moi knows nuffing. LOL

Gath, I tried the Image Processor. It gave me an error message after I hit the process button, then I tried it again and it worked fine.

GATH, we tried to download the image processor. Could not get it to download. Got the failure to inalitize it seconds after trying download.

Hubby said he will try again, and make sure to unzipp file, he thought it was self extracting, whatever that means.

Thanks, and sorry I had not checked instructions page in several days, till someone sent me a heads up about this message from you.

OH, we using windows XP pro, and did NOT unzip file, and got error within seconds of pushing the download button. I'll let you know what happens when he can try it again.

TO MAKE PICTURES SMALLER
I am including paint and photo shop instructions.
If you are using the paint program:
open your photo, click on image then stretch/skew, change(less than 100) the horizontal and vertical by the same amount. Click okay. To check the size, go to image again, then attributes, make sure pixels is checked for the units. The smallest you'd want it to be is about 300 pixels. I'm not sure about the largest but I'd say no larger than 1000 pixels. Save your image to where you can find it.
If you are using photo shop:
Open your image, click on image, then resize, then image size. Change the pixel dimension(make sure it is pixels and not percent) width or height to what you want. I think between 300 and 1000 should be good. The proportion should be locked so you only need to do one. Click okay and save it where you can find it.
If you have a different photo program, it should be a similar process.
Hope this helps. Happy resizing.

In Regard to resizing of photo's
I use a web site called Photobucket to store my images. Once uploaded you are able to go in and edit the size of the images
avatar - 100 x 75
Thumbnail 160 x 170
Web/Email 320x 240
I simply choose web/email and their done. No need to play around with any pixels etc.,

Hi Everyone,

I'll be adding some way for you to subscribe to certain threads, that way you are alerted when someone posts/replies. A lot of the modern forums have this feature and it saves you having to check every day to see if someone has replied.


Gath

Hi Everyone,

I've just made a new forum category for these type of threads & moved it over.


Gath

If I send a message to someone's private Inbox is there a way I can keep a copy of the message. Also I wrote a fairly long message and I could not send it as a box came up saying there was a limit of 3,000 characters. Is this right?

Hi Tree Sheila,
I suggest you first type your message in a word document, save this in your "my documents", then just copy and paste into the message box. This way you have a record and also if the text is to long you are then able to send the rest as another message. Hope this helps you.