Frequently Asked Questions
- Access to all of our posts and comments
- Your own profile including an avatar, buddy lists, and other social networking features
- The ability to send private messages to other users on this site
- The ability to chat and interact with other citizens and voters in and around Lower Merion.
(Don't live in Lower Merion? That's okay. We won't hold it aginst you.)
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Since I've gotten various questions about this site over the recent months, I figured I would put together a little FAQ...
After logging in successfully, click the link that reads, Write Blog Entry You don't need to do anything directly. Rather, I read through all of the new posts every couple of days, and promote items which I think seem interesting or timely. It is acceptable to nominate posts made by others to be on the front page. Well, only admins can put things on the front page, and I am currently the only person with administrative access here. Something I'm investigating is a way to automate front-paging. For example, putting anything with a certain number of votes on the front page would be a pretty cool idea. But, since I run this site in my spare time and I only have so many hours in the day, it might be awhile. Any help is welcomed, though! Here's how not to do it: send me an angry email demanding that I remove a post someone else wrote. For extra points, be sure to threaten legal action. That usually results in the threats being posted in public and ridiculed. A better way of approaching the problem is to try reaching out to the poster directly. (registered users here can send private messages to each other) Also keep in mind that posting on this site works both ways--if you want to leave a comment on a post that you disagree with, stating why you feel the post is wrong/misguided/whatever, go for it! Being able to discuss and argue different viewpoints is how a free society is supposed to work. 3. One came from an individual who tried trolling a user here, and went bonkers after I subsequently banned his account. One came from an elected official who was upset that a blogger linked to a newspaper article critical of them. One came from a business that was unhappy because a blogger embedded a video from Blip.TV that they owned the copyright to. Rather than contact Blip.TV, they demanded I "remove the video from this site", even though the video wasn't hosted here. Really, I can't make this stuff up. One word: spammers. Sorry about that. You can always send me a private message, if you like. Well, I'm a pretty good engineer, but not such a hot graphic designer. The good news is that the theming system in Drupal is a completely separate entity, and new themes can be "dropped in" to an existing site installation. Want to build/contribute a theme? Feel free! Take a look at the editor toolbar:
To embed an image, click the image button circled above, then paste the URL of the image to embed. To edit that picture after it's included, click the picture itself, then click the picture icon to bring the image embedding dialogue back up. The recommended maximum image width is 500 pixels. Multiple images may be included in a post. To embed a video or document, click the HTML button. This will bring up the raw HTML of your post. (it looks rather ugly, yes) Paste the embed code into that box, click the "Update" button, and that item will now be embedded. A word of caution: our richtext editor isn't the most robust, and it may not work in all situations. Sorry about that. Please bug me if you need further assistance. New England Clam Chowder. |
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If it's not New England, why bother. Just say no to Manhattan clam chowder.
please can you post an FAQ of how to embed a photo or document!!
please can you post an FAQ of how to embed a photo or document!!
Done! Includes a screencap as well.
And I added a bonus section: # of legal threats received so far!
Well, I'm a pretty good engineer, but not such a hot graphic designer. The good news is that the theming system in Drupal is a completely separate entity, and new themes can be "dropped in" to an existing site installation. Want to build/contribute a theme? Feel free!
can we have more of the hippo with the baseball bat? he reminds me of a cuddlier version of john nagle with his gavel.
Well, there's the official website of the show at http://www.dr.dk/dolph/. (Warning for language that makes me blush!)
How do you search posts? 
I had to disable the search interface here because indexing all of the content was just killing the CPU, unfortunately.
That said, there's a way to search this site with Google. Go to Google, type site:saveardmorecoalition.org and your search crtiera into the search bar. Then Google will only search this site.
Example: site:saveardmorecoalition.org beer will search this site for all posts containing the word "beer".
Mmm... beer... 
I'll bet you love all posts that start with "Can't you just..." but...
Can't you just pipe all search requests made on Save Ardmore through Google?
Can't you just pipe all search requests made on Save Ardmore through Google?
It's a little trickier than that, since Google has an API for such things. I'd probably have to write a custom module that--holy CRAP, there already is one that does this!
I'll try out the module tomorrow or Saturday and see how it works.
Okay, I have this module installed. It is provisionally enabled at:
http://www.saveardmorecoalition.org/search
I'm going to keep a very close eye on system performance over the next few days, since this required re-enabling the dreaded Search Module. If things work out, I'll make a public announcement.
Doug- it might be obvious to some but as to photos and documents don't you first have to upload them to flickr or scribd?
Just updated the FAQ to answer the question of why I am the only person who decides what goes on the front page. (in response to an angry email from someone who doesn't even participate here...)
dmuth, when I try to post a new topic, I get a pink alert "tag field required". I put a tag in and re-submit. The page just keeps spinning, never loads or posts- just blinking dots. What am I doing wrong?
That's a known (and annoying) bug. Let me guess, you're hitting "enter" to submit, right? (I've got bitten by this one a few times, too)
The current fix/workaround is to click the "Save" button with your mouse.
If this continues being an issue, I'll probably remove the "blinking dots" module, since others may be affected.
I think I've had the same issue with the tag field. I put in a tag, or several, and get the message saying tag required, and the post refuses to post. After several more tries, it usually cooperates.
No, I'm hitting save, just like I did here. I'm not a enter key guy. I'm a mouser.
I'll keep trying.
Okay, that's definitely NOT what I'm seeing.
Can you tell me what browser you're using? If you're on a PC, try clicking Help -> About in the menu to get that info.
Firefox 4.0.1 in my case.
Firefox 3.6.17 here. (PC)
Okay, that's two different browsers, so I think we can rule out browser bugs.
I just disabled the module.
Clam Chowder! Yum.