... Get Set!

Posting and Comment Protocol
These are the ‘rules’ of using this site. Some may appear condescending but they are standard web protocols.

You are allocated a registration by the Distance Programme Manager, Clive Power. This registration allows you to post articles and discussion topics to the site and also to make comments which appear with other users’ posts. The registration must be used appropriately. Any users abusing the protocol will have their registration withdrawn. Users can ‘flag’ what they view as inappropriate posts or comments using the 'flag blog' button at the top of each page which will alert The Clives.

Rules and Advice

1. Discussion is always useful.
   
2. Be considerate; you are responding to human beings who also have their good and bad days.
   
3. People will disagree with you, people will post stupid comments, people will read and never post a comment.
   
4. Be prepared for the consequences and accept responsibility for each thing you publish.
   
5. Always be as accurate as possible. Use a spell-checker on your content. Every person has a different tolerance for spelling problems and they will not match with yours.
   
6. Write content that is useful not just to you but that gives benefits to the readers. Remember your personality and character are reflected in your words.
   
7. Do not reproduce more of an article than is necessary to make your point.
   
8. Attempt to provide links to the material you quote and to material of interest. Be clear and specific in descriptions of links. Tell your visitors where you are sending them, eg, ‘Read the Ziegler article here,’ is OK, but ‘Read this, it’s great,’ is not because it doesn't tell you where you're going. See the 'how to ...' later.
   
9. If at all possible never import images from another site; they don’t belong to you. It is OK to link to those images at will – a subtle but important difference. See the 'how to ...' later.
   
10. Ethics: Adopt a ‘living room doctrine’. Any comments you would find threatening or offensive if said to you in your living room are inappropriate on the site. It’s fine to disagree, because that’s OK in your living room, but unbridled hostility, name calling etc. is not allowed. Anonymous comments or posting are not allowed. All posts and comments must be signed by the registered author. Spam and off-topic comments are not allowed.

How to...
Use the calendar
The calendar will appear at the top of every page. You can go through to any date you choose and there's infomation there right through to London 2012! Please let The Clive's have any additional calendar information you think is relevent (eg, your club's Annual Animal Lane Championship dates). We will attempt to keep it as comprehensively up-to-date as possible but it's your responsibility to check date accuracy etc.

Comment
Once you are signed in and viewing you can click the 'Post a comment' links at the bottom of each article which will take you to this screen.



Add your comment and hit 'publish your comment'; simple as that.

Post an article or start a discussion
Same as commenting but this screen appears:



Make sure you give your article an appropriate and descriptive title, 'Great Set' is not as descriptive as '12k lungbuster!'.

Links
Links are easily added – first copy the web address of the article you want to reference, then type the text you want to use, highlight it, click on the add link button and paste the copied address into the pop-up space. Be careful with the http:// because it has a habit of appearing twice and that screws up the link.


Images
Uploading your images is easy, Simply click on the add image button and then follow the instructions in the 'Add an image from your computer' section on the left-hand side of the pop-up window. If you want to link to an image on another site follow the instructions on the right-hand side.


When you've completed the instruction the image code will appear at the top of your post text! It's a stupid bug in the blogger software which will scare you but its quite innocuous providing you treat it nicely. You will have to cut and paste it to wherever in the text you want the image to appear. Make sure you cut and paste all the code otherwise it will not work.

Bold
Emphasis can be added in bold by simply highlighting the targeted text and hitting Ctrl+B

Italic
Emphasis can be added in italic by simply highlighting the targeted text and hitting Ctrl+I.

If you want bold and italic do it in two operations but make sure you only highlight the text (not the code because you'll probably get it wrong) on the second operation.