MyGiftedLife.org

I know this site is a lot different from our last one on the front end. It's a lot like it in the way that it works, though. So I'm writing this article to take a brief guide through some of the more common features you'll be using.

First, there are articles, like this one. The first time you have anything ready, let me know and I will bump your status up to Author. Once you have that status, you can submit articles (there will be a link in the user menu on the left). Articles will fit under categories, and as time goes on and we get more, they will fill out sections of the site. This works the same way as it did on the old site.

Second, there is your main profile for the site. This is less fancy than your forum profile, just a few settings and a space to change your email as necessary. There are a few different editors that can be chosen when submitting things to the main site. (The forum uses its own special one which works specifically with bbCode. It includes extra options, even to the point of allowing image uploads and YouTube links for those fond of them (you know who you are)). You have your choice of four editors to be used in the front of the site: the default is JCE (which is WYSIWYG and full-featured), TinyMCE (which is even more full-featured but sometimes finicky), there's a weird more manual one called XStandard Lite (which merely reads the HTML tags you put in a blank window and previews them), and you can even go without an editor if you want and just type plain text.

Third would be the forum. There are links to it in both the left and top menus. It has subscriptions, favorites, all sorts of things that you can try out, but it still posts the same as the old one. It has new thread buttons and reply buttons. The icons should be simpler and more visible, so that buttons can be found. The forum links in with the main site so that articles will automatically create threads for discussion. Check out your profile from the link in the forum header and pick or upload an avatar. Create your signature the same way as you're used to.

Fourth is the PM system, and this is a real advancement from the old site in some ways. This PM system announces PMs on the screen when you're online, but can be set to send an email only if you're offline. It also stores PMs in an encrypted way to protect them and allows you to download them. A box (although I may change the type to a little inbox) is always in the top left.

The site also has newsfeeds under Headlines (if you have one you'd like to see, please send me the link) and Web Links which can be submitted. More can be added as we grow, but I don't want to overload the site with features until we have uses for them.

Please let me say again that while I write the help documentation, it's not a nuisance, it's a benefit to me if you ask me any questions you have.