Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

This is the Dakkadakka.com FAQ. It will be regularly updated to answer questions that are posted in this thread and across the rest of the forum. If you do not see your question represented in this thread after reading through it, please don't hesitate to post your question here. Question posts will be removed as I collect your question (to help keep this thread easy to read). An answer to that question will then eventually be posted here in this thread.


All of the question titles in this post are actually quick links to the appropriate Question & Answer. So when you see a question that matches what you're wondering, click on it and read away!



DAKKA PROFILE QUESTIONS

Q: I'm having trouble logging onto my account, why isn't my password working?

Q: How do I upload an Avatar, add a website address to my account or make any other kinds of changes to my Dakka profile?

Q: Other users have cool army-specific ranks under their name, how do I get one of those?

Q: The little flag that appears next to each of my posts doesn't display the country I'm actually from. How do I change that?

DAKKA SETTINGS QUESTIONS

Q: How do I change the timezone settings so Dakka will display my timezone? What timezone is Dakka on by default?

Q: How do I disable the post preview function that occurs when I move my mouse over topics in the forum?

DAKKA PICTURE QUESTIONS

Q: How do I insert pictures into my forum posts?

Q: How do I directly link to pictures I’ve attached to my Dakka posts into other threads or into threads on other website forums?

Q: If I attach pictures to my Dakka posts, how can I arrange the images throughout the post instead of having them clumped all at the bottom?

Q: How do I get my pictures displayed on the Dakka front page?

Q: How do I submit pictures to the Dakka gallery?

DAKKA CONTACT & SERVICES QUESTIONS

Q: How do I contact a moderator or administrator via personal message?

Q: Where do I leave feedback about the site or ask questions about technical issues?

Q: Where can I suggest additions to the Dakka glossary, army rank tracks and the funny sayings at the top of each page?

Q: How do I contact the site administrator via email?

Q: How can I get my advertisement on Dakka?

Q: What is a DCM and how do I become one?

Q: How do I submit an article to the site?

DAKKA POSTING QUESTIONS

Q: Where can I find the list of rules I have to abide by when posting in the forums?

Q: In the text editor screen, what does the "Code" Button and [ code ] [ /code ] tags do?

Q: How exactly does the 'Multi-Quote' feature work? It doesn't seem to do anything for me.

Q: I’m having trouble logging onto my account, why isn’t my password working?


A: When the site switched to new forum software in November 2007, all user passwords were reset as a security precaution. When you attempt to log-in for the first time on the new forum software it will ask you to click on a text link to “change your password”.

When you click on this link you will have the option to either enter your username or your email address (that is on record in your Dakka account) and then an email will be sent to the email address on record in your Dakka account.

Follow the instructions provided in the email in order to access your account and create a new password. Anytime you forget your user password you can utilize this feature by going to the login page and clicking on the ”I lost my password” link.

Just make sure you check and appropriately adjust the spam/junk mail filter settings on your email account as they may automatically filter or block our emails from reaching you (our automated emails are sent from machinegod@dakkadakka.com if you need to unblock the sender address).

If the email address on record in your Dakka account is no longer valid, if you are having issues with the activation email or you just have questions in general, please send us an email at:

webmaster@dakkadakka.com

In order for us to manually change your password you will have to provide us with the (now defunct) email address that is on file in your Dakka profile. If you can't remember what your old email address was anymore, you will need to start a brand new profile!

Q: How do I upload an Avatar, add a website address to my account or make any other kinds of changes to my Dakka profile?


A: To make any kinds of changes to your Dakka profile, including adding an Avatar, changing any of your profile settings, etc, scroll up to the top of the page and click on the “'Edit Profile'” link.

This will take you to your profile page where you can change your settings and add unique items to your profile.

To add an Avatar to your profile scroll down to the bottom of your profile page and click on the “Browse” button. Then select an image off of your local computer to upload to your profile. Your Avatar picture is hosted by us (for free) and will automatically be resized to a proper height and width. Click “Submit” at the bottom of the page and your Avatar will now appear next to all of your posts!

Q: Other users have cool army-specific ranks under their name, how do I get one of those?


A: Dakka gives you the ability to have your post rankings based on your favorite army/race from several popular miniature games. To choose your army rank, scroll to the top of the page and click on the ““'Edit Profile'” link. This takes you to your profile page. Scroll down to the bottom of your Profile page and access the “'Choose a ranking track'” drop-down menu. Choose whatever army or race you please and click the “Submit” button at the bottom of the page. Your new army-based post rank will immediately appear under your user name in your posts.

Feel free to change your army rank track as often as you’d like.

If that still isn’t enough for you, DCMs have the option to create their own custom rank. Consider becoming a DCM today and help to keep Dakka running and improving.

Q: How do I change the timezone settings so Dakka will display my timezone? What timezone is Dakka on by default?

A: Dakka’'s clock runs on the Greenwich Mean Time (GMT), which is +5 hours ahead of EST and +8 hours ahead of PST. So when it is midnight in EST, it is 8am in GMT.

To change your clock (or any other kind of change to your Dakka profile), scroll up to the top of the page and click on the “'Edit Profile'” link. This will take you to your profile page where you can change your settings and add unique items to your profile.

On your profile page scroll down and click on the drop down menu for "Select your timezone". Once you've selected the appropriate timezone, don't forget to click the 'submit' button at the bottom of the page.

Q: How do I disable the post preview function that occurs when I move my mouse over topics in the forum?

A: To disable post previews (or any other kinds of changes to your Dakka profile), scroll up to the top of the page and click on the “'Edit Profile'” link. This will take you to your profile page where you can change your settings and add unique items to your profile.

On your profile page scroll down to the 'Disable post preview popups' item and select 'Yes'. Then click the 'submit' button at the bottom of the page.

Q: How do I insert pictures into my forum posts?


A: There are two ways to insert pictures into your forum posts. But first you need to understand that you can’t just link to pictures off of your computer onto the internet. You first must upload your pictures to a hosting service. Once your pictures are hosted you can then link to those photos and have them displayed elsewhere on the internet.


#1) The best way to get pictures into your posts on Dakka is to have us host your pictures for you at absolutely no cost to yourself! To accomplish this all you have to do is attach your pictures into any of the posts you make on Dakka. At the bottom of the text editor screen (what you see when you’re typing up a post) is a link for “attachments”. If you click on this link you will see a button to “browse” for pictures on your local computer. Select the picture you want to upload from your computer and then finish submitting the post and ‘viola’ your picture will now be displayed at the bottom of your post for all the world to see!

You can attach up to 30 pictures into each post and Dakka will automatically resize your pictures to properly fit into our forum. When attaching the picture to your post you will notice a “Description” field. I highly recommend putting as much detail about your picture into this description as you can. Not only will the description appear below the picture in the post, but once our full-fledged gallery system is up and running every picture that has been attached will have been automatically uploaded to the gallery. The more information you provide about each picture the easier it will be for people to search and find your picture in our gallery.

For example, if you have a series of pictures of your Defiler, for the picture that shows the front of the model you should (at the very least) put: “Defiler front”. Other useful details would include the army/race it comes from (“Chaos”) and the game it is for (“40K”).

All pictures displayed in Dakka posts must be miniature games related and may not contain graphic images. Please remember this is a family-friendly forum. If you are ever in doubt, please contact one of the forum mods or administrators for clarification on whether your picture is acceptable or not.

For tips on pasting links to your Dakka attached pictures into other posts, click here.


#2) The second way to get your pictures into your posts on Dakka is to have someone else host your pictures and then directly link to those hosted pictures. There are numerous picture hosting services on the internet. Some cost money while others offer free services (you’ll need to check them out yourself to see which one is right for you). Some of the more popular sites are: ‘photobucket’ and ‘flickr’ (but there are many, many more).

Be aware that some of these sites (especially the ones that offer free services) don’t allow you to directly link to your pictures, meaning you can post a link to your picture but you won’t be able to actually directly insert a picture into your post.

If your hosting service does offer direct linking, copy the web address of the picture (the easiest way to do that is to open the picture in its own window and then copy the web address from the window’s address bar) and paste it directly into the text entry field of your post. Highlight the address you just pasted and click the ‘IMG’ button (found above the text entry field). The address will now be surrounded by [ img ] and [ /img ] tags on either side (but without the spaces between the letters and the brackets). These are the tags needed to paste a picture into your post (you could manually type out these tags if you felt like it). Once you submit your post you should now see your picture appear, huzzah!

Q: How do I directly link to pictures I’ve attached to my Dakka posts into other threads or into threads on other website forums?


A: Linking to one of your pictures attached in another Dakka thread can be a bit tricky the first time through, but once you get the hang of it you’ll find it is really very easy.

First, you need to copy the web address the attached picture is located at. The method for accomplishing this task varies depending on what kind of browser you are using to surf the internet, but I’ll cover the most common two browsers: Internet Explorer and Firefox.


Internet Explorer: Right-click on the attached picture you want to link to and select ‘Properties’. A Properties window should pop-up and in that window you should see a field called ‘Address’. Highlight and copy that address.


FireFox: Right-click on the attached picture you want to link and select ‘copy image location’.


The address you’ve now copied is the address for the Dakka re-sized version of the picture. What you do not want is to copy the address for the original picture (done by choosing ‘copy link location’ in Firefox, for example), which usually is very, very large and will be a giant eye-sore in any thread you post it in.



Once you have the proper address copied, paste that address into the text entry field for a post you are making. Highlight the address you just pasted and click the ‘IMG’ button (found above the text entry field). The address will now be surrounded by [ img ] and [ /img ] tags on either side (but without the spaces between the letters and the brackets). These are the tags needed to paste a picture into your post (you could manually type out these tags if you felt like it). Once you submit your post you should now see your picture appear, huzzah!


Please keep in mind that other website forums may require different steps for embedding linked images into their posts, but the ‘address’ for your attached Dakka picture is always going to be the one you described above.


We at Dakka do not mind if you directly link images hosted on Dakka’s server into threads on other forums, in fact we encourage it!

Q: If I attach pictures to my Dakka posts, how can I arrange the images throughout the post instead of having them clumped all at the bottom?


A: When you attach photos to a post, they all appear at the bottom of the post (below any text you enter). You can enter a description for your picture and it will appear below each attached picture, but if you want even more freedom of where your pictures appear in your thread there is a solution.


We offer the ‘Photo-Dump’ forum. Here, you can create a thread with your user name where you are free to attach all the pictures into one big thread. This then becomes your “home-base” for you to link your attached photos into other threads in our forums. For details on how to link your attached photos into other threads, read here.


Please note that photos attached to posts in the ‘Photo-Dump’ are not currently displayed on Dakka’s front page. While this may change in the future, for now if you want your attached pictures to show up on Dakka’s front page make sure you attach them to posts in other forums (like the modeling forum).

Q: How do I get my pictures displayed on the Dakka front page?


A: Currently, the most recent pictures attached to Dakka posts are automatically displayed on Dakka’s front page. To get your pictures displayed simply attach a picture to one of your posts and your pictures will soon appear on Dakka’s front page. They’ll stay there until newer photos are uploaded to Dakka (which will essentially bump yours off).


One really cool feature about the pictures displayed on Dakka's front page is that anyone who clicks on them is instantly linked to the thread they are attached in. By attaching good looking photos into your threads you can draw casual visitors into reading all about your latest modeling or painting triumph!


Be aware that sometimes it take a little while for your attached pictures to show up on the front page. If you don't see them immediately, don't panic! They will get up there eventually.

Q: How do I submit pictures to the Dakka gallery?


A: Right now you can’t. The Dakka gallery is currently under construction and until it is finished (coming soon!) we are not accepting any submissions. However, any pictures attached to a Dakka post are automatically uploaded to our Server. When our Gallery is finished, all pictures uploaded this way will automatically be sorted and displayed in our Gallery.

As an added bonus, the most current pictures attached to any post on Dakka are also displayed on Dakka’s front page for all the world to see. Show off your models to the world by attaching your pictures to your Dakka posts!

Q: How do I contact a moderator or administrator via personal message?


A: Sign into your Dakka account and then click here.


You can also find this same link on the bottom of any forum page.

Q: Where do I leave feedback about the site or ask questions about technical issues?

Q: Where can I suggest additions to the Dakka glossary, army rank tracks and the funny sayings at the top of each page?



A: All Feedback, technical issues, suggestions for the Dakka glossary, army rank tracks and funny page headers can be done in the Nuts & Bolts forum.

Q: How do I contact the site administrator via email?


A: Send your emails to: webmaster@dakkadakka.com

Q: How do I submit an article to the site?


A: Visit our Articles section click on "Add a new article".

For more information on submitting articles see THIS tutorial.

Q: In the text editor screen, what does the "Code" Button and [ code ] [ /code ] tags do?


A: The "Code" button and the [ code ] [ /code ] tags (without the space between the letters and the brackets) create an area where any further UBB or html tags placed between them will not function.

This can be useful to describe to other posters exactly what html or UBB codes they should use to achive different posting results.

So, if someone asks how they can put an html link embedded into their posts (as illustrated by the link in the word "embedded"), you can put the [ code ] [ /code ] tags (without the spaces between the letters and the bracket) around your setence to show them how you did it.


As an example, I'll put the "Code" tags around my previous sentence and you can see what it does when I submit my post:


So, if someone asks how they can put an html link <a href="http://www.dakkadakka.com/core/">embedded</a> into their posts (as illustrated by the link in the word "embedded"), you can put the [ code ] [ /code ] tags (without the spaces between the letters and the bracket) around your setence to show them how you did it.


As you can see, by putting the "Code" tags around my sentence the 'guts' of the embedded html link are now visible.

Q: How exactly does the 'Multi-Quote' feature work? It doesn't seem to do anything for me.


A: Click on the 'multi-quote' button above a post you want to quote in your reply. You will then see the 'multi-quote' button turn slightly darker for that post to show that post has been added to your multi-quote queue.

Repeat this process for any and all posts in the thread you wish to quote in your reply.

After you've clicked on the 'multi-quote' button for all the posts you want to have quoted in your reply, then click on the 'post reply' button (at the top and bottom of each thread page) and when your reply text field pops up you'll see all those posts quoted in your reply text field.

Q: The little flag that appears next to each of my posts doesn't display the country I'm actually from. How do I change that?


A: The flag is set on a post-by-post basis, depending on where your ISP (internet service provider) is based or routed. Any posts that go through a US company or ISP, including VPNs (virtual private networks) will display a US flag by default.

The flag detection is about 99.5% accurate, which is good enough for the site as a whole, especially considering it would currently take tens of thousands of dollars to upgrade to better location detection software.

Unfortunately for you, it means you are stuck with whatever flag your ISP is recognized as. If you really want to make sure other users know what country you are posting from make sure you set your 'location' status in your profile. This also appears next to every one of your posts and will let other users know (despite the incorrect flag) where you are actually posting from.