Edit Signature

The "Signature" section is pretty straightforward. It is worth noting, however, that in an effort to control spam, signatures will not be enabled until you have made at least 2 posts on the forum.

Please bear in mind that advertising is not allowed under the rules of this forum. A discrete link to your site or portfolio in your signature is acceptable, but blatant advertising is not, and will be removed.

You can post an image in your signature if you host it elsewhere. You can host images for free at www.imageshack.us, www.photobucket.com, or www.tinypic.com.

Once you have uploaded the image, you can link it into your post using image tags, like this:



Please bear in mind that this is a public forum frequented by people of all ages, so please refrain from posting quotes or images that may be deemed offensive.

Be sure to click "save changes" before you navigate away from the page. (I will be saying this a lot.)

Edit Email & Password

You will need to enter your current password before you can make any changes here. Then, enter and confirm your new email or password, and be sure to click "save changes" before you navigate away from the page.

Edit Profile

You have the option here to use a "custom user title" - this is the text that is displayed under your name in your posts. The default title is something like "Junior Member", and you don't want to use THAT, do you? No, I didn't think so.

In this section you can enter your birthdate (and specify whether you want it displayed or hidden from the others), the url to your website, your instant messaging aliases, and some other personal information.

While it can be fun to share these things, do bear in mind that this information is displayed in your profile, where anyone can see it. I wouldn't recommend using anything too personal - like your full name - if you're hiding from the authorities or the coworkers at your day job.

Again, be sure to click "save changes" before you navigate away from the page.

Edit Options

You can choose to activate "invisible mode", which means that you will not appear online to other forum members or guests.


In the next box down, "Messaging & Notification", you can specify whether you will allow administrators and/or other members to contact you by email.


Private messaging

Private messages may not to be used to get around the other rules of the forum, such as the anti-advertising policy, discussions about pricing, or the ban on free work requests. If you receive spam by private message, please report it to one of the moderators so it can be dealt with accordingly.

In an effort to control private message spam, private messages are restricted to users with a minimum of 2 posts.

In this section, you can also enable private messaging. You may enable the following notification options for private messaging:

- The forum can send a message to your email address to inform you when someone sends you a private message

- If you are browsing the forums when you receive a new private message, the system can pop-up a notification box informing you of the new message.


You can access your private message box from your user control panel, or from the "Quick Links" dropdown menu:




You can also click on another member's name to view their profile, their home page, or send them a private message:





Just under that is a section called "Default Thread Subscription Mode". This forum can be very active, and sometimes it's easy to lose track of a thread that you were following. If you subscribe to a thread it will be kept on your own custom list of links so that you can find it easily without searching.

You have the option to receive email notification of new replies to that thread instantly, daily, or weekly, or to subscribe to a thread without any email notification.

You can access your list of subscribed threads by choosing "Quick Links" from the main forum page, then choosing "Subscribed Threads" from the dropdown menu.




Next, scroll down a little more to the section called "Thread Display Options". Here, you can enable or disable signatures, avatars, and images from displaying in threads. This can be helpful to those who have slow internet connections or simply prefer not to view these.

A little farther down the page you will see a section called "Number of Posts to Show Per Page". You can set the forum to display 5, 10, 20, 30 or 40 posts per page.

Immediately below that is a section called "Default Thread Age Cut Off". Threads older than the time period that you specify will not be displayed. If you want access to the older threads posted on the forum you will want to choose "show all threads".

In your "Date and Time" options you can specify your time zone. Since different parts of the world traditionally use a different day as the start of the week, you can also select the appropriate day for your region so that the forum calendar appears correctly for you.

As you may have already guessed, you will need to click "save changes" before you navigate away from the page.

Edit Avatar

Your forum avatar is the picture that appears under your name and title beside your posts, and is the "face" that the other forum members see.

The maximum size for avatars is 80 by 80 pixels or 19.5 KB (whichever is smaller).

You can upload an avatar directly from your computer, or link to one that is hosted elsewhere. You will need to click "save changes" before you navigate away from the page.

Edit Profile Picture

Your profile picture is displayed when someone is viewing your public profile, like this:




As with your avatar, you can upload the picture from your computer, or link to it if it is hosted elsewhere. Be sure to click "save changes" before you navigate away from the page.

One more tip on keeping up with the forum:

The "new posts" link can be very helpful in finding what threads have been updated since your last visit. You can find it here:








After reading the threads that interest you, you can leave the others unread indefinitely - they will show up in the list with the heading "The threads below have not been updated since your last visit but still contain unread posts."

If you prefer to remove these threads from your list, you can go to "Quick links" and choose "Mark Forums Read", like this:

Posting Images

You can post an image one of two ways: by attaching the image to a post, or by linking to the image.

- To attach a file to a new post, simply click the [Go Advanced] button, then at the bottom of the post composition page, click [Manage Attachments] and locate the file that you want to attach from your local hard drive. Only certain types of files may be attached: these are the valid file extensions for files to be attached to this forum: bmp, doc, gif, jpe, jpeg, jpg, pdf, png, psd, txt, zip.

After posting, the attachment will show up in the body of your message. To view the contents of the attachment (if it is not already displayed) simply click the filename link that appears next to the attachment icon.

Note: if you attach more than one image, the images will appear as links in your post instead of displaying the images in the post.

- You can also host an image for free on a site like www.imageshack.us and link to it here. This is helpful because it will display more than one image in your post. Here is a helpful tutorial on how to do this: http://www.graphicdesignforum.com/fo...ad.php?t=18616

Other helpful tips

Be sure to read over the Welcome and Forum Rules before venturing too far into the boards.

For information about using mcode (BBcode, or forum code, which is NOT the same as HTML) in your posts, see HERE.

I hope that you have found this introduction to GDF helpful. Enjoy the forum!