Newcomers - All You Need to Know About Using BuSo

The Engineer

Aegis Jaeger
Administrator
BuSo Pro
Digital Strategist
Joined
Jun 15, 2014
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Every once in a while we get an email from a newcomer about some aspect of using BuSo. A lot of us take it for granted that all internet marketers have used forums, because we're all old timers. But a lot of the new crowd has only used social media and aren't completely familiar with the conventions of a forum.

So this thread is a living and breathing document to help you new members find your way. It's in Q&A format, and if you have a question the answer is likely here, so it's worth skimming it all.

1) Why Can I Only Post in the Orientation Section?
We've gone to great lengths to make BuSo the highest quality forum online in any industry. One of our many layers of defense from idiots and spammers is to start users off in one section. If you're new, there's a big colorful banner on the homepage, but some people still don't read that:

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It says that you can only post in this section until you make 3 quality posts and get 3 likes on these posts. This can be done in about 5 minutes and is a tiny barrier, but in combination with other methods we have stopped 99.9% of spam and morons from flooding the forum. A good way to get this done is to post an introduction in the Introductions Thread and tell us about your current and past projects, ambitions, or whatever. Make it good!

2) Why Are My Posts Being Deleted?
Because you're breaking one of our basic Rules (read those, please):
  • Asking for likes
  • Posting some variation of "thanks" or any message that doesn't contain substance
  • You can't speak coherent English
  • You're not being civil, you're using personal attacks, or using overly emotionally charged language meant to incite and disrupt conversation.
Once you make 3 posts and get 3 likes, you will have the ability to use the "like" button to say thanks. Otherwise, take a look at the higher post count member's posting styles and model yourself after them. We all try to add some value with every post (unless in the Water Cooler section where it's casual and off-topic). That doesn't mean you have to type a novel. You can add value by asking a question. But a short, drive-by sentence meant only to increase your post count for whatever stupid reason will lead to your post being deleted.

3) Why Can't I Send a Private Message?
You need to make 3 high quality posts and receive 3 likes. If we let anyone create an account and send messages immediately, there'd be so much spam flying out it'd make your head spin. If you're a lurker or new member and want to message a Marketplace vendor, they (and you) have a set of marketplace guidelines that tells them to include an email address or Skype handle, for instance, so you can still reach them.

4) Why Did My Post Go Into Moderation?
We only moderate posts in the Digital Strategy Crash Course and for newcomers with less than 10 posts, and that only happens when they've included a link in their post. It doesn't mean you did anything wrong and we tend to approve the comments within an hour if it's waking hours. It's just another way to stop spammers.

5) Why Can't I Post an Image?
You can. Everyone can. And it's the simplest thing to do, yet supposed webmasters can't figure it out. I blame this on the REST API and social media and everybody embedding everything these days. You young whippersnappers...

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You don't want to insert an image. You don't want to upload an image. You don't want to embed an image. All you want to do is click the stand-alone image button on the post editor and paste a direct URL to the image file.

Please note, I said "image file", not HTML page that the image exists on, which seems to be a common mistake. If you upload an image to Imgur, for example, don't paste in the URL to the Imgur page. You need to right click the image and copy the actual image address that ends in .gif / .jpg / .png / etc..

Always include the image in your post in this manner. Don't create a text link to an image or a page that an image exists on. Just include the image by copy and pasting the URL to the direct image in that little box. Another option is to simply wrap it in "image tags" like this: [img]https://www.example.com/image.jpg[/img].

You should resize any giant images or they won't show. There is a size limit that you shouldn't ever reach if you aren't doing anything silly. Beyond image posting, you can also embed YouTube, Vimeo, Twitter, and Instagram URLs through the "Insert > Media" button.

6) Tips for Clean Posting
There are two pieces of BBCode (bulletin board code) that you should know about. Those are:

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"icode" mean "inline code" and does this. You should use this if you want to mention an example URL like https://www.site.com/example-url or an example email address like contact@example.net. URLs and email addresses do create automatic hyperlinks, and we ask you to not litter the forum up with broken links that lead nowhere. You can also wrap short pieces of code in "icode" BBCode to make it more readable, like <?php the_content(); ?>.

"code" is used to create a big code block where you need to maintain indents and line breaks and things of that nature. It's used to share actual code on the forum like:

B9mBCsq.png

There's also another fun one (click the fuzzy part): You can use "ispoiler" to create inline spoilers like this and "spoiler" to create a block level one with a button to reveal it..

7) Why Can't I "Like" a Post in the Water Cooler?
I turned that feature off in the Water Cooler for the time being. Likes are meant to be a measure of a members contributions to the forum on the business side of discussion, not for raking in the Likes for being funny or posting memes.

8) How Can I Change My Username?

There is no way for users to change their usernames themselves. We have to do it and we get asked to change usernames every day, usually for silly reasons with no real consequences in reality. We have better things to do with our time then respond to all these messages.

If your account is new enough and you simply want a different username, then just start a new account. If you need to change your username for privacy reasons or anything else that actually matters, please visit the Upgrades tab at the top of the forum and select the "Username Change" option and then PM me your new desired username.

9) Don't Try to Attract Attention Through Formatting

Attract attention with the quality of your words, not how you format them. Word about us has spread to some of the more ridiculous areas of the SEO community and, while we invite high quality members to join us, this is a forum for adults and professionals. Please follow our culture for posting.

That means that we don't need you to put every 5 word sentence on a new line with a blank line between them. We don't want you to make every one of your posts have text that's twice as big as everyone else's with purple colored letters. Just be normal and do it like everyone else is doing.

We value the quality and content of your contributions. Thank you for posting with us. What we don't want is to read 32px font-sized center-aligned bright pink text where every 3 words is in a new paragraph.
 
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Maybe send this out as a welcome email to all new members? No guarantee that everyone will read it, but I was messing up the images by pasting the Imgur URL for 6 months straight I think :D and I didn't know about the icode tag until now.
 
I am just wondering if buying any of the upgrades would lead to bypassing the orientation phase? I also think it would have been nice to send this info via email after signing up as I signed up while I was on a thread, and I was clueless as to why I couldn't contribute to that post. It would have been better if it has mentioned, "Click here to learn more," linking to this post where it says, "you have insufficient privileges to reply here." It didn't show me the message about the orientation phase until I navigate to the forum's homepage — just my 2 cents.
 
Thanks for the clarification Aegis. This 3 post/likes requirement is a good filter. Bit of a pain though as I'm keen to take part in the ToTheMoon $3m AMA. Sam's suggestion of a small payment to bypass this requirement is a good option to offer potential users who'd like to post immediately or aren't able to post well but would like to be genuine participants in the community. It'd be good to get a quicker way to jump in, especially once we get immersed in a thread and can contribute to it positively.
 
@Padi, that is possible with the BuSo Pro account upgrade. It wasn't clear (or even present) so I've just adjusted the text there to add that fact.

BuSo Pro will allow you to post outside of the Orientation Room before you reach the 3 posts and 3 likes threshold.

There's two exceptions:
  1. If you drop a link in your posts before you've reached that point, your post will go into auto-moderation and if there's no spam it'll be approved very quickly.
  2. You still won't be able to send private messages until you reach the 3 & 3 threshold, which is astoundingly simple, especially with BuSo Pro.
Thanks for the suggestion, have a like.
 
Thanks for this, great to see there is some actual structure and rules here. It's nice to see a well-managed forum that puts content integrity at the forefront like this.
 
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