Tinsology

Creating Threads

Searching

When a rational person has a question or a topic to discuss on a forum that person might think “Maybe I should use the search feature to see if a thread regarding my topic already exists!”. This is generally a waste of time, however. The probability of two people on a forum consisting of thousands of members over the span of several years having the same question, idea, or thought turns out to be very low. In addition to this, using the search feature can be incredibly confusing to use and takes far too long (sometimes 2 whole page loads).

Here’s a tip: If you happen to find a thread that is slightly related to your topic, feel free to hijack borrow it.

Finding the Appropriate Forum

It is common for a board to have a separate forum for each distinct topic. However, you probably don’t have time to read the title and description of each one. The best way to choose a forum to post in is to chuck a piece of chewing gum, spit wad, or dart at your screen. Which ever forum it sticks to is the one you should post in. It is safe to do this because forums have these things called moderators. They are responsible for placing threads in the appropriate forum and can generally be thought of as your slaves.

Here’s a tip: If you can’t decide between several forums, either because your topic is related to both, or you can’t tell which your dart landed closer to, post in all of them. This will ensure your post gets maximum exposure.

Titling your Thread

Thinking of a clear, relevant title for your thread can be a difficult task. So don’t bother! The best way to create a thread that will draw the attention of others is to use lots of capital letters and lots of exclamation marks (!!!).

Here’s a tip: It is best to keep things simple. The title: “Need help validating form data in PHP” can be reduced to “OMG HeLP!!1!”. Not only is it shorter, but it also conveys a sense of urgency.

Punctuation and Grammar

The great thing about forums is that they are informal. This means that punctuation and grammar are completely optional. In fact, including punctuation in your post is a waste of precious bytes in the forum’s database. In addition to this, readers will have to read through your post multiple times and think very hard in order determine what you are trying to say. In other words, leaving out punctuation is the easiest way to create a thought provoking post. If you do decide to use punctuation, you should use it in new and unique ways as a form of artistic expression.

Here’s a tip: the most efficient way to write your post is to pretend you’re in the 19th century sending a telegram. Leave out any words that aren’t absolutely necessary.

Spelling

If you’re writing your PhD dissertation in comparative literature then spelling is probably important. On a forum, however, don’t waste your time distinguishing between there, their, and they’re. Most modern browsers come with a spell check feature, but it is common knowledge that these features were created by grammar Nazis determined to hurt your feelings by pointing out your mistakes; Don’t give them the satisfaction!. Ideally it is best to use a browser that won’t bother you with little red lines such as IE6.

Here’s a tip: If your spelling is so bad that people think you’re not from an English speaking country just go with it.

Posting Code

Most forum software comes with built in features for displaying formatted code with syntax highlighting. However, unless you’re the one that designed these features figuring out how to use them is a lost cause. It is best to just copy and paste your code directly into your post. It is also important to post any and all code that could possibly be slightly related to your problem, even if it is hundreds of lines.

Don’t bother including any error messages with your code. They are almost always too cryptic to be useful. Also, most programmers enjoy the challenge of trying to determine what is wrong with your code based only on vague description. If you really want to give them a challenge, don’t even include the vague description. A post containing only the words “wuts wrong with this:” followed by a massive blob of code is a programmers dream.

Here’s a tip: Not mentioning the particular line that’s giving you a problem will force your readers to dig through your code to find it. This ensures you have their full attention.

Getting a Response

Response time varies from forum to forum, but any thing longer than thirty seconds should be considered unacceptable. If you find yourself waiting longer than this you should reply to your own thread demanding an immediate response. Remember: Just because the person helping you is not being paid doesn’t mean you can’t demand he devote himself completely to your problem.

Here’s a tip: The best way to get a response is to make sure your thread is always on the top of the page. If it ever falls below number one just reply “Bump” until it gets a response.

Replying to Threads

Your 2 cents

It is generally considered rude NOT to reply to a thread that you read, even if you have nothing of use to say. At the same time it is important to convey to everyone that you’re an expert… at something. If you don’t have any clue what you’re talking about, just say something vague. You can also try just stating your opinion as fact and backing it up with nothing (no one will notice).

Here’s a tip: Make sure never to come back to see replies to anything you’ve posted. This way people will learn not to question you because they know you won’t dignify them with a response. This is the forum equivalent of sticking your fingers in your ears and singing the Oscar Myer Weiner song, which as we all know is a very effective debate strategy.

Volume

Making lots of short, mindless posts is the same as making a few well thought out, well written posts. Only without all that headache-inducing thinking. Having a high post count will indicate to others that you’re an expert… at something.

Here’s a tip: Posting “I agree” or “Great topic” is a good way to increase your post count. You don’t even have to read the thread!

Reading

Reading the title of a thread is usually good enough to devise a perfectly good response. Reading the topic itself should be considered a courtesy. Reading each post in the thread is usually very time consuming and yields very little benefit.

Here’s a tip: If you recognize one of the words in the thread title, just regurgitate everything you know about that word.

Miscellaneous

Being an Expert

Some people think being an expert is about learning as much as possible about a given topic and being able to use that knowledge effectively. Clearly they’re not experts on being an expert. Being an expert is 50% claiming to be an expert, 50% pretending you know what you’re talking about it, and 1% actually knowing something. If you read the first paragraph of the Wikipedia page on a topic, then you’re ready to start telling people you’re an expert on that topic.

Here’s a tip: Learn as many buzz words regarding your topic as possible. If you can combine these words into a coherent sentence everyone will think you’re an expert.

Signature Links

I read somewhere on the Internet that signature links are one of the best ways to promote your website. Naturally I now tell everyone this is true.

Here’s a tip: Some forums, for no particular reason, have rules that prevent members from having signature links until they have a certain number of posts. You can get around this by just adding the link to the bottom of your post. No one will notice.

Rules and Reprimands

Believe it or not, some forums have rules. Usually, however, they are difficult to find and too time consuming to read. This being the case it is perfectly acceptable to just ignore the rules and trust your judgment. If a moderator happens to reprimand you, you should remember one thing: Moderators are generally rude people and tend to overreact. Anything they say can usually be taken as a suggestion.

Here’s a tip: The only practical way to learn the rules is through trial and error. Have lots of extra email accounts on hand, that way you are free to “test the waters”. If you get banned just register a new account.

This guide will show you how to create a domain on your local machine and configure apache to route traffic to that domain to a particular directory. I’ll describe how to do this using Windows, but the process should be very similar in a linux environment.

The first step is to choose a domain name. When choosing a domain you should remember two things: It will only exist on your local machine and it will override an already existing domain. The latter is probably the most important; choosing google.com as the domain will prevent you from accessing google.com. The simplest way to avoid overriding a domain is to leave off the TLD. Personally I use subdomains of localhost. For example, if I had a project Foo that I wanted to create a domain for I’d choose foo.localhost.

The next step is to associate the domain with your loopback address (almost always 127.0.0.1 the IPv6 version is ::1). To do this you need to locate and edit your hosts file. In Windows it should be located in the directory C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc If you are using Vista or 7 you won’t be able to edit it with Administrative Privileges. You’ll need to run whatever application you are using to edit it (notepad will do) as an administrator. To do so in notepad follow these steps:

• In your Start menu navigate to All Programs > Accessories
• Locate and right-click Notepad
• Click Run as administrator
• Once in Notepad select File > Open...
• Navigate to C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc and select the file hosts

Your hosts file should look something like this:

127.0.0.1 localhost
::1 localhost


If the domain you chose if foo.localhost then just add the entry:

127.0.0.1 foo.localhost


After you save the file the domain foo.localhost should route to 127.0.01. For now it is effectively identical to just using localhost.

It is up to apache to route traffic to foo.localhost to the right location. This process may vary depending on your configuration, but at this point it is identical to configuring a virtual domain on your server. The first step is to create a virtual host. Locate your httpd.conf file, it should be in the conf directory wherever apache is installed. If you haven’t already set up a virtual host you’ll need to add the line:

NameVirtualHost *

You’ll then need to setup a virtual host for each domain, here is an example:

NameVirtualHost *

<VirtualHost *>
    ServerAdmin webmaster@foo.localhost
    DocumentRoot "C:\srv\foo\public-html"
    ServerName foo.localhost
</VirtualHost>
<VirtualHost *>
    ServerAdmin webmaster@localhost
    DocumentRoot "C:\srv\public-html"
    ServerName localhost
</VirtualHost>

If you entered your new domain into your browser now you may get a 503 error (forbidden). To fix this problem you’ll need to tell apache to allow access to directory you specified in the DocumentRoot entry in your virtual host:

<Directory "C:/srv">
    Options Indexes FollowSymLinks
    AllowOverride None
    Order allow,deny
    Allow from all
</Directory>

Thats it! Your domain should be setup and ready to use.