InvisionFree Web Designing
*This tutorial will completely guide you through the process of making an InvisionFree Website. InvisionFree Websites can be opened for free here: http://invisionfree.com/. It takes about 25 seconds to sign up and then you can get started with your new website. InvisionFree has a semi-easy setup, and with this guide you should be able to establish your site easily. This is a great setup to use if your short on money but you still want to run your own website and share your ideas and expressions within a community of your own.
Breaking Down The Admin CP (Control Panel): I'm going to be breaking down each section of the Admin CP and each of it's sub-sections. After learning each sub-section, it should be simply to design exactly what you want.
InvisionFree Network-
1. Account Info-
This is where you will find much of the information about your board and your account on that board. This section will also tell you the amount of disk usage on your website, also states how much space your allowed to have before the limit is reached. The "Account Information" section entails; the date your board was created on, advertisements, serial number, server name. That small portion is pretty self explanatory. Next you have "Disk Usage" and "Overall Space Limit", which both basically just show you have much disk space you have used, and the maximum limit of space you can have.
2. File Manager- This breaks down what is using up your disk space. This is just more specific documentation of what your space is consisted of, more forum statistics.
3. Board Directory- Inside of this forum you can edit your board's directory. Remember the type of forum you selected earlier? well now you can change the type of forum that you have, for instance, RuneScape based would be under 'RPG'. Here you are allowed to type in a 100 word message or board description that will be displayed in your board's directory.
4. Domain Manager- The domain manger is a section that you should not necessarily mess around with, unless you want to add a domain name to your InvisionFree website. If you add another domain, you can choose which one will be your primary domain, which I don't suggest doing, unless you know what your doing.
5. InvisionFree Forum- This is the official forum of the Invisionfree.com website. A lot of your questions could be answered here by staff and other members.
6. Terms Of Service- This is the terms of service for the InvisionFree website. If you are unsure about anything you should be able to read about it here. These are basically the terms and conditions of InvisionFree.
7. Support Ticket- You can open up a support ticket here if you are having any troubles. Someone should respond your question hopefully with an answer helping you out. This is just another place you can go if you are having any difficulties, the most affective help.
8. Add Removal- Want to get rid of the ads on the main page? You can pay a minimal fee of $5 USD to have them removed from the main page.
9. Convert To ZetaBoards- Here you can convert your forum to ZeteBoards, it's somewhat of a simple process.
System Settings-
1. General Configuration- This is where you can change the name of your main board, otherwise known as the website name. Under features you can edit some of the user options for regular users. Also you can edit skin options such as general background coloring. Here you can also chose if you want to use the COPPA mod. COPPA stands for Children Online Privacy Protection Act, in which regards the collection of personal information from a person under the age of 13.
2. Security & Privacy- Here you can edit your security and privacy options. You will want to edit this to make sure your site is safe and things which you want private are kept private. Here you can choose exactly what you want users to be able to do, such as administrators having to except every member who joins into the forum. Then you can choose more privacy options in terms of IP addresses.
3. Topics, Posts, and Polls- Here you can edit posting options of normal users, such as posting restrictions. Also you may edit polling options, and polling restrictions.
4. User Profiles- Here you can control the restrictions on the normal users signatures and avatars. If you want guests to place restrictions on guests you may edit those options here as well. When you edit guests options you can decide exactly what visitors can do.
5. Date & Time Formats- Here you can set the time zone and exactly how you want the time to be formatted on your forum.
6. PM Setup- These are just some minor PM editing options.
7. Board On/Off- Here you can turn the main page of your forum on or off. If you decide to turn off your forum, you can type in a message here to display to the visitors and members of you forum when they attempt to visit the website.
8. Calender/Birthday- You may edit here if the calendar and birthdays show up on the forum at the bottom.
9. Board Guidelines- Here you can impose forum rules by typing them in the large box. You will be able to set forth forum rules to all members and guests.
10. Warning Set-Up- Here you can implement the warnings system to the specified user groups which you please. Also you can edit the permissions of forum moderators and global moderators. This is very important because you don't want your staff to be too powerful.
11.IPDynamic Lite Set-Up- This is just for editing affiliations and such.
Forum Control:
1. New Category- This section will allow you to add a new category to your forums. A category is the 'main topic' in which all your smaller forums will be listed under. These smaller forums will be related to the 'main topic' or category. This is basically a generalization of what will be inside of this category.
2. New Forum- These forums will be the smaller topics inside of your categories. These will be more descriptive of the specific 'main topic'. These forums can have descriptions which will elaborate more on what specifically is inside this forum.
3. Manage Forums- Here you can edit and manage the forums which you have created. Basically you can just change the name of that specific forum.
4. Permission Masks- This will allow you to mask or hide certain portions of the forums to certain user groups. This is a great feature because it gives you the ability to have a forum which only your staff can see and discuss topics inside of.
5. Re-Order Forums- Here you can change around the order of the forums according to a numerical value. The closer the numerical value is to 1 the closer to the top it is. You can do this with categories and with forums.
6. Moderators- You can appoint certain and specific moderators to forums according to name or user group. These will make up your staff and certain user groups and be retained to one or many certain forums, which is great because it allows you to curb certain moderators boundaries.
7. Topic Multi-Moderation- Multi moderation allows you to combine moderation actions to create easy to use shortcuts to several moderation options.
Users and Groups:
1. Pre-Register- Here you can register any account name you like. This is a section where you may be able to add any member you please perhaps to monitor members or just to set up an account for a close friend of yours.
2. Find/Edit/Suspend User- Finding members can be tricky so this tool makes it very easy. You can find/edit/suspend any member which is in your database, editing consists of changing certain features and settings on that specific users account.
3. Delete User(s)- Here you may search for a user and edit or delete that user in this section.
4. Ban Settings- You can post banned email addresses, IP's and names of members which are to be banned and won't have permission to be re-registered into the forum database.
5. User Titles/Ranks- Here you may add user titles based on the amount of post count a member has. Also you can add a member rank based on the amount of posts or specific user groups. If it is a specific user group than the rank image which you upload in the provided box will be located next to all that belong to that user group's name's. These are how you will decipher who is ranked on the forum.
6. Manage User Groups- Here you can edit the abilities of specified user groups depending upon which user group you decide to edit.
7. Bulk Email Members- Emailing members can be a pain, so here you may mass email members with the same message and every member who is registered on the forum will receive that message with their registered email.
8. List Suspended Users- Here will be a list of users which you or your staff has suspended.
9. Manage Validating- Any member who is having trouble getting validated will be placed here and you can decide what you would like to do. Also if they request an email change you may verify that here.
Administration:
1. Manage Word Filters- You may manage which words would get blocked out on your forum, the words which you specify will be starred out and not be able to be seen by anyone.
2. Manage Emoticons- Here you may manage which emoticons will be available for usage on your forums. You can download more emoticons at other websites then upload them into your database to be used on your forums by any member, depending on their permissions.
3. Recount Statistics- here you may recount all forums stats for your own personal records.
Skinning & Styles:
1. Board Wrappers- This is where you can edit certain tags and what specific items are wrapped with. You can add or edit wrappers with HTML if you please.
2. Images- Here you may edit the images of your forums easily by replacing links. You may enter plain text to use instead of an image and if you have uploaded an image you can choose the type 'upload' to use the image. The replacement you enter will be ignored for this option.
3. Manage Style Sheets- Don't edit this unless you know what your doing it can be very difficult but is good if you want to customize your forums a bit more.
The last two sections of the admin cp are basically statistics logs which you can check for your own reasoning. I hope you enjoyed this guide and hope it progressively increases the amount of forums being made. Good luck and any questions which you may have you can PM me and I will be willing to help you with any of your forums needs.
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