Starting tips, basic help

We will try and list here some basic tips to make your life as easy as possible:

1. To become a member is one of the easiest tasks:

• Hello Friends, sorry in this site you will find no registration of new users area. No visitors can apply for a user account on line anymore as it is done in other sites. From now on only administration of these pages will be able to create new accounts for anyone.
  All what you have to do is send us a short note using the contact form (from the top bar or the primary links) and include your full name, existing email, your preferred user name (best include two names just in case the first one is taken) and a preferred password (min 8 characters which you can change later). In the subject area write "New account" and add a few lines of text..

  Only in English, French or Greek please or it will be ignored.

• Once you receive your email with your new account, log in to the site and proceed to your personal page (click on your user name in the left bar and open the edit tab) to change your password as you wish. Drupal may advise you on the strength of your password, the final decision is only up to you. Click save and you are now done. Most probably you are now logged in. To make sure that your new password was registered correctly log out and log in again using your new password.
• Also note that there is another tab headed as contact, this is your personal contact form from where others can contact you in privacy. Only registered and authenticated users will be able to use your personal contact form. The edit page of your profile (which includes your email) can be viewed only by you and administration of this site.
• If there is any problem with your password click on "Request new password" and a new password will be emailed to you (which you can change as shown above).

2. Now you can start adding content.

Drupal in one of the most complete open source content management platform, it includes a variety of tools and various entries that are generally divided in:

• Book page: Must be the easiest and possibly most efficient entry. As you can see in the left sidebar under "books" there are a few categories such as: "How to create a new Book", etc. You have two choices: (a) Select one of the existing categories by clicking in the side bar and enter you new page as a child to this category (you will see the "add child page" at the bottom of the page you just opened (in this case please make sure that your subject is related to the subject as expressed by the title you selected  or (b) Open the "Create content" link, a new page will open where you select "Book page"and the "create book page" will open. First thing to do (before you forget), go down below the Input format and expand the "Book outline". There you will see the existing Books and a new choice as: "<create a new book>". You may also choose one of the existing categories - as done in (a) above. If you choose the "<create a new book>" make sure that your title is short and it covers a subject that will be of interest to you and other people, so that more pages can be added. Now go back to the top, add title, and your message under "Body:" If this is the first page of a new book, explain with a few words the subject of this new book, and add also your own message. Don't forget to add a few tags, words or short sentences separated by commas, to make it easier for search engines to find your article.

• Forums: for the time being we have a couple Forum Categories as "Global Friends" and "You can place your ads with pictures here",  with a number of Forums. More categories, Forums and sub-Forums will be added as we go along to create an easier search structure. It is very easy to move topics from these two categories to the new one's or new Forums,  without loosing anything. You can add, for now, new topics anywhere you wish (please note: you cannot add a new topic under categories, e.g. under the two categories shown above. All new topics must be added under Forums or sub-Forums). You can request more Forums or Sub-Forums either by sending us an email (see item 6 below for this issue) or starting a new topic (Forum) under an existing Forum, or even placing a new comment under one of the existing Forums. Suppose you wish to start a new topic (Forum) in the existing structure, follow these steps:

1. Click on the "Create content" link, and select "Forum Topic" a new page will open. Enter the title of your topic under "Subject" and in the "Body" write your message using the formatting tools provided.
2. Now you must go up under "Forums" and select the Forum that you wish your topic to be under. Do not select a category (such as "Global Friends"), categories are only a container for Forums. When you click on the Forum link on the top header you will see that Forums have a little envelop to the left of the title, Categories have nothing and the heading is more to the left than Forums. Also under "Friends" in the "create Forum topic" page Forums have a dash ( - ) at the beginning, while categories have nothing.
3. The next and very important thing is to add some words under "Tags" (or very short phrases) that will make your topic easy to find by search engines. These words will be stored under Vocabularies. Type these words in the box titled "Tags:" Separate the words or short phrase with a comma from each other.
4. Under the "Body" you will see the "Input format" set it up to full HTML and the "File attachments" were you will upload your pictures (if any).
5. Now you are done, click on "Preview" if you wish and "Save" to publish your new Topic.
6. If you wish to have a new Category or Forum, send us an email (use the form from the upper area of the header with the name "contact"), and describe the new subject. We will create it almost immediately.

• Polls: To create a new poll it will take less than a minute. The question is where to place the link. By default the last poll only is shown in the left sidebar. For now we created a link "polls" which is visible in the top header (5th from the right), open it and you will see a few test polls and a section below marked "Users Polls".
  To create a new Poll select "Create content" then "Poll". In the new page "create poll" add your question and below place your proposed answers. By default two answer spaces are included, but you can add more answers if you click the "Add an other choice" button. Then hit the save button and you new poll will appear. After a couple of refresh of your browser the last poll will appear in the left side bar. We will add the link to your poll under the area "Users Polls". You new poll will also show as the last poll in the left sidebar until a newer poll is added. 

3. Contact our site and Contact other users

1. If you are an authenticated user and even a visitor, for now, then you can contact our site using the form under "Contact" in the top head bar (4th from the right the right). Please do not abuse this form and force us to delete it or delete your account or ban your IP if you are a visitor. If you do not get a reply maybe your entry was deleted by our spam protection system.
2. If you are an authenticated user (not visitors this time) you can also contact other users using a similar form which is located under the user profile. In order to access the user profile you must be logged in. Click on the user name you wish to contact from anywhere in the site (for example under - or near - Created or posted by in an article that the user wrote and in the new page select "Contact" for the form to open. Your user name and email will be visible, and they will be visible when your message reaches its destination.  You will not see the recipients email, unless he replies to you.

 4. Our Pages, Columns, Links etc.

All pages in our site have two basic columns, a wide column to the right which includes all text, pictures, videos and anything related to content of this website and a narrow column to the left which includes all internal links and could also include some external links. The header also has two rows on internal links and the footer includes a variety of external links and a link to the Drupal webpage. If you have a wide monitor and you are loosing much space, you may chose to enlarge the font by pressing from your keyboard the Ctrl and the + sign simultaneously. To return back (or shrink) press the Ctrl and the - sign. This will work with most browsers, a limited number may not react or may expand in the vertical direction, which is not what you really want.

The left columns includes all the main links of our website. Starting from the top we have:

• Search: Search our site, with one or more words and click on Search.
• Primary links: Include mostly Pages. These links are shown also in the top header area in the same sequence.
• Secondary links: Includes (for now) mostly stories and are also shown in the top header area in the second row from the top.
• Polls: Shows the last created poll. There is a "polls" link under Primary links which includes links for more polls as explained above.
• Book navigation: Includes a number of Drupal Books where you add pages or create new books.
• User Log in: Will be visible until you log in or if you are a visitor. From this area you can also ask for a new password if you lost the old one, by clicking on: "Request new password"
• Who is new: shows the 5 latest new users. If you are registred  these will show as links and if you click on them you open a limited profile area from where you can also send an email ("Contact") to this user.
• Navigation: If you are not registered this is the title that you will see, if you are registered and logged in you will see your user name there and other personal links. A visitor will only see a link to "Recent posts".
• Who's online and Online users: will tell you user names and/or numbers about on line users and visitors.

5. Small notes for things that may confuse you:

• When you start any article (blog, forum, story or book) you may get an editor that has no icons on the top. Go below the editor and open the "Input format" and from there select the "Full HTML" radio button.
• You may notice under the WYSIWYG editor the link: "Disable rich-text". Do not touch unless you hate formatting icons and you simply wish to write a few lines of text. If the icons still bother you, you can from the visual editor click on the small up-pointing arrow at the extreme left narrow bar and the icons temporarily will disappear. You can always bring the icons back any time by clicking the arrow in the same area again.
• If you are using a browser with built-in spell-checker, it does not seam to work in the Visual editor, but it works in the Source editor (one good reason to leave the toolbar where it is).
• More notes may be added later.....

If you face any problem while entering your new article, please post a comment under this article (or send us an email as shown above) and give us some details to help us trace it. Thank you.