What are the rules of conduct for the forum?
Why should I register?
Why do you ask for two email addresses?
Does my browser to have to be set to accept cookies?

How do I log in?
Help! I'm having trouble logging in!
I forgot my password!
What are the requirements for the secured login?

How do I change my password?
How do I edit my profile?
Is there a limit to the size of an image I can have in my signature?
What does this "invisible" mean in the user profiles?

What does the flashing envelope icon on the navigation bar indicate?
How do I change the number of posts displayed on a page?
How do I edit my display preferences?
What is the title that appears beneath my Display Name in posts?
Can I mark all posts as read?

How do I find posts that may already have the answer to the question I have?
Why is a post's subject so important?
What if I make a mistake in my post?
What if I post in the wrong forum?
Can I use HTML in my posts?
How do I add an image to my message?
I'm having problems getting the URL tags to work.
Can I attach a file to my post?
How do I put a poll in my post?

Updated: 18.2.2008

Registration as a User implies acceptance of the following terms and conditions:

Public
First think, then post - Remember the human. Never forget that the person reading your posting is, indeed, a person, with feelings that can be hurt. Ask yourself, "Would I say this to the person's face?". If the answer is no, rewrite and reread. Repeat the process till you feel sure that you'd feel as comfortable saying these words to the live person as you do sending them through cyberspace.

Conversation
Be careful about how your words come across - misunderstandings can be common. Without a tone of voice, unless you're a great writer, a sarcastic or otherwise harmless comment can often come off the wrong way. So, mark ironic statements with smilies.
Please do not type in capital letters. This is considered SHOUTING and is EXTREMELY RUDE. SEE HOW YOU LIKE IT?!?

Free opinion
If there are different opinions, be objective and argue. In such a situation, review your statement carefully. Everybody has the right to give his opinion!

Criticism
Never criticize someone for misspelling or grammatical error. If someone else makes a spelling mistake, while it's undeniably annoying, you should refrain from pointing out their mistakes.

Moderation Complaints
If you have a question or comment regarding a moderation, contact the moderators or administrators privately. Complaints posted which concern forum moderations will be either locked or removed, since a lot of members wish to enjoy the forums without having to put up with the drama.

Advertising
Participants may not use the Forums to post or transmit advertisements or commercial solicitations of any kind.

Proprietary
Participants shall not post any material likely to cause offence, that is protected by copyright, trademark or other proprietary right - without the express permission of the owner of such copyright - or that contains personal phone numbers or addresses.

Liability
This web site does not verify or guarantee the accuracy of the material posted to the Forums or bear any responsibility for any loss, damage, or other liabilities caused by any posted message.

Final Statement
This forum is a free service run by a few private individuals to bring cycling travellers around the world together. Anyone who violates the rules to cause trouble will be warned or banned depending on the severity of their actions. The forum administrators and moderators have the right to edit, censor, delete or otherwise modify any message, title, member name, signature, image or related content on its boards at any time, without notification.
While the administrators and moderators of this forum will attempt to remove or edit any generally objectionable material as quickly as possible, it is impossible to review every message. Therefore you acknowledge that all posts made to these forums express the views and opinions of the author and not the administrators and moderators (except for posts by these people) and hence will not be held liable. You agree that the site administrators and moderators reserve the right to delete any message for any reason whatsoever if they feel it is inappropriate.

By registering with the forum, you will be able to edit your member profile and preferences. You will get the most out of your time here if you change your profile and preferences to suit your individual tastes. There are many options in your profile to make your experience here more enjoyable, so please take a few moments to try the various settings. Also, only users that are registered and logged in can take advantage of the "New Posts" feature upon each visit. Once you've registered and logged in, click "Edit Profile" or "Edit Preferences" in the menu "My Stuff" to edit your settings.

The Email Address field is used for email notifications, Watch Lists and to email your password. The Public Email Address field is what other users see when they view your profile. We realize that you may not want everyone to know your real email address, but we need to know it in case you want to watch certain content or if you want to have replies emailed to you. For this reason you can give us your real email address in the Email Address field and only the Administrators of the board will see it. You can provide a different email address for the general public using the Public Email Address.

Yes. Cookies are used to remember your login information as well as what posts you have read during your current session. Without accepting cookies some functions won't work properly.

If you have registered with these forums, you must log in to write posts and take advantage of the personalization of settings. To log in, look in the upper right-hand corner of your screen for the "Log In" link. This link will take you to a page where you can enter your Username (email address) and Password. Keep in mind that the password is always case-sensitive. This means that the software considers "S" and "s" to be different characters.

Once you have entered your Username (email address) and Password, you'll be brought to your Starting View. (You can change the page used for your Default Starting View by clicking "Edit Preferences" in the Forum Navigation island.) If you have any Private Messages waiting for you, you'll see a flashing envelope on the My Messages island.

This checklist may help you successfully log in:

• Make sure you are entering your password correctly. Passwords are case-sensitive.
• Please note the difference between your "Loginname" which is only needed to log in, and your "Displayname", which all other members see throughout the forum. Did you really enter your Loginname?
• Ensure that your browser supports cookies; if so, check the security level you are using. High levels of security restriction in certain browsers will automatically reject cookies. In order to use the key features of these forums, you'll need to accept cookies. The maker of your browser can help you with additional problems you may have with your cookie settings.
• Completely log out by hitting the Log Out link in the upper right-hand corner of the page, and then log back in again.
• After logging in, you may have to hit the Reload or Refresh button on your browser to expedite the authentication.
• If these steps don't work you can try purging your cookies for this site using the My Cookies tool.
• If you continue to have problems, go to the Log In page and click "Have you forgotten your login information?". Enter your real email address into the Email Address field and a temporary password will be emailed to the email address used for the account setup.

If you have forgotten your password, don't worry! You can very easily have a temporary password emailed to you. Go to the Log In page and click "Have you forgotten your login information?". Enter your real email address into the Email Address field and a temporary password will be emailed to the email address used for the account setup.

This process is safe because the password is only emailed to the original owner of the account.

Please make sure you have installed the IdenTrust’s DST Root X3 certificate in your browser.

You may change your password any time. Click on "My Stuff" in the menu, then on "Edit Profile". Edit the Password and Verify Password fields and then click "Submit" to save the information. (Keep in mind that passwords are case-sensitive.)

Click the "My Stuff" link on the menu (on top of every page). Under "Edit Profile" you can edit your profile.

We ask that you keep your images relatively small. To not interrupt the flow of reading, signature images that exceed 42 pixels in height will be cropped. The file size should be not larger than 20 kB. This will ensure that the forums load quickly for all users.

You are only able to see these details you specified in your own profile. If you have chosen to not specify your real name, the names of the other members will be invisible to you also.

It means that you have unread Private Messages.

You can change the number of posts displayed on each page by editing your display preferences. You can set this to anything between 1 and 99 posts per page. By default, this is set to 15 posts per page.

Yes, you'll be missing a trick if you fail to take advantage of the versatility offered. There are many aspects of how the Forums are displayed that may be customized. Click the "My Stuff" link on the menu (on top of every page). Under "Edit Preferences" you can edit your preferences.

You can choose the stylesheet in which you wish to view the forums, how many posts are displayed on each page, whether or not you want to view users' pictures alongside their posts, and much more. Once saved, these become your default settings. You may edit these preferences again at anytime.

Every user of this forum has a title, which is displayed under his name. These titles are either system-generated to give ranking to your postcount, or set individually by an administrator. By default we only got two different titles in this forum. "User" is every newly registered user who did not write any post yet. As soon as the first post was written, the title changes to "Member".

Yes, you may mark all posts as read without opening them all. To do so, follow this link: Mark all posts as read

One of the key benefits of the discussion board format is that it enables commonly asked questions to be answered once, for the benefit of all. Before posting your question, it is always worth checking to see if it has already been asked - and answered! You can do this via the Search island. Using the Search island, you can perform a quick keyword search, or click on the "Advanced" button to search by more specific criteria. Various options are available, both for how the search term is specified and for controlling how many forums you want to search. This is where the specificity of topic subjects is important, making it much easier to locate precisely what it is you're after from a list of search results.

The first post of a given topic establishes the subject by which all subsequent replies will be known. Once there's been a reply, the topic subject cannot be subsequently changed. It's therefore important to get the subject right from the outset. Make it as descriptive and as specific as possible. For example, "Waterproof Bike Panniers - any experiences?", is much better than something completely generic, such as "Newbie needs help!". Not only is it more likely to elicit a response, but it'll also make it much easier for all posts in the topic to be subsequently located.

Users can edit their own posts up to 12 minutes after they are made. Where the change is substantial, it is courteous mark the post as edited so as to alert readers to the changed content. For cosmetic changes, it's better not to do so.

Let the forum Administrator or Moderator know - he/she will be able to move it for you.

No, normal HTML can not be used. But is is possible to use a special markup code. The following UBBCode tags are available for your use:

[b]text[/b]	Makes the given text bold.
[i]text[/i]	Makes the given text italic.
[u]text[/u]	Underlines the given text.
[s]text[/s]	Will post your text with a line through it (strike through).
[color:red]text[/color]	Makes the given text red.
[color:#0077FF]text[/color]	Displays the given text in the specified RGB-color.
[size:14pt]text[/size]	Will change the size of the text to whatever size value you specify. (Only available in some boards)
[font:Arial Black]text[/font]	Will post your text with the specified font. (Only available in some boards)
[format]text[/format]	Displays the given text using a fixed width font.
[quote]Text[/quote]	This tag is used for quoting a reply.
[spoiler]Text[/spoiler]	Will wrap your text in a spoiler container. Users must click a button in order to see this text, thus giving them the ability to specify if they want to read the item.
[spoiler:warning]Text[/spoiler]	Will wrap your text in a spoiler container and allow you to specify the warning message displayed. Users must click a button in order to see this text, thus giving them the ability to specify if they want to read the item.
[list] [*]Item 1 [*]Item 2 [/list]	Makes a bullet list. [list=A] or [list=1] will make order/numbered lists.
[url]http://www.globike.net[/url]	Makes the given url into a link: http://www.globike.net
[url=http://www.globike.net]globike.net[/url]	Makes the given title into a hyperlink pointing to link: globike.net
[email]name@domain.com[/email]	Makes the given email address clickable: name@domain.com
[email=name@domain.com]Name[/email]	Makes the given title into a hyperlink pointing to email: Name
[image]http://www.domain.com/image.gif[/image]	Shows the remote image from the specified URL.
[align:left|right|center]Text[/align]	Will align the text in the direction defined.
[image:left|right|center]http://www.domain.com/image.gif[/image]	Will allow you to allow text to wrap on the specified side of your image.

You can add an image to your message or your signature, which is already available on a web server and reachable by a URL. This can be an image on your own personal web page, for example. To place an image within a message, simply use the following Markup Tag:

[image]http://www.url_to_image.com/image_name.gif[/image]

For example, if you have an image called cateye.gif and its available from your own website at http://www.mywebsite.com/pics, then you would use the following image markup:

[image]http://www.mywebsite.com/pics/cateye.gif[/image]

Some members also can upload images to our server (see Donation Page). In this case, when composing a new post, the "File Manager" can be used to attach images.

If the tags are showing up in your text or you're getting a link, but it's to "http:///", you're including some unwanted spaces in the syntax. Avoid any intervening spaces, and everything will work fine.

Putting a poll in your post is simple.

Start by creating a new post in a forum. Below the body of your post, click the "Poll Manager" link. You will be guided through the rest.