New Users's Guide To Spymac.com Pt. 2

In a five part series, we will be outlining Spymac.com and how to use its system and services. New users to the website have issues when it comes to posting, navigation verifying settings and features they are not tapping. The Web Operating System (WOS) is amazing and full of features that completely immerse the user. When used properly you can take control of the system and make it work for you. The five part series will consist of:

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Day-2

A powerful part of the system is its managers. These are sections that sum your activity up in one place. Imagine creating a topic. Five days later, the thread would be long gone. Or that that picture you uploaded yesterday and you want to know who commented but you can’t seem to find it. Perhaps you want to talk to a user directly but don’t know how. Also, you want to add someone to your friends list but don’t know how then you add them and want to send them a message or browse their gallery and have no idea how to do that either. All of these things would take hours and a pro Spymac user can do it all in a few minutes with the managers.

No, we don’t mean the manager that you worked for at that fast food joint, but managers to make your life easier and are at your calling for once. The Forum, Gallery, Note, web and Friends manager can make things a lot easier and the following will explain how easy they are to use. Let’s begin with the Forum Manager.

You logged into Spymac this morning and posted at new topic, and replied to a few threads but you can’t find them later. Below the tabs at the top of the screen, you see a list of low opacity, or faded, buttons. Those are the managers. Roll your mouse over the one on the far left and you see “Forum Manager” under it. Click and all of your forum activity is there waiting for you. There are topics you are tracking (Click “Track” at the top of a thread you want to keep up with to track it), topics you have replied and topics you have created. The topic’s name, room, views, replies, date posted and last post time by who is listed. Just this will give you an idea of where the thread has gone since you last left it. Find the one you created and click the title. The Thread loads, but use your back button and click Last post and “View”. This takes you to the last post of that thread. Going back again, you can see what time the last post occurred and clicking on the “last poster” name you can find out more about that person. Want a different view of what time the thread was replied, then click the time and see it change formats. You can do the same for the other parts of the Forum Manager. Finally, you can create your own Member Forum. You will have to do so if you use the Spymac Blog system and want users to comment on your entries. You can also use your member forum to discuss things you enjoy with other members. Spymac Forums does not cover everything so having your own forum is great and you are the moderator and content manager on that forum. Click “Edit Member Forum” to create your own. The forum manager can be accessed at http://spymac.com/forums/manager.php Make sure you are logged in before loading the link.

The Gallery manager is the next button. This has a list similar to that of Forum Manger. There are pictures you have uploaded and pictures you have tracked. You can also click “Add Picture” to upload a new photo. If you look at the list of “Pictures you have uploaded”, you can see the title, views, replies and the last poster. It is a great way of finding your pictures. If you want others to view your gallery, you can do by clicking “My Gallery” under the tabs and it will take you to a direct link of your gallery. Copy and paste that link so friends can see your pictures, rate and comment on them. There is not much to explain about the Gallery Manager since it bares the same essence as Forum Manager.

Note Manager is the paper icon on the far right and is a alternative for E-mail if you are sending a message to a fellow member. If you receive a note there is a number in black on top of your note manager icon displaying how many notes you have. Clicking note manager will show your inbox. You can click Outbox or New and see sent messages or create a new note. In the new area, it is similar to a forum reply. There is a title, smilies area, and a blank where the users’ name should be. Do not use the @Spymac.com address, just the name will do. If you have friends in your list, a drop down menu beside the blank “To:” box will have a list of friends and makes your drop easier when deciding whom to send a note. Time and other lists are in the same format so it is easy to understand how it works.

Friends Manager is a complicated interface as of this writing. The top of the list has “Friends” and from there has “Mutual Friends”. The bottom has an area to add a friend and request a mutual friendship. The bottom is a block list. You can put a member’s name in and choose to block their posts in certain areas of Spymac. This is great if you are receiving problems from this user or just don’t like their point of view. Of course this is not a supplement to moderator intervention if you are receiving personal attacks from a user feel free to send a note to a moderator or administrator stating your problem and it will be resolved. When sending mail to tech support or an admin, be sure to include as much info as possible. A mutual friendship is you are friends with someone and they are friends with you. From Friend Manager you can send a note to a user, view their gallery, forum posts and blog. All you have to do is click their name or avatar listed in your friends list. The big red X deletes them from that list. You can manually add friends or do it via their posts in the forums (more on avatar functionality in the forums later). If someone asks for a friendship you receive a “System Message” prompting for a mutual friendship from a user. You can Accept, Deny or Ignore. Deny sends them a message saying they were denied and they can try again in 24 hours. Ignore sends nothing to them to avoid heartbreak but leaves you scott-free.

Tools is a tab up top and has many functionalities in all areas of Spymac. This is a new addition and sums up many other features that are scattered. Simply clicking it will show you everything but just to give you an overview; you can Create forum topics, view recent posts, edit member forum, upload a picture, view uploaded pictures, view friends and more. The most important is your blog area. It shows how many people have viewed your blog and the last 20 members that read your blog. It also has options to create a new blog or edit/ delete old ones. Tools help out for those that need action now and don’t like sifting through the different managers. Click everything because you won’t break anything.

If you find a post in the forum or gallery interesting and want to find out more about that user, their life story is a click away. If they are an active user, they use all of Spymac’s services. Click their avatar (member image) and up pops a slew of features. You can view their profile, forum posts, pictures, auctions, add them as a friend, send a note and view their blog. Once again, just click around and you will uncover much about that user. Their signature is another way to see their views, and sometimes they link to a personal website, member forum or their blog. Also, if you want to give someone a link to send you a note, just click your avatar and copy the link to send you a note and give him or her that link. You can also tell them your username. This avatar features is a great one added in Spymac 3.

This concluded part two of the Spymac new user’s guide. Stay tuned for Part three where we discuss more features and we still have part four and five coming to you.