Registration is necessary in order to comment on Tim's site. The registration link is found on each comments page below the comment box. These are the steps:
1. Sign up. Use a REAL email address and check it within 24 hours. Why? Because after you registerUpdate: I find it hard to believe that no one reads this FAQ before signing up, but I am obviously naive. The proof that no one reads the FAQ is that I keep getting emails like this in my administration inbox:
I apologize for this automatic reply to your email. To control spam, I now allow incoming messages only from senders I have approved beforehand. If you would like to be added to my list of approved senders, please fill out the short request form (see link below). Once I approve you, I will receive your original message in my inbox. You do not need to resend your message. I apologize for this one-time inconvenience.
These emails are the result of someone registering using an email address that utilizes some form of Spamguard program. The person registers, the system spits out the automated email which has the registration link, and it goes into limbo because dodohead forgot that his Spamguard rejects everything he hasn't approved beforehand. Please don't use your Spamguarded email, or at least change the settings so you can get your activation emails.Your Membership Profile It is not necessary to add anything to your membership profile, but it is nice. You can add pictures, a link to your web page, stuff about yourself, and so on. The link to your profile page is on any comment page of the blog, under the comment box.
You type your comment and press submit. You can press "preview" first (recommended) to check your spelling and so on. That's it.
BUT -- you will no doubt want to format your comments to look pretty (with bolds, italics, and so on) or put a link into your comment. (You can link to pictures off site but you can't put images into comments -- that's turned off.) The commenting system is set up to use PMCode, which is a slightly easier version of html. There is a link to a list of PMCode tags above the comment box -- please review it. However, the easiest way to format is to use the simple formatting buttons above the comment box. Here is how you use them: For all but "link" simply click the button once (for example, the italics button), type your word or phrase, and then click the same button again. You will notice that the button image will change after you click the first time. That is because it is showing you what the open and closed tags will look like. For the "link" button -- which is for making clickable links to other urls -- click on the "link" button once. A box will pop up. Enter the complete url, including the http:// -- no quotation marks. Click "ok." Another box will replace the first. Enter the word or phrase that you want to be the link. Click "ok." The complete code will appear in the comment box.
IMPORTANT: you can post a link in a comment without formatting it -- just type in "http" etc. -- and it will be transformed into a clickable link. HOWEVER, really long urls will "break the page" -- run off the screen width, causing all sorts of viewing issues, such as making everything on the page into very long lines that scroll offscreen, and so on. This is very annoying to people who are looking at the blog with different monitor resolutions, and to the Management, who has to fix all these mistakes and restore everything back to normal. Therefore, the following policy has been implemented: any line of text such as a long url or a multiple-hyphenated phrase that breaks the web page, no matter how important or relevant to the comment thread, will not be fixed, it will be DELETED.
NEW: Please don't try to fix formatting mistakes people make in their comments, and that affect the entire comment page (such as a bad italics tag causing every subsequent comment to be in italics), yourselves by placing tags in your own comment -- such as "[/i]" or something of that nature. You don't have access to the proper tools to really fix these problems, only I do. I check the site every day, usually more than once, so I will catch the mess sooner or later and fix it. Eventually I will figure out how to fix the template so that mistakes people make in their comments don't mess up everyone else's. Until then, check your code by reading it over (not just previewing the comment, sometimes that doesn't catch the mistake) before submitting it.
Troll Policy: trolls will have their IDs banned. What are trolls? In short, they are commenters who annoy the Management. This is a blog. If you want to flame people, go back to Usenet.