[Rules] The General Rules Thread

General Forum Rules General Forum Questions Signature and Avatar Guidelines Reputation Rules

Registration Agreement Specific Forum Rules General Posting Guidelines Editing and Deleting Your Posts

---

General Forum Rules

1. Do not spam or self-promote in the forums
   
   These forums define spam as unsolicited advertisement for goods, services and/or other web sites or posts with little, no or completely unrelated
   
   content.
   
   Do not spam the forums with links to your site or product, or try to self-promote your website, business or forums etc. Doing so is a waste of time.
   
   Your account will be banned permanently and your posts will be deleted.
   
   Spamming also includes sending private messages to a large number of different users.
   
   However, please note that there are two exceptions to the self-promotion rule. In the Website Critiques forum, you may post the URL to your website
   
   to ask for reviews, and in the Business Help forum you may discuss your business.
   
   
2. Do not post "Free " threads
   
   Posting pyramid scams (such as free iPods, LCDs etc.) is forbidden. All such posts/signatures will be edited or deleted. Any new users posting scams
   
   will be banned permanently; contributing users will either be warned or temporarily banned.
   
   
3. Do not cross post questions
   
   Please refrain from posting the same question in several forums. There is normally one forum which is most suitable in which to post your question.
   
   If you're not sure where to post, ask a moderator first.
   
   
4. Do not post copyright-infringing material
   
   Do not upload, attach, or otherwise post any copyrighted material which you are not free to redistribute (subject to the licensing terms of the
   
   specific item). If you have a question about having permission to post or attach a specific item, please ask a moderator.
   
   We do not condone nor accept posts pertaining to illegal activities such as hacking, cracking, warez, or spam.
   
   Any posts or threads found in violation of this rule will be edited or deleted, and the poster warned or possibly banned; at the moderation team's
   
   discretion.
   
   
5. Do not post "offensive" posts, links or images
   
   Do not post anything which is offensive, hateful, racist, sexist, discriminatory, obscene, vulgar or in violation of local or international laws.
   
   
6. Do not PM users asking for help
   
   Do not send private messages to any users asking for help. If you need help, make a new thread in the appropriate forum. If you're that desperate,
   
   then it's time to pay for help.
   
   
7. Remain respectful of other users, moderators and administrators at all times
   
   All posts should be professional and courteous. You have every right to disagree with your fellow community members and explain your perspective.
   
   However, you are not free to attack, degrade, insult, or otherwise belittle them or the quality of this community. It does not matter what title or
   
   power you hold in these forums, you are expected to obey this rule. Doing otherwise will get your account banned temporarily, or permanently if the
   
   situation becomes severe enough (this will be left to the discretion of the moderation team).
   
   For example, phrases such as "shut up, idiot," are indicative of problematic posts and should be reported. Suggested alternatives include "I
   
   disagree with what you said for the following reasons..." Please remember to stay mature and thoughtful at all times.

---

General Forum Questions

1. Am I allowed more than one account at Dev Shed?
   
   No, there is no reason why you should have more than one account at Dev Shed forums. If you are banned from the forums, please do not create a new
   
   account. By creating a new account, you are making the banning/warning system pointless. Your new accounts will be permanently banned.
   
   If you continue to create new accounts after you have been banned, your IP address may well be blocked from the forums. If you then start to
   
   register using differnet IP addresses, we reserve the right to take legal action against you. Using proxy servers will not get you anywhere.
   
   
2. What happens if I break a rule?
   
   If you break a rule, then you will either be warned or banned. A ban of your user account may either be temporary or permanent. If you are given an
   
   official warning, using the built-in warning system, a further warning within the next 30 days will result in a temporary ban which will last 7
   
   days. If you are not given an official warning, a user note may be added to your account and the incident may be logged for future reference.
   
   While a ban will normally involve only a ban of your user account, in extreme circumstances, it is possible to block your IP address from the
   
   forums.
   
   The administrators and moderators also have the right to edit, delete, move or close and thread or post as they see necessary, without prior
   
   warning.
   
   
3. What happens if I see a thread/post which has broken a rule?
   
   Please report the thread/post to the moderators using the red triangle "Report Bad Post" link, which appears in the top right-hand corner of every
   
   post. This report will be sent to all moderators of that particular forum, who will respond to the incident as quickly as possible.
   
   
4. Where can I find out who is in charge?
   
   The Forum Leaders page displays all the moderators and administrators of the forum.

When in doubt, ask a moderator about the topic of your thread or post. They will be able to tell you if it violates the rules or not. If your thread

or post is removed and you do not recieve an email or PM about it, then ask a moderator why it was removed. Do not re-post your thread or start

another one complaining about your thread being removed.

---

Signature and Avatar Guidelines

One of the perks of continued membership is having a custom signature for your posts. The contents of your sig must be acceptible for our community,

and shall not contain any profanity, vulgarity, or insults/disparaging comments to our community or its members. In addition, comments and/or links

that represent direct competition are not allowed. Once you have been a member at Dev Shed for 30 days and have 30 posts, you will have the ability

to include a signature in your post and upload an avatar to your profile. Your signature will be shown only on your first post on each page of a

thread, to avoid clutter.

• Keep your signature and avatar in good taste, the contents of your signature must be acceptable for the community: no vulgarity, lewd
  
  men/women, profanity or insults to other community members.
  
  
• If you use an image as your signature, it should be no larger than 486 pixels wide by 100 pixels tall. Your avatar will be limited to 100 pixels
  
  by 100 pixels.
  
  
• Animation should be kept to a minimum and both your signature and avatar shouldn't be too distracting.
  
  
• Keep the size of any images in your signature below 50KB. Your avatar will be limited to a size of 14.6KB.
  
  
• If you don't want to use an image in your signature, you can have up to six lines of text (with a maximum font size of 2).
  
  
• Do not include spam, harassing links or affiliate links in your signature.
  
  However, we will not object to you posting links to either your personal websites or other commercial projects which you support. This is a
  
  privilege which you are allowed as a contributing user.
  
  Comments and/or links that represent direct competition are not allowed.
  
  
• Do not create fake signatures. If you are not yet entitled to having a signature (because you have not been here for 30 days or don't have 30
  
  posts) you are not allowed to create a fake signature, where you post the same text or links at the bottom of every post. Your posts may be edited
  
  and you may receive a warning.

Any signature violating these rules will be considered spam. The signature will be deleted and the offending member will be addressed by our

moderators.

---

Reputation Rules

Reputation should be used to reward users for informative and insightful posts. It should not be used to reward jokes, and pointless trolling.

If you see that someone has been repped multiple times in one post, think hard about repping them again. Go find another user to reward. There are

many contributing users to the forum who still have a low reputation.

---

Registration Agreement

Registration to this forum is free! By using our forums (this includes but is not limited to signing up as a member or even browsing our forums

without signing up) you agree to the following:

The owner, administrators, and moderators of Dev Shed Forums will not be held liable for any objectionable messages posted on this forum, ownership

and liability lie with the original poster of the message in question. It is impossible for us to review all messages. All messages express the

views of the author, and NOT Dev Shed and neither the owners of Dev Shed Forums, nor Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd. (developers of vBulletin) will be held

responsible for the content of any message, regardless of what the message says or implies or any posts replying to said message.

You warrant that by registering for our forums, or simply just browsing our forums, you will indemnify Dev Shed from any and all legal liability

both civil, criminal, or otherwise. Any legal proceedings brought against Dev Shed or its owner must be originated in Broward County, Florida. You

warrant that you will not post any messages that are obscene, vulgar, sexually-orientated, hateful, threatening, or otherwise violative of any laws.

The owners of Dev Shed Forums reserve the right to remove, edit, move or close any thread for any reason but are not compelled to do so unless they

deem it to be necessary.

---

Specific Forum Rules

The rules and guidelines found in this document cover all forum categories within this site. In addition, some of the forums may have additional

rules and guidelines that apply specifically. Before posting in any forum, check for any sticky posts containing additional rules.

---

General Posting Guidelines


I figured this was necessary because a lot of people come in and post threads without thinking, and without realizing that there is no possible way

they could get help because of the way they posted the question. Here are some general guidelines.

USE SEARCH FIRST!

There is a pretty good chance that unless you have some
really odd or unique problem that it has been addressed on this
forum before (or even hundreds of times before for some issues).

Use the forum's search feature first to see if there are already some good threads on the subject. It's easy to search - just click the "Search"

button at the top right of the page.

Be DESCRIPTIVE

I cannot stress this enough. We cannot possibly help you if you simply post a thread, copy and paste your whole script and say "it has errors what's

wrong with it?". Keep this in mind:

1. Explain to us what your script DOES (or what it's supposed to do).

2. Explain to us what exactly the error is. Is it a PHP error? Your own error reporting? MySQL error? Or is it just not doing what you want?

3. Remember that you know a lot more about your script than we do. Don't assume we know just what it does.

Don't use stupid topic names

Post a descriptive topic name! Give a short summary of your problem IN THE SUBJECT. Don't use attention getting subjects. They don't get attention.

They repel attention and annoy people.

Here's a great list of topic subjects YOU SHOULD NOT POST by freebsd:

1) Help me
2) Hello
3) You must know the answer
4) Please help this female newbie
5) Something wrong
6) Come on PHP gurus
7) This one for you
8) Just wondering
9) This is too complicated for me
10) possible?
11) Very urgent
12) I have a question
13) Stupid question
14) Newbie needs help
15) pulling my hair out
16) this is driving me nuts

Generally ANYTHING similar to those is unacceptable. Just post your problem.

Here is a good example of a way to post a question about ereg() and regular expressions / validating emails

"Need ereg regular expression help"

or even better:

"validating emails w/ ereg() regular expressions"

These are bad examples:

"I can't figure this out!"
"Stupid question..."
"Female newbie needs regex help"
"Help me! Urgent!"

ONLY POST THE PART OF YOUR SCRIPT THAT HAS PROBLEMS!

PLEASE do not post your entire script in a message. And if you have to use 2 messages that's a good indication that you're going to annoy people.

Only post the part of your script where you have problems. That's it. Just a very small piece of it. It's not hard. Just find the part you think

doesn't work and post that. WE DON'T WANT TO SEE YOUR ENTIRE SCRIPT. And if you post the entire script it's going to take us a lot longer to find

the problem.

PUT YOUR CODE IN in php vB code!!!

Hundreds of times per week we see people post a huge ugly script right into the message. There's a problem with that. The tabs don't work. There's

no syntax highlighting. That makes it difficult to read!

There's a really neat vB code built in that will format and syntax highlight your PHP code when you post it. You can use that easy PHP button right

above the box where you type your message. The result will look like this:



If you get an error on a certain LINE, tell us what's on that line and what's on the few lines above it!

It's not too helpful when you mention an error on a certain line but don't tell us what code is on that line. Because errors can sometimes be caused

by lines of code above the one the error is mentioned on, please post a few lines above that line.

Only you know what "doesn't work" means

Please tell us what your script is supposed to do and why it "doesn't work". Or if you don't feel like explaining what the whole script is, at least

tell us what the offending code is supposed to do. When you come in and say "it doesn't work" or just "it has errors", that means NOTHING. There

could be a million things wrong and no one will know where to look.

If you're not going to take the advice, don't ask for help.

Often times, people post questions about their script with the wrong mindset from the very beginning. Soon they are receiving replies, and silently

debugging their code, making no effort to even acknowledge the people helping them! It becomes one sided, and the poster isn't aware that

many of the people helping them hope to learn something as well! Letting people know of your progress and how their suggestions apply (or do not

apply) will not only help you figure out your problem quicker, but you'll be returning the favor to those of us who learn more by helping.

In even worse scenarios, sometimes the poster will argue back even when they don't know what they're talking about. Hey - if you know it all, don't

ask for help.

When people give you free code that may solve your problem, by all means, try it out! And if it's not what you need, at least thank them.

And if people post code that is over your head, ask them for an explanation. Too many times I see great solutions posted, then the original poster

doesn't understand it and goes hunting around the PHP manual and finds some function they think will solve their problem but really has Nothing to

do with their problem! The solution you are given may not always be something you are totally familiar with, so just ask for a better explanation!

Remember when people help you, they are doing YOU a favor

Regardless of how big your ego is, it is NOT someone else's privilege to debug Your code. It is not their privilege to have them help you. It is

YOURS. Remember that when people help you they are doing YOU a favor. You are not doing them a favor by letting them see your incredible

application. Be patient, help people out by posting good descriptions of what you need help with, and not snapping at people with garbage such as

"if you aren't going to help don't waste my time replying".

---

Editing and Deleting Your Posts

Due to security issues and the need to ensure the quality of our knowledgebase, we have had to impose a 30 day limit on the ability for regular

users to EDIT thier posts. What this means, is that users have the ability to edit thier own posts for 30 days after creating it.

If for some reason, if a user needs a post changed that is more than 30 days old, a moderator can assist them to make the necessary changes.

This also means, as a rule, that we do not remove or delete content from our forums. So, before you post, consider this rule.

---