Changing The Website Theme

Each user can customize the theme, or design, of the website by choosing from one of the available themes. Themes can be added as well, so creative users could design, or help to design, new themes for the website.

1. Navigate to your account managemnet page by click on "My account" on the right side of the page
2. Click on "Edit" at the top of the page
3. Scroll down the page until you see the section titled "Theme configuration"
4. Click on the radio button to the right of the desired theme to set your new theme
5. Click "Save" at the bottom of the page to activate your new theme
6. Rinse and repeat as desired

 

Creating A New Game

This video walks through creating a new game. You must be promoted to the role of Captain on the website in order to create games. Contact the website administrator if you think you should be promoted to this role.

Check the calendar to see if the game is already created before creating a new game.

Creating an Embedded Slideshow from a Smugmug Gallery

Embedding a slideshow from a Smugmug gallery is fairly simple but requires a couple of steps and there are some easy places to make mistakes.

Start by creating a page or announcement to hold the embedded slideshow, this can be essentially any type of Drupal page, in a group, outside a group, etc. Then setup the page with the normal title, tags, text, etc. before moving on to the slideshow embedding piece.

In the "Body" section of the page you're going to insert the following code:


<object align="middle" height="600" width="600">
<param name="movie" value="http://www.smugmug.com/ria/ShizamSlides-2007090601.swf">
<param name="flashvars" value="AlbumID=2504559&AlbumKey=fO3Dg&transparent=true&crossFadeSpeed=500&clickUrl=http://www#46;smugmug#46;com">
<param name="wmode" value="transparent">
<param name="bgcolor" value="000000">
<param name="allowNetworking" value="all">
<param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always">
<embed src="http://www.smugmug.com/ria/ShizamSlides-2007090601.swf" flashvars="AlbumID=2504559&AlbumKey=fO3Dg&transparent=true&crossFadeSpeed=500&clickUrl=http://www#46;smugmug#46;com"
wmode="transparent" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowScriptAccess="always" allowNetworking="all" height="600" width="600"></embed></object>


This code makes a call to a program on the Smugmug website that will handle the slideshow for us. However, we need to do one more thing, tell this program what gallery we want to display in the slideshow.

Smugmug uses AlbumID codes and AlbumKey codes to keep track of galleries, so we need to enter the right AlbumID and AlbumKey codes into the code above to make sure the right gallery is displayed. Finding the AlbumID and AlbumKey is done by visiting the gallery on the Smugmug website and clicking the Share button (upper right), clicking Get a Link, then copying the key from the Slideshow share link (3rd link listed on the Get a Link page). The Slideshow link looks something like this, http://wafc.smugmug.com/photos/swfpopup.mg?AlbumID=8554912&AlbumKey=CX9Hx. We're interested in the last two parts of that link.

Copy the AlbumID and overwrite the AlbumID in the code quoted above. Do the same with the AlbumKey. Note that there are two instances of both values, so you need to make the replacement in both places.

Finally, make sure the Input Format for the page is set to Full HTML (this is set via options just below the Body section of the editing page).

Use the Preview button to verify your work and then save the page. The slideshow might be a little slow to load because it's pulling all the info from Smugmug.

If you're interested in learning more about Smugmug integration check out this site, http://wiki.smugmug.net/display/SmugMug/Flash+Slideshow.

Entering Scores For A Game

This video walks through the process of adding scores to a game, note that you must be promoted to the role of Captain on the website to edit a game. Contact the website administrator if you think you should be promoted to the Captain role.

If the game doesn't already exist you must create it in order to record scores. You can see how to create a game in the video "Creating A New Game".

Signing Up For A New Account

The website provides different types of access depending on a person's account status.

• Anonymous - read access to most stuff on the website but cannot post new content of any sort
• Authenticated (normal) - read access to most stuff on the website and can post some types of new content (e.g., forum entries, posts in Group areas, vote on polls, etc.)

Because of this, most WAFC members probably want to sign up for an account on the site, which will allow you to be an Authenticated user.
Steps:

1. Click on "Create new account" in the upper left side of the http://www.wafc.org/ home page.
2. Enter a "Username"
3. Enter an "E-mail address" (make sure this is right!)
4. Enter optional information like mobile phone number (useful for receiving text messages from the website), join groups that interest you, and enter some geographical data...all optional though
5. Enter the "reCAPTCHA" text challenge to verify that you're human and not a spammer's software program
6. Click "Create new account"
7. Check your email account (entered in step 3) for an email from the website with a password to use (don't forget to check Junk Mail folder if you don't see the email shortly)
8. Go back to the home page, http://www.wafc.org/, and enter your "Username" and "Password" in the upper left corner of the page, then click "Log in"
9. Change your password to something easy to remember by going to your account (click "My account" on the right side of the page or go to the URL http://www.wafc.org/users/"username" replace "username with your username
10. Clcik on "Edit" at the top of the page near your username
11. Enter a new password in the "Password" and "Confirm password" boxes
12. Click "Save" at the bottom of the page

Other things you may want to do while editing your account:

1. Upload a picture of yourself
2. Link your account to an OpenID identity so you can login using a Yahoo! or similar id
3. Set a desired language for the site (English or Spanish are the only options right now)
4. Add a signature to be tacked onto the bottom of comments and posts that you make
5. Switch the theme (design) of the site, there are a few options to choose from
6. Change which "blocks" of information are "turned on" on your account, those are the little areas to the left and right sides of the screen with stuff like weather, Active forum topics, New forum topics, etc.
7. Change your notification (email) setting to control how often the site emails you
8. Change your autosubscribe options for new groups and content (autosubscribing sets up a notification process that will email you when new content is added)
9. Change personal information like your home phone number, city, state, and hobbies
10. Change your Mobile settings to make sure you can receive text messages sent from the site (or send yourself links to content using the "Send to phone" link on most content)

Using Groups

The website provides a service called "Groups" that allows a group of people to share an isolated space on the website for virtually anything. Groups are a very powerful option because a Group can be virtually an entire website within the wafc.org website.
Some examples of possible groups:

• Leagues
• Teams
• Volunteers

Any collection of people could form a group, the key is getting enough "subscribers" (participants) to make the group worthwhile.
Some of the key group features:

• Privacy - each group can be made private, requiring an invitation to join or approval of membership, if a group is private no one outside the group can see discussions inside the group
• Focused communication - with a limited set of members it's easier to post content to a group and blast it out to people without spamming everyone on wafc.org; group members can customize how often they receive emails about new content posted to the group
• Customized themes - groups can use different themes than the main website to create a unique look and feel
• Open posting - users can (usually) post information to groups just like they would to a forum
• Unread filters - users can quickly see any unread posts within the group

In general, Groups provide a very flexible private or semi-private environment for like minded collections of individuals to communicate without disturbing anyone else on the site.
To create a group, send a request to the webmaster using the contact form.