The Small Business Design Network - the small business forum for ideas FAQ

The Laughingbird forums have grown tremendously over the last 5+ years and we thank all of you for being a part of this growing community.

In order to keep the forums running well and to prevent problems, please follow these simple rules.
If you have any questions or problems, please feel free to contact one of the Laughingbird forum Mods or Admins.

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The Golden Rules.

• Treat members ...and yourself, with respect.
• Members of this forum are using the forum and participating in discussions on their own time (as are you). Nobody likes to be yelled at or made fun of.
• Help others. The forum is a community, and works best when people share information.
• Provide feedback. If someone helps you by answering your question, try to add a follow-up response letting them know if it worked or not. Be polite and post "Thank You's".
  
  

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General Rules.
(An overview of the rules below can be squished into two words: Common Sense. If you feel you've somehow lost your common sense... please read on.)

• While debating and discussion is fine, we will not tolerate rudeness, insulting posts, personal attacks or purposeless inflammatory posts. Our decision is final in these matters.
  
  
• Please refrain from posting meaningless threads, one word (or short) nonsense posts, or the like.
  
  
• Multiple or repeated postings in order to increase your post count is not allowed.
  
  
• Spamming and trolling is not allowed (what's "Trolling" you ask? If you don't know, you're probably safe with us). This may be cause for your immediate ban.
  
  
• Please wait a reasonable amount of time before bumping posts. For style changes and general 'how-to' questions this should be 24 hours. For specific troubleshooting issues, use 12 hours as a guideline.
  
  
• We also do not allow posts that are sexual in nature or violate to our family community. We DO have visitors who are younger than 13 visit our forums occasionally. The Laughingbird Forum team shall be the sole arbitrator of what does and what does not violate community standards. For the most part, we'll use our common sense.
  
  
• Discussion of illegal activities such as software and music piracy and other intellectual property violations are not allowed. Your post will be deleted.
  
  
• Each member is allowed one login account. Registering with multiple accounts is not allowed.
  
  
• We reserve the right to remove offensive posts without notice.
  
  
• If you are going to post non-English on these forums, please also post an English Translation of your post.

Also while these rules cover most common situations, they cannot anticipate everything. Consequently we reserve the right to take any actions we deem appropriate to ensure these forums are not disrupted or abused in any way.

We reserve the right to ban anyone who wilfully violates the forum rules, as access to our support forums are a privilege and not a right. A banned customer is still entitled to support for any Laughingbird Software product they may have.

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Links in sigs.

Links in signatures must follow these guidelines:

• Linking to a commercial product/service is fine, provided it is not a product or service that competes with a product or service offered by Laughingbird Software
• Promotional text for a commercial product or service is ok, provided there are no price(s) of product(s) or service(s) listed.
• A link and promotional text for a site that is not commercial and does not contain product(s) and/or service(s) is allowed, provided the site is not sexual or does not violate the community standards. The Laughingbird Forum team shall be the sole arbitrator of what does and what does not violate community standards. (Examples include sites about drugs and/or sex.
• Duplicate links to the same URL in a signature are not allowed.

Large signature images are no longer allowed. It simply makes it too hard to read a thread you've posted to.

For text signatures: 4 lines normal size, 8 lines small size and up to 90 chars per line. Font sizes above 2 are not allowed. (Blank lines count as lines.)
Do not use images with large text to bypass the previous item
For images in signatures: 1 image up to 300 pixels wide, 125 pixels tall and 20k in size

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Avatars.

Every forum member is requested to have an Avatar.
Along with the Avatars we've got built into the forum (over 200 to choose from), you can also obtain some custom avatars from the following sites:

The Avatar Creator (Created by our own Laughingbird Mod Chris)
http://www.theavatarcreator.com/

The Simpsons Avatar Creator
http://simpsonizeme.com/

Another cool Avatar maker by GamEdition:
http://www.gamedition.com/31/Avatar_Creator

Forum Faces (included in your user control panel)
These terrific Avatars were provided by Afterglow

Here are a few examples of some of the 200 Avatars we've got built into the forum...

Many more to choose from. Click Here (after logging in) to view your choices.

Avatars that may be confused with official staff avatars are not allowed.

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Thanks for your help.
Let's all make this a community we're proud and happy to be a part of.

- Marc Sylvester
Laughingbird Software and owner of The Small Business Design Network

Here you can find answers to questions about how the board works. Use the links below or the search box above to find your way around.

The Blog system gives you your own personal space at The Small Business Design Network - the small business forum for ideas. Depending on how the administrator has configured the blog, you will be able to create your own entries and control who may view them.