FAQ

Frequently Asked Questions

Every site has to have a Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ), right? Well, this site is no different! So here we go!

Warning: This FAQ is about the website, not about the show SouthLAnd! If you want to know more about the show, check out the About SouthLAnd section of the site.

Contents

Can I upload my own custom avatar for my user account?

Yes and no. No, you cannot upload an avatar directly on the website here. Yes, you can have a custom user avatar, using the free service provided by Gravatar. Gravatar is a service that links your email address (or addresses) to an avatar and displays it on any site that supports the service. You can setup your free Gravatar account at http://www.gravatar.com and your Gravatar will show up automatically on the site here.

We highly recommend that you register and use Gravatar! This service is used by many, many sites around the internet and is growing fast. If you comment a lot on forums and blogs, chances are they currently use, or will soon use, this service. Register once now and you can add multiple email addresses the same account. Make your internet postings personal with the avatar of your choice!

Do I have to register in order to comment on posts?

Unfortunately, yes, registration is now required to comment due to the ever increasing volume of “blog spam” that has flooded us here on the site.

Fortunately, though, thanks to the generous donations of our supporters, we are able to use a very secure and robust 3rd party service known as Janrain Engage (formerly RPX) that allows you to link an existing account on one of 12 Social Networking sites around the internet to SouthlandTvFans.com. With this service, you can do a one-time quick & easy setup to verify your account on one of those services (like Google, Facebook, AOL, Windows Live, Twitter, etc.) and automatically setup your account here. If that service provides an email address (most of them do, except Twitter) then once you verify you are all done. You can go right into adding your comment and participating on the site. Otherwise, we’ll just prompt you for an email address and let you go on your way. Don’t worry – we do NOT share your information. Check out our Privacy Policy.

The 12 Social Networking/External services that we support for authentication are:

  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • Google
  • Yahoo
  • AOL
  • OpenID
  • MySpace
  • Windows Live ID
  • Blogger
  • flickr
  • WordPress.com
  • LiveJournal

We believe this represents the majority of the internet, especially as OpenID is one of the most widely adopted authentication methods available and can be used by most providers even if they don’t support any other method.

Once you have logged into your selected provider on their website (see next question) in the pop-up window, you will be returned to our website and you will be able to make your comment.

Is your 3rd Party Authentication system safe and secure?

Yes! Absolutely, 100% safe and secure! At no point during the authentication and login process do we ever ask for your username and/or password for that 3rd party service, nor will we ever do so. That is why we use this setup.

We use a system known as Janrain Engage (formerly RPX) to provide login services, which is world renowned for its security and safety. It is, in fact, the internet’s largest provider of 3rd party authentication services and the defacto standard for such services. Nobody is more trusted for this, which is why we used valuable user donations to pay for the Professional version of their product to give you more options for services to use for login. Your safety and security is at the foremost of our thoughts.

We send you (via the pop-up window) to the 3rd party site with a “token” (an encrypted text string), they log you in and send you back with that “token” and another bit of information that says that you logged in OK, along with some VERY basic information like your name and email address (depending on the service), all over an encrypted SSL connection for added security. We never know anything at all about what you sent to that service, so it’s completely between you and them. All we store is the “token” and any information you choose to enter here on our site (for example, an email address if you register using Twitter, or other information that you authorize that site to give us – you will be prompted to allow us to receive it, but NEVER your password).

If you run into other services claiming to use another service for login purposes and they ask you to enter your password (for example, Twitter “add-ons”), run the other way – they are either doing it wrong or trying to steal your password!

Why do you have Google Ads on the site?

Ideally, of course, our many hundreds of website visitors and SouthLAnd fans would help out by making donations of even $1 per person to help us keep the site running. After all, we get anywhere from a few hundreds to several thousand visits a day here! But, alas, that is not to be. :)

Because running a website, not to mention registering domains, running contests, paying for our chat room, buying prizes and everything else we do here is expensive! The few pennies we earn from the Google Ads don’t even begin to cover the expense of running this site and all that it involves, nor do the proceeds from the Store, but they do help offset the costs a little bit. We do try to be as discreet and inoffensive as possible with them as we can, so they are not intrusive and overbearing.

We also monitor the ads that appear on the site as much as possible to make sure that nothing offensive shows up. If, by chance, you do see an ad show up that you believe is offensive, please Contact the Webmaster and let him know so he can add a filter to the AdSense account.

How do I submit new content?

Step 1. Create An Account Directly On the Site

First, you must have an account registered directly with the site – not one that is provided through a 3rd party system like described above, which is for commenting only.  To do this, you need to log out (if you are already logged in through a service like Twitter or Facebook for commenting) then go to the Registration page. Create an account with a valid email address. This is important, because the system will email you your initial password at the address you give – if you don’t enter it correctly, you can’t get in!

Hint: If you want the convenience of using a 3rd party service to log in, you can create a direct account with us, then link it to a 3rd party site from the Profile page after you are fully registered. You just need to register with us directly first, but then you can use the Janrain Engage login service to do a “quick login” after the account is setup.

Once you have registered with your account, and confirmed it from the email sent to you, you need to remember when you go to log in (the link is at the bottom left of the page, in the footer) that you always use the “sign in with a password” option. Once you do get logged in, the first thing you may want to do is go to the Profile page from your Control Panel and setup an association with your 3rd party provider as described above. Then you’ll be able to log in automatically using Twitter, Facebook or one of the other 4 services again and still have your posting-enabled account.

Now that you have done that, there is one final step you need to do – notify me! By default, all new users are setup as just “Subscribers”, which allows them to make comments on existing posts. If you want to contribute new content (and we want you to!) then your account needs to be updated to “Contributor” so you can write posts and submit them into the queue for publishing. To do that, just send an email to support@southlandtvfans.com with your registered user name. These days, I tend to get tied up with my business so I get behind on emails some times. If the information you have to submit is timely, please add something to your subject line in the email to make it stand out and identify it as such, or send me something on Twitter (@southlandtvfans) to make sure you get my attention – otherwise I will get back to you as soon as I possibly can.

Step 2. Deciding What To Post

Obviously, we want content that is about, or related to, SouthLAnd and the SouthLAnd actors! The question is, what should be posted?

Here are a few simple guidelines to help you decide what should and should not be posted. Keep in mind, whatever you submit is going to be reviewed (and possibly edited) before it actually goes live on the site, so don’t worry if you make mistakes or spelling errors. The only way you will learn is by doing it! If you submit something that we can’t use, for whatever reason, then you’ll get feedback on the reasons with suggestions for how to improve it or exactly why it couldn’t be used.

Do Submit

  • Interviews, Reviews, Episode Recaps and News Articles from around the internet about SouthLAnd and the SouthLAnd cast. However – do not post the entire article, review or whatever unless you explicitly got permission from the original author/poster to do so, or the item has specifically displayed on it that it may be reused/reprinted! See the “How to Post” section below for more details.
  • Links to information about SouthLAnd that cannot be copied or shared, post a short introduction/description of the item with the link.
  • Pictures related to SouthLAnd if they are not copyrighted! This is extremely important and I will watch it like a hawk! Images from the paparazzi of people like Ben McKenzie leaving the airport and such, as popular as they are, usually are copyrighted and licensed to organizations like Getty Images and they are very, very active in going after sites that use them illegally. As a fan-run website, we cannot afford a multi-million dollar lawsuit because someone posted a picture that shouldn’t have been posted.
  • Original reviews or opinions of the show! Be creative and write something! We are doing a rotating schedule of “primary” Review & Recap postings for the new episodes of Season 2, however there is nothing that says we can’t have R&R’s for the older episodes to fill out the details of the site, or reviews of the show in general. Any original content written by users is encouraged!
  • What would you like to submit???? If you aren’t sure, just email me and ask! There’s no possible way we can anticipate every possible idea ahead of time, so go ahead and throw out an idea.

Do NOT Submit

  • Celebrity Gossip. Sorry Ben fans – this is not a Ben Fan Gossip Site, or even a Michael Cudlitz Gossip Site (no offense Ben or Mike). It is a SouthLAnd Fan site. :) Relevant articles about the show and the actors are one thing, but we do not need to post every time the actors go to the pet store or get off the plane at LAX. There are plenty of other sites devoted to that sort of thing.
  • Any copyrighted material. Period. Unless you specifically have permission from the copyright holder and I get that permission in writing (e.g., they send me an email or it is posted publicly on their website where I can capture it) we do not violate copyrights.
  • Attacks on other users of the site or people in general. We are here to support, and show our love for, SouthLAnd, not vent emotions or carry on vendettas.
  • Links to, or embedded videos of, episodes of the show from ANY site. Period. If people want to watch the show they can get it from one of the legitimate sites, which we link to EVERYWHERE on the site.
  • Links to any sort of affiliate program such as iTunes, Amazon.com, etc., for purchasing products, related to SouthLAnd or not. If there is something that you think is relevant and you believe the fans would appreciate it, then we can link to it, but we will do so with the affiliate programs setup for this website. Running this website takes a LOT of money and it is ALL VOLUNTEER. The Google Ads and affiliate links are one way in which we defray those costs, by a very tiny bit.
  • This should be obviously, but …. content unrelated to SouthLAnd.
  • Again, if you aren’t sure, email me.

How To Post

After you log in to the site (using your username and password!) you should see the Dashboard. If you don’t, and you were sent straight to your Profile on the first visit, that’s OK – that’s just your chance to setup the information people see about you, like what name is displayed, your website address, Twitter name, and so on.

Note that on the left side of the page are your Navigation Links to get around the admin portion of the website. There is also a Quick Link menu at the very top of the page, towards the right side where it should say “Howdy, yourusername“, which defaults to “New Post”, but has a drop-down for “Drafts”. More about that later.

To get started, click on the “Posts” header in the Navigation Links on the left side. This will bring up a list of all the posts that have been made on the site to date. Why? So you can see what has and has not been posted yet – as well as any that may be pending in the queue to be posted but not yet published. This will help you decide if you want to actually post your content, or if someone else already has. There is a search function there, too, so you can quickly find something by keyword or phrase.

If you find that your subject has not yet been posted, then click on the “Add new” link on the left, under the “Posts” header, or click the “New Post” button at the top of the page, either one. This is going to open a new page for you with a fancy Graphical Editor. Don’t be intimidated! Just think of it as an online Word Processor!

The first thing you need to do is decide what you are going to use for a title. Here we use the KISS principle, but not the one you are used to. This one is Keep It Short and Simple. Think newspaper headlines – just enough to tell the users what you are posting, but not so long as to be cumbersome. Whatever you use for the title, that’s also going to be the link for the post, so long and wordy titles will be long and word links!

Once you have your title, it’s time to write the content. Since it’s a WYSIWYG editor, just like Word or Google Docs, you have all the buttons to do formatting for you. So if you want bold text, just highlight the text and click the B button. If you want to make a link, highlight the text that you want to make into a link and click the “chain link” button. If you don’t know what a button does, just hover your mouse over it and a tooltip will display for you.

Fancier formatting like tables and such are a bit much for this FAQ, but feel free to play around with the editor and see what the buttons can do! You can always click the “Preview” button at any time and your post will open in a new window/tab showing you exactly how it will look on the site after it is published. This is a great way to check your progress. Your edits are also automatically saved as drafts periodically, so if you get disconnected or your computer dies, you’ll be able to come back and pick up where you left off (remember I mentioned that Drafts link earlier?).

If you want to add images to your post (and they meet our requirements), or a video, then you can click one of the icons next to the “Upload/Insert” text above the editor. This takes a little getting used to, as it is not really very easy, so if you want to email me any media to be used in your post and have it inserted for you, feel free to do so. I’ll add a special FAQ for how to use the Image uploader as soon as I can.

Once you are all done and happy with your content, and you have Previewed it to see how it will look, then you all you need to do is submit it to the queue by clicking the “Submit for Review” button! If, at any point in time (even after it is published) you find an error, you can always come back and edit the post and make your corrections.

If you get half way through a post and need to go away for a while, that’s OK. Instead of using “Submit for Review” you can click “Save Draft”. This will put it into your own Drafts queue, so you can come back and pick up where you left off.

I normally check the site for new posts and review them at least once a day, if not more often. If, for some reason, you have submitted a post and it hasn’t showed up on the site after a day, then feel free to contact me and point out your post. It may have slipped by me for some reason, or there may be some reason why I haven’t been able to get online to review them for some reason. Even if I can’t get to the website I can still usually get to emails, though, and get a response back to you pretty quickly.

Posting Reviews, Interviews and External Content

Unless we have explicit permission from the original author/poster of the content, or they have given permission on their website to post all the content, we do not post everything from another site. Instead, what you do is copy the title from the original site, start your post with “From: Site Name”, then copy & paste the first 2-3 paragraphs of content in. Then you post a line with something like “Read more at: link” or “More: link” and link to the original page.

For example, check out this post about Ben McKenzie’s blog entry from TVGuide.com.

Some Style Guidelines

  • When posting the show’s name, please post it as SouthLAnd, with a capital S and the LA capitalized. Make the whole name bold. We are trying to make this consistent throughout the site to make it stand out.
  • Episode names and the names of other television shows and movies should be in italics.
  • When you create a link to an external website, please use the option “Open in new window”. This leaves our website open if the go somewhere else, so when they close that window we are still there, and they will be encouraged to continue on to look at other pages.
  • Don’t use a lot of ALL CAPS or put large chunks of text in bold. This is annoying to the readers and detracts from the experience (not to mention the content)
  • Give credit where credit is due! If you are pulling content from somewhere, link to it. If you use a picture from another site, give credit to the photographer (assuming we have the right to use it in the first place).
  • If you have more than one picture, alternate the layout left & right, so they aren’t all lined up on one side or the other.
  • If your post is long, we’ll add a “more” link so it doesn’t make the front page of the site too long, so make sure you start it off with a “bang” to grab the reader’s attention! Get them interested from the very beginning so they want to click that “more” button to see the whole thing.