CSDb help / documentation
CSDb usage
The front page:
This is the main page of CSDb. Here you can see the latest additions made to CSDb, the latest posts in the forum etc etc.
At the right you can see the best demos, groups and sceners ever, based on the CSDb users votes so be sure to vote yourself. If you are a registered user, you can customize what you want displayed here.
You can also keep an eye on which other CSDb users are currently browsing CSDb, and send them a private message by clicking on the PM-button next to their handle. By clicking on their handle you will get to their profile in CSDb if they have one attached. If not CSDb will try to search for the scener in the database and show the persons info. (this works in about 95% of the cases)
To use the oneliner function and the news&comments you need to be logged in.
You can always get back to the front page by clicking the CSDb logo at the top right corner.
Browsing:
CSDb is all about information on the C64 scene, so to browse through this is the most importaint part of this site. You can do this either by clicking on some of the links on the frontpage, by clicking the browse-tab at the top of the page, or by searching for something in the search field in the top right corner.
Please also notice the advanced search function.
When you are browsing the information of CSDb you'll find a lot of links. F.x. when viewing a sceners info-page you'll find links to the groups this scener are/were member of, links to the releases he/she have contributed to etc.
Registering:
You can choose to become a registered CSDb user. It very simple and fast to sign up - we only need your E-mail address and a word or two about you.
When you register you will have a lot of new possibilities. We really recommend you to register if you are planing to use CSDb.
If you are not registered you can of course see the information in CSDb, but when you are registered you can add your own information, comment on the information already there and vote for the releases you've seen, and a lot more.
Please notice that when you log into CSDb a cookie will be sent to your browser so that you'll log in automatically the next time you visit CSDb. If you are using a public computer remember to click the log out button when leaving CSDb. This will remove the cookie from your browser.
It is of course NOT allowed for one person to have multiple accounts. Any such "fake" accounts will be deleted when discovered, and in certain cases the person will be banned from CSDb!
Be aware that being a registered CSDb user, and have your profile entered in the database is two different things. Just because someone have his/hers profile in the database, this dosn't mean that also have a user account, and visa versa. Because of this we can not make a direct link from a registered CSDb user to a profile in the database, but the user can do that.
If you are a user, and have a profile in the database, you can relate your CSDb account to a profile. This is done from the userpage in Update your settings by selecting the appropiate handle-id. (Use the little search box). This will make it easier for other users to find information about you and contact you.
Editing and adding information:
When you are a registered CSDb user you can add and edit information in CSDb.
BEFORE adding or modifying entries READ the Rules!
If you want to add a new scener/group/release or event you can do this from your userpage.
If you want to edit an already existing entry you go to it's info page, and click on the Update button at the bottom of the page. Sometimes an entry might be locked by other users (which is shown by a key-icon next to the Update button) and so only they (the maintainers) can edit the information of this record.
Any user can become a maintainer of any non-locked record from it's edit page, though we strongly urge people ONLY to set themselves as maintainers of records that directly related to themselves. Also because a maintained record is no longer open for the public to change, it is the maintainers responsibility that the data in the entry is correct and full.
ATTENTION!!
As there is no direct control with the information entered to CSDb, we strongly suggest that you should ONLY enter information that you are sure of, and never enter personal information of others which have not specifically approved you doing so!!!
The forum:
Yes. CSDb has got it's own discussion forum where you can talk to other C64/CSDb users. You have to be registered to be able to write in the forum.
Searching:
You can use the search field on the right side of every CSDb page to find specific groups, releases, sceners or events.
If your search matches only one entry you will be bounced to that entry automatically.
If you are using Netscape 6 or above you can also add a CSDb search tab to your sidebar.
There also exists a search-plugin for the Firefox browser made by Jens Bürger aka sunnyman which can be found here.
In case you want some more advanced search features you should try the advanced search page.
The userpage:
When you are registered and have logged in you can access your userpage by clicking on the userpage-tab at the top of the page.
From here you can add information to CSDb, talk to other CSDb users either through the forum or through the CSDb private message system.
Of course you can also change your personal account details here, and see/edit/delete your comments, votes etc. you might have made in CSDb.
The CSDb private message system:
CSDb has a private message system which allows you to send messages to other CSDb users. The next time they load a CSDb page they will be notified that they got a message from you, and they can write you back.
You can always check your messages and see if the guy you've sent a message to have read it.
The private message system can be found via the userpage. However there are shortcuts to sending messages. Some places you can find a small PM-button or a '*' next to a users login, and by pressing this you can send a message directly to this person.
Writing text in CSDb:
As this database is international, all text should be written in english. Of course, when writing private messages, this dosn't apply
CSDb filters out any html-tags you might write in the forum, in private messages or in any other place where you can write text. So if you write "<b>Hello</b>" you will not get Hello but just <b>Hello</b>.
This is done so that noone can make unwanted html-fuckups, but this also limits what you can write.
Link parsing:
To try to compensate for this, there is a link-parser in CSDb which will try to recognise url's, and automaticly make them into active links. The rule is that when CSDb finds "http://" or "ftp://" it will place a <a href="...."> around the text, and thereby make it an active link.
CSDb tags:
Another little thing to compensate for the html-filter, and to make it easier to refer to internal stuff in CSDb, we have some special CSDb-tags which have meaning, and which will not be filtered. These tags are:
- <scener id="XX">
- <group id="XX">
- <release id="XX">
- <event id="XX">
- <sid id="XX">
- <forum id="XX">
Writing one of these tags in f.x. the forum, and replacing XX with a valid ID, it will be parsed to a link to the current record or forum post in CSDb with it's name as the link text. Note that it is very importaint that the ID you give it is valid. This means that there must be a record in CSDb of the type specified by the tag with the ID. If not, the tag will not be parsed, and will be displayed just as you wrote it.
As an example, if you write: <group id="1"> you will get: No Name.
BBcode:
CSDb also supports some BBcode tags.
The following tags are supported:
- [b]bold text[/b]
- [i]italic text[/i]
- [u]underlined text[/u]
- [s]strikeout text[/s]
- [code]Some code[/code]
- [img]url[/img]
- [url=someurl]Link text[/url]
- [quote=name]A quote[/quote] (The =name can be ommited)
If you are missing a tag let us know.
Services provided by CSDb:
CSDb has grown to be a rather big database of the C64 scene, and to make the information in it more accessable there have been made a few services.
The CSDb webservice
This webservice can provice more or less the same information that can be found when surfing CSDb, but it returns the output in XML-format for easy handling of scripts allowing the information in CSDb to be used by external sites, or for private use.
Click here for more information.
The CSDb RSS-feeds
RSS is a Web content syndication format, which allows the website who provides this service to make information available to a large number of RSS readers that exists.
CSDb provides a number of RSS feeds with different kind of information. Information on these feeds can be found here. There is also a main RSS feed which is a feed over the feeds available in CSDb, with a little description of what they provide.
CSDb login for other websites:
CSDb offers a simple way for other websites to let people log in using their CSDb account, in a similar way as seen by Facebook and Google etc.
When people log in on your website using their CSDb account, you will get some basic information about the CSDb accout. You can specify what information you want, and the user will be notified of this before approving upon it.
Note that if the person is already logged into CSDb in the current browser, it will not ask for login and password.
For you to use it on your website you first need a unique siteID, which Perff can give to you. Either send a PM or Mail.
You can then maintain your sites which use this feature directly on the CSDb userpage.
It should be quite easy to implement on your website assuming you know a bit about webprogramming and javascript.
Instead of a longer description you can check out this example which should be self-explaning.
Please note that you need to include jQuery, jQuery UI and the CSDb authenticate js-file on the page to be able to use this feature.
|
|
|
