How-To Guides for Beginners

[Jeff Probst]

Welcome to Bracari Beach!

Congratulations on finding your way this far, not every player in the Stranded family manages to figure out their way from the main beach home. Now that you have got this far, let me just talk you through a few features of the board. This stuff will all be second nature to you in a few days time, trust me.

First up you will see the Outer Forum View - which you can return to at any time by clicking on the header image up top;



Each of these marks out a Sub-forum of the beach. Click on any name to enter that area, and see the threads/conversations within. The icon of a page to the left here is greyed out - showing you there's been no new posts since your last visit. Once there are, the icon changes color to alert you.

1) Camp - This is your general beach area. Chill & chat with your tribemates as a group, play games with each other, swap war stories, whatever you want. You're all able to create threads in this area and the atmosphere around camp depends on what you guys make of it, so keep it active. Feel free to talk at your leisure over here. The other tribe can not see what you are discussing, and in the case of any of them visiting your beach, all threads will be archived, and they won't see your old conversations.

2) The Arena - This is actually not a subforum in itself, but a hyperlink that will jump you straight across to the challenge arena and main beach. There is another one of these over on main that will bring you back here in a hurry :)

3) Tribal Council - You know what this is, and you never want to be here if you can help it.

4) Your Confessional - Only you and the hosts can see this area. And it will stay that way until the game is over. No-one else will ever see in here until after the game. By which point, it is one of the most fun things to read through them all and see where everyone's heads were at at different points. Pleasepleaseplease use this area as much and as often as you can! We will prompt you now and again, don't worry.




To the left of each sub-forum are a few stats about what is inside. These explain themselves but the one bit you might miss is the little arrow here, beside my name. If you click directly on this it will bring you directly to the latest post inside.





Direct your eyes to the top right and you will see these chunky tabs;




All nice and mobile or tablet friendly The most important one is your personal message link. This will take you to your inbox. I cannot overstress the importance of PMing in this game. So much I have a whole other thread for that. If the forum threads are your tribe interacting on the beach, your PMs are huddled one-on-one conversations in the shelter, or gatherings of a select few up in the forest. Mark my words, the earliest boots in the game will be the people who don't master the art of PM

The Memberlist is another useful resource, containing links to everyone on your tribe's profile pages, and the hosts too. So make sure you know how to get to it for easy access to PMing a specific person.

The settings page allows you to do some useful tweaks like setting the board clock to suit your own timezone, and the highly under-rated friends & foes page. Have a poke around and see what you can make useful.




Last but not least is the lurkerbar down the bottom of the page;



Here you can see exactly who is online right this moment, and you can click directly to any person's profile or even memberlists by group. One last tip on this bit - if you click directly on the "Who is Online" text, it will actually show you not just who is here, but what they are doing right now too

[Jeff Probst]

How To: Posting Images

Hey guys, time for a crash course in uploading and posting images on the boards! This is actually a breeze to do once you try it out once or twice, but this will be an essential skill in some challenges so better that you have it down in advance

1) So first we need an image - or more accurately, we need it's URL (i.e. internet address :P ) If we are just pulling an image from somewhere else on the web, all you do is right-click on the image you want and you will be offered the option to copy image location or Copy Image URL



Note that if you are doing this from somewhere like google images, you will need to actually go and view original image, or at least visit the page. If you try do it straight from Google you will end up with a huge string of text instead of the URL. The URL is going to be something that ends in .jpg or .png or .gif . Now skip to step 3!






2) Thats all well and good if the image is already on the net, but if it's something you've made yourself - say the solution to a challenge - you will need to upload it to the web first. Make sure you use an anonymous upload site. Try any of;
http://www.imgur.com / http://www.cubeupload.com / http://www.postimage.org / http://www.min.us

Do not use your photobucket account where it will sit beside your holiday snaps No-one wants to see that and it's a backdoor to breaking the anonymity rule.

Looking at imgur your chosen website will create a URL for you to use, like so Copy the URL.








3) Now here's the not tricky-at-all part. You need to create [ img ] tags to make it appear here as a picture and not just a link. The easiest way is to just click the [ img ] button at the top of the post reply window shown here;



That will make the tags appear. If it's speed you're after, you might find you can type that out quicker than you can click ;)



Remember the URL you grabbed? Next you want to paste that between the tags, like so;



Now hit submit (or preview) and hey presto, that turns into this!








kk, now you go. Use this thread. I promise we won't laugh at your noobie fudge-ups

Srsly though, learn this now, reap the benefits in later challenges

[Jeff Probst]

The single most important feature in this game is Private Messaging. Those that master it will have a significant advantage over those who struggle with messaging. It is the only way to make true bonds/alliances in this game.



How To: Compose a Private Message

There are several ways to send messages in this game. You can go to your message box (mentioned below) and press the "Compose Message" button.



You can also select the "PM" button underneath a username in a post on the forums.



Once composing the message, it works in the same way as a post, but you can specify who you would like to send the message to at the top. You can either add one person or multiple people for a group message (more on this later). If you have selected the PM button under a person's Avatar then they will automatically be added to the "To" box.








How To: Reply to a Message

The first thing you will notice is the button at the top of the page. It will either be lit up red when you have a new message or it will remain the same color as the other tabs meaning you have no new messages.



(0 Messages with a red box means that you have viewed your message box, but still have unread messages in it.)

Clicking on it brings you to your message box. Once in your message box, you will notice that new messages appear with a red symbol next to them indicating that you have not yet read them. All read messages will have a faint grey box next to them.



Notice the key on the left hand side. This will tell you if you have replied to a message or not. You can see the dark grey line to the left of the message that has been replied to here:



At the top of the message, you will notice options for replying to the message or replying to all. In order to reply to the one person who has sent the message, press the "send reply" button.







How To: Group Messaging

This brings us to group messaging. This can come in handy if you have an alliance or discussion with multiple people and you want to have a conversation with all of them at once. Instead of hitting "send reply" press the "reply to all" button in order to send a message back to all of the members involved in a group message.


Upon doing so you will notice the "to" list at the top of the new PM. You can add new members to this message to broaden your group message. You can also click on the X next to a member to remove them from the group message upon sending.

[Jeff Probst]

How To: Changing Your Password

Changing your password is completely fine, infact it's encouraged to help you remember it! However, please do not change your e-mail or add any other personal contact information as it will reveal your identity and will be considered a breach of the rules.


In order to change your password, click the Settings tab at the top of the page in the menu bar.



From there, navigate to the Profile tab at the top of the User Control Panel.



On the left hand menu, navigate to the "Edit Account Settings" tab.



This is where you can enter your new password!

[Brenda Lowe]

I hope you all had a good read of this thread, lots of tips in here. I have one more to add.

You should make some time now to save yourself lots later, and go to everyone on the tribe's individual member page. e.g. this page for me; memberlist.php?mode=viewprofile&u=184

Once there, find the "Add Friend" link;



Do this, and confirm it, and then go do it for everyone on the tribe. Once this is done, you get a neat little sidebar on your PM page that highlights who is online and who is off. So that should help with PMing.

(Above the line and regular text is online, below the line and italics are off)




You can get all of Bracari via here; memberlist.php?mode=group&g=8