Browsing French translation

20.

Don't attach files more than a few megabytes in size to forms whenever possible – instead, upload them using FTP and reference their URLs. It is a limitation of the World Wide Web that form-based uploads are unstable.

21.

The best design tool in the world is a pen and pad of paper, or if you have one, a whiteboard. Design your website layout off the computer, and then implement it bit-by-bit in ocPortal.

22.

A forum community can make a website come alive – it can also make a website lose its controlled, professional feel. This is just one example demonstrating why you need to give thought to which ocPortal features you want to use, and how to use them.

23.

Use the inbuilt statistics features to see how your site is being used. With careful study, you can identify navigation problems, and where your strengths and weaknesses are (to allow you to focus your efforts).

24.

A common need is to give people access by default, but to be able to take away access on abuse. To do this, you could switch a user's usergroup to one with less privileges, but this requires maintaining of full permission sets for multiple usergroups. If you are using OCF, a better technique is to define a new ‘default usergroup’ that only has permissions for the abusable feature – new users will be put into that usergroup as well as the main usergroup which has wider permissions. To remove a user after their abuse, just remove them from the new ‘default usergroup’.

25.

ocPortal can cater for websites large and small – as your site grows, stop trying to set permissions by editing things, and start using the ‘Permission tree editor’ – it'll save you a lot of time when making batch changes as well as allowing you to see a complete view of your permissions!

26.

People will always abuse you and your website regardless of how good it is. Large websites will always get negative feedback from users who are super-liberal (thinking they have a right to free action on your website without following any rules) and users who are super-conservative (thinking that everyone should act in the certain way that represents their personal viewpoint). As a webmaster, you need a thick skin – try and be fair and balanced, and don't take criticism too harshly, especially when it conflicts.

27.

Turn on the ocProducts error e-mails if they're not already. We regularly fix minor bugs that people wouldn't bother report based on these, making the product more stable for everyone. You can do this by going to Setup > Configuration > Site

28.

Use the Comcode <tt>hide</tt> tag to place messages that are obscured until consciously uncovered. This is great for placing warnings (such as <tt>spoilers</tt> or disclaimers) or hiding answers to questions so to give the reader time to think.

29.

If you are a Firefox user, make use of the Web Developer Toolbar extension. It contains great tools for interactively working with CSS that you can use in supplement to ocPortal's own CSS editing capability (to test out ideas interactively before saving them in ocPortal).