AdsFlick Help & FAQ

Membership

Do I Need to Register To Use AdsFlick?
Registration is not necessary to browse news items, view comments, view member profiles or to grab a RSS feed. However, to submit news stories, boost (jack it) a story's ranking, drop a story's ranking (drop it) and/or post comments, registration is required.

How Do I Become a AdsFlick Member?
To become a AdsFlick member, simply click the "Register" link in the grey nav bar just below the AdsFlick logo near the top of the page. Fill in the form fields on the registration page, click the "Create user" button and you're done. The entire process takes less than a minute. Password and personal profile information can be changed at anytime from your member account.

What are the Benefits of AdsFlick Membership?
As noted above, AdsFlick members can vote or "drop" news submissions as well as post comments about news stories. In addition, a member can:

1. Edit news items previously submitted by using the "admin links" link that appears below the story titles.

2. Check his/her Inbox for messages received. The "Inbox" link appears in the grey nav bar near the top of the page after member login.

3. Review posting history. A member's Profile page has 7 tabs - Personal info, Submitted, Published, Upcoming, Commented, Voted, and Saved - which are fairly self-explanatory but in brief allow you to:

    - modify your personal profile
    - review a list of your previously submitted news stories
    - review a list of your previously published news stories
    - check upcoming stories (i.e. submitted but not yet published)
    - peruse member comments about stories submitted by you
    - review votes cast for your submissions in date order (recent - oldest)
    - read news stories you have saved to your member account

4. View people you have added as friends as well as those who have added you as a friend.

5. Search the AdsFlick member base.

6. Add Friends to your Member Profile simply by clicking on the Posted by "username" link and then the "Add 'username' to my friends" link.

7. Send private messages to other members in your Friends list.

News Submissions

How Can I Submit a News Item?
To submit a news story, simply click the "Submit a new story" tab on any AdsFlick page. Follow the instructions on each succeeding page. Once you have submitted your story, it will appear in the Upcoming News section.

By default, your story receives one vote when you submit it. For a news story to move from Upcoming News to Published News, it must receive at least two or more votes. Non-members cannot vote and Members can only vote for a news story once.

Why are News Items Removed?
News submissions can be removed for several reasons:

1. A news story that fails to receive at least 2 votes remains in the Upcoming News section for 10 days. At the end of 10 days, it is automatically discarded.

2. News stories may be removed manually by the AdsFlick administrator, if they are off-topic, contain profanity or otherwise violate AdsFlick's Terms of Use.

3. News stories can also be removed by members using the "Drop it" feature, which is a link that appears below every news story. Once a news story receives a certain number of "Drop it" votes, it is discarded. The formula for determining whether a story is dropped or not is based on a ratio of positive versus negative votes.

We encourage members to use the "Drop it" feature to keep AdsFlick free of irrelevant, off-topic, offensive content.

Note: The "Drop it" icon and text will appear below a news item only if you have not voted to "drop" that story. Once you have used the "Drop it" feature for a news story, it will no longer be visible to you for that story.

How Can I Find News Items that I am Looking For?
Use the Search form which can be found at the top right of every page. Currently, only news item descriptions are searched, not titles.

How Do I Embed Videos into My News Submissions?
Members can embed videos with their news submissions using supported video tags. Currently, AdsFlick supports the addition of videos from the following video sites: Youtube.com, Google Video, Veoh.com, Xoinks.com, Vimeo.com, MySpace.com, DailyMotion.com, MetaCafe.com, ifilm.com, Guba.com, Revver.com and Windows Media files (wmv).

Not all of these video services have been tested with the AdsFlick system. We strongly recommend using the Preview feature before posting a news item with an embedded video. If you can't get a video to load properly in Preview mode, DO NOT publish the news item.

Note: Place the video ID between the video tags not the URL to the video.

Below are some examples of proper tag usage with some of the above noted video services:

YouTube:
URL to video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nsa5ZTRJQ5w
Tag usage: <youtube>nsa5ZTRJQ5w</youtube>

Vimeo:
URL to video: http://www.vimeo.com/clip:219323
Tag usage: <vimeo>219323</vimeo>

Xoinks:
URL to video: http://xoinks.com/mov/view_video.php?viewkey=13a279a0ce06d7fe5f30
Tag usage: <xoinks>13a279a0ce06d7fe5f30</xoinks>

MetaCafe:
URL to video: http://www.metacafe.com/watch/332947/riya_launches_like_com_the_first_true_visual_search_engine/
Tag usage: <metacafe>332947</metacafe>

ifilm:
URL to video: http://www.ifilm.com/video/2812819
Tag usage: <ifilm>2812819</ifilm>

Guba:
URL to video: http://www.guba.com/watch/3000010696?duration_step=0&fields= 23&filter_tiny=0&pp=10&query=news&sb=10&set=5&sf=0&size_step=0&o=3&sample= 1182551205:7c0decd74668d629121d1f44238c9c95e3d99967
Tag usage: <guba>3000010696</guba>

Revver:
URL to video: http://one.revver.com/watch/306111
Tag usage: <revver>306111</revver>

Google Video: In a box next to a Google Video are 2 form fields, one of which is a URL field. The URL in the URL form field is generally a YouTube URL. Use the video ID from this URL as per the YouTube example above.

Other AdsFlick Features

Add to
Clicking on the icons below a news item allows you to add the link for that item to social bookmarking sites such as Digg, Simpy, Reddit, Del.icio.us, Yahoo and others. Currently you can submit news item links to 15 social bookmarking services.

Discuss
The Discuss option requires AdsFlick membership but allows you to comment on a submitted news item or respond to comments made by other members as well as see who else voted for the news item. Clicking on the names of members who voted will take you to their member profiles. From a member's profile, you can Add to Your Friends list, Send a Message or Search for other members.

Save
The Save feature found below the "Add to" links and beside the "Discuss" option, allows you to save a news item to a "Saved" folder which can be accessed from within your member Profile. You can view previously saved news favorites anytime you visit the site. Once you have saved a news item, the "Save" link changes to a "Remove" link. Clicking on the "Remove" link will delete the item previously saved from your Saved folder.

Tell A Friend
This link resides next to the "Save" link under each news story. Clicking on the Tell A Friend link will allow you to send a message regarding a news story to three of your friends.

Profile
Once you login to your member account, you can access your personal information by clicking on the Profile link. From the Profile page, you can change your password, upload your image, see all the news items you've previously submitted or commented on, members who have added you as a friend and those you've added as friends.

Adding and Watching Friends on AdsFlick
You can add friends in several ways. One way is to visit your profile, click on the 'Search Users' link and and search by username or email. A table of matching usernames will appear with an Add/Remove icon on the far right. Simply click to Add or Remove a Friend from your friends list.

Another way to add a friend is to click the "Posted by" link under a submitted news item. Doing this will take you to the Poster's profile page. Once there, simply click the Add to My Friends link.

Once a friend has been added, you can send him/her messages. You can watch of all your friends' Posts and comments on their Profile page and/or subscribe to their RSS feeds (The RSS feed icon appears to the left of the 7 tabs in a member's profile when any of the tabs are clicked with the exception of the "Personal info" tab.

RSS Feeds on AdsFlick
Almost every function that you perform on AdsFlick is stored in a unique RSS feed, so you can subscribe to an almost endless number of feeds. For example, you can subscribe to an RSS feed for a specific user, a category or sub-category, or to the news stories within the Upcoming and Published sections.



Site Tools

Real-Time Site Activity
'Real-Time Site Activity' is a realtime snapshot of AdsFlick activity - submissions, votes, users, story status and comments. It enables you to watch what's happening as it happens. You can use the tabs in this section to view realtime activity in the Published, Upcoming, or Comments section or view activity in all of them simultaneously.

Tag Cloud View
The 'Tag Cloud' view is an another way to view submissions. Similar to traditional heat maps, the 'Tag Cloud' view gives an organized depiction of news posts using tags or keywords.



Contact Us

If you still have questions or if you encounter a bug or problem, send an email to: support @ adsflick.com or use our contact form.