updated 4 days ago by Monty | 243 views | 1 barks

TUTORIAL...USING GRAPHICS, MUSIC PLAYERS, AND 'BLING'

We have been asked numerous times by MDS ‘newbies’ and now our DP Pals (danemum) how to do the stuff they see us ‘old timers’ do. Have fun, and ENJOY!!  (This is also posted in the forums...Support and Suggestions, (it's easy to find, Hershey 'stickied' it!).

Here is how to post pictures in barks (that’s what we call the messages). Find a site that has some really neat graphics, you can do this by doubleclicking on any of the graphics posted anywhere and it will take you to that site. When you find one you like, look for the ‘myspace code’ copy that, and then come back to MDS. When you click on bark to send a message, you will see in the upper left hand corner a B I U (smiley icon) and html. Click on the html and it will open up another dialog block….now paste your code there, click ‘update’ at the bottom, then it takes you back to the first block, then click submit (to the right, it’s blue) and voila, you should have it appear. If the pic looks too big, then AFTER you hit ‘update’ and BEFORE you hit ‘submit’ you can click on the pic and grab it by the upper right hand corner and resize it. Then click ‘submit’ and it should fit in the bark.

For personal pictures, get a free online registration to photobucket. You can load personal pictures from your computer on your own account there (mark it private if you dont want everyone to see it). When they are loaded they will automatically be html coded for you. Remember to resize them smaller (click edit above pic, then resize, what works best for MDS is ‘Website email 320×240), )...now you can copy and past the code from any pictures of your dogs onto the barks too.

A site named ‘Blingee’s", will let you upload pictures from your computer and ‘dress them up’, and then generate a code. Another popular one is called Imikimi, and that allows to you trick out your pics as well. You import your pics from your computer (no code needed) dress them up and then the code is generated for you.

This also works when you go to MY DOGS, and click ‘edit’ click on html and post the code there. When you post a code here, make sure you hit the update button first, then the submit button at the bottom of the page.

That’s also where we post our music players. Go to a site called project playlist, sign up for an account, registration is free, follow the directions, get your own music and copy and paste the code. The code will be the same one generated for MySpace. Make sure you check the box for random play, so the same song does not play everytime your page is accessed, this is also where you choose the color of your player. You can go there multiple times to change the color of your player, or if you player doesn’t load correctly,go there and get the code again. Go to MyDog (edit) then go to the ‘open box" and click on HTML (to the right of the smiley icon}, when the second dialog box opens paste in that box, hit ‘update’ then when that closes hit submit at the bottom of the page. Any time you add ‘codes’ you have to click on html and the second dialog box opens. If you see a song you like on anyone’s playlist, just click where it says ‘add’ to the right of the song, copy and paste the link and it will take you to your projectplaylist and add to your own player. Exit out, don’t worry it will save and add it automatically. From the project playlist site you can edit, delete your music with reloading or repasting codes, it automatically will update.

There is a site that has a slide viewer,(slide.com) a number of people on the site that have used it, have had their page crash. They had to cancel and rejoin, losing their pals, awards, etc. Unless the security policy has changed on MDS, once an account is deleted or cancelled, nothing is saved or retained. Good news and bad news.

Some graphics ‘interfere’ with the music player when posted below the player, try to post all your graphics above.

For editing purposes, I have found a trick on my own, I use ‘tilde’s" (~~) between each ‘code’. It makes it easier to delete or paste another code.

Hope this helps. Have fun and enjoy getting into the fun of sprucing up your page. Go to Astrids page and sign up your female dog for the Diva’s club, she hosts virtual dances for the dogs, it’s a real hoot, you can scroll back a number of pages and see some of the previous dances. For the boy dawgs, there is the original club Macho Men’s Club formed by Chance, an Eskie (chanceandholly), to protect the Diva’s and the rest of the dogs on the site.

We have a lot of fun, dressing up the dogs, taking pics and having a virtual dances for them. The MMC usually acts as bodyguards, and we dance with the gals and eat up all the treats on the virtual buffet.

If you are having trouble with posting graphics it COULD be your browser...IE7 doesn't do a very good job of supporting PNG graphics...we found that switching to Mozilla Firefox is the way to go.