How To

How to list content you like

Mon, 26 Mar 2012 18:07:50 +0000

When you find a forum post, blog or download on the site you particularly like, you can add it to "content I like" and have them listed in your CP area for you to view any time you like. In this example, we're going to "like" a download so we can have it added to our list in the Control Panel.

When you find a download you want to keep a note of, simply hit the "Follow this file for updates and comments".
Fig 1.1

You will now see an option box where you can choose to be notified of any changes that happen to that file, such as if it's updated or someone comments on it. If you don't want to be informed of updates or comments, simply untick the "Receive notifications" box. If you don't want people to see that you are one of the people following that download, tick the box marked "Follow Anonymously".
Fig 1.2

Once you have "folllowed" a download, the button changes to "Unfollow this file", giving you the option to stop receiving notifications (if you chose them) and remove the download from your list in the Control Panel.
Fig 1.3

Now you can double check which downloads, blogs or forum post's you have in your list by choosing the option from your profile dropdown "Content I follow" as in Fig 1.4 below.
Fig 1.4

When you choose this option, you will automatically be taken to the content you have participated in on the forums, such as forum posts, etc. You will automatically be subscribed to post's you have made or replied to so don't worry if you don't remember "following" some topics, you have probably just replied to some of them.
Fig 1.5

To view the downloads or blogs you have "followed", simply choose the "Downloads" or "Blogs" link on the left of the screen as in Fig 1.6 below. It's safe simply to ignore the "Pages" option for now.
Fig 1.6

You can "follow" a topic post or blog entry in much the same way as you would "follow" a download. To follow a forum post you have read or enjoyed, either reply to it which will automatically subscribe you to it or alternatively you can hit the "Follow this topic" button as in Fig 1.7 below.
Fig 1.7

Similarly, to keep track of a blog listing in your Control Panel, just hit the "Follow this entry" button as in Fig 1.8 below.
Fig 1.8

If, for any reason, you want to change the way you are notified about any of the content you follow, or actually remove any content from your Control Panel, hit the "Toggle Edit Options" button and you will see the current notification situation appear below the listed content along with tick boxes down the right hand side of the listings.
Fig 1.9

Simply tick the boxes alongside the content you wish to change, and choose the appropriate option from the drop-down menu near the bottom of the screen. Hit the "Update Selected" button to finalise your choices.
Fig 1.10

How to find things on FreewareBB

Sat, 07 Jan 2012 13:58:00 +0000

We've spoken about finding things and searching on FreewareBB before, but I thought I'd write a more definitive post about finding things as quite a bit has changed since we last wrote about it. I'm going to use practical examples in this tutorial so just remember to adapt things accordingly for what you want to search for

1. Quick-search
At the very top, right-hand side of our site you'll see our Google "quick search" - this is the quickest and easiest way to start searching for something on the site. Simply enter what your looking for in that box and press the "search" button.
(There is also an "Advanced Search" facility which we'll take a look at just shortly.)

2. Quick search results
The results for your quick-search are displayed on a seperate page - take a look at the results and choose the most appropriate result for your search.

3. Advanced Search
If you don't find what you're looking for using the quick-search, you can also use our own in-built search facility which is a great deal more powerful than the quick search and offers many more options. The advanced search link can be found at the top of any page, within the sub-menu as pointed out in step 1. When you hit that link, you will be searching within the downloads section on our site - we'll show you how to search other area's just shortly.

To begin searching using the advanced search facility, enter what you are looking for as shown in the screenshot below. You can choose to search in both the title and content or just one or the other. FreewareBB also use tags for most of our content which is always being updated. This means, for example, a listing for something like "Mozilla Firefox" could have tags such as "browser", "firefox", "mozilla", and so on. Entering a keyword in the "Find tags" field would return a list of all those listings with your chosen keyword. Normally, we wouldn't really recommend attempting an important search using tags as it can often be a tad misleading.
You can further narrow down your search by searching for the person who submitted a download or forum post by entering the persons name in the "Find author" field. Similarly, if you only want to search for content that was added within a specific timeframe, then you can enter the start and end date within the "Find by date" fields.

4. Advanced Search - other area's
When you first go to the "advanced search" facility, you will automatically be searching within our downloads. But if you scroll down the page a little, you will find other area's you can search in, such as "Forums", "Members", "Help Files", "Blogs" and so on. So, for example, if you wanted to search within our forums for the keywords "mozilla firefox" you would simply enter those words in the "Find words" field and then change the "Search in section" to "Forums". This is handy if you want to search for a discussion that may have happened on something like firefox, or any other keyword of your choice.

5. Advanced Search - more options
As you go further down the advanced search page you'll see even more options available to narrow down your search such as the category you wish to search in, or alternatively leave that at default to search within them all. Similarly, those options will change as you change where you want to search. For example, if you choose to search in the "forums", the list available would change to our list of available forums. Remember, by default, the advanced search facility will be set to search the downloads on our site so if you want to search somewhere else, you'll have to remember to change the "Search in section" as in step 4 above.

In our example below, we're still searching the download section so we'll continue explaining the options as they are shown in the screenshot. You can enter an operating system in the "Will run on" field to return only a listing of those OS's, such as "xp" for windows xp, "2000", for windows 2000, "7" for windows 7 or the likes of "linux", "mac" and so on. Selecting the "License" type from the drop down will return only those results that match your selection, so if you chose "Private and Commercial Use" your search would only return those downloads we have found to be allowed to run on both private and commercial environments.

Finally, the "Seach In" option will simply search our database of downloads, if left at default, but if you choose "Comments", the keyword or phrase you entered in the "Find Words" field at the beginning will be used to search all the comments within the downloads.

Please feel free to experiment on any of the filters within the advanced search facility - you may just be surprised at how detailed you can make your search and the results that follow!!. For now, anyone is welcome to reply to this tutorial with additional questions regarding the search features within FreewareBB where I'll be more than happy to answer
Regards
Marko

How to create a blog

Thu, 01 Sep 2011 07:41:54 +0000

Here's a quick look at how you create a blog on FreewareBB. You can use a blog for all kinds of things, whether it's personal or for your software, we really don't mind - the more unique, the better!!

1. First, go to the Blogs from the main menu and then hit the "Create New Blog" button.
Fig 1.1

2. Accept the short agreement and press "Next".
Fig 1.2

3. The name of your blog will already be set, change it if you want to something else or you can just leave it as is. Enter a description also or you can just leave this blank. If you would rather link your FreewareBB blog to an existing blog you have somewhere else then choose "Link to external Blog" from the dropdown otherwise just leave it at "Local Blog", then press "Finish".
Fig 1.3

4. Have a look through the options which you are now presented with, for the most part you can just leave all these as they are but feel free to change them as you wish. If you want to allow another member to have editorial access and rights on your blog just start typing their username in the "Editors" box and choose the correct name from the dropdown which will appear.
Fig 1.4

5. More options are shown like the ability to have an RSS Feed for your blog and to ping some of the better known social services.
Fig 1.5

6. Final lot of options, although these can mostly be left alone unless you specifically require an XML-RPC interface feed - this would apply if you wanted the contents of your blog to be posted to other blog services you have an account with, like The Blogger, etc. Now press "Save Settings"
Fig 1.6

7. Now we have your new blog created, we can post a new entry, manage it's settings and more - for example if you wanted to create a new category you would choose "Manage Categories".
Fig 1.7

8. Under "Add New Category" enter a new for your new category, then press "Add".
Fig 1.8

9. To make a new post, you would choose "Post New Entry" (as in Fig 1.7) or from the Blog front end "Add Entry". You'll notice straight away it's very like adding a post in the forums, the slight difference being you'll be able to save your blog post as a draft and come back to it later for further editing, or to post your blog on the site you would just hit the "Publish" button.
Fig 1.9

10. A great way to collect useful information you've found on the forums is to "Blog This" .. just create your blog then in the forums you'll notice a "Blog This" link under the topics - if you find a topic particularly useful or just want to collect similar useful post's in one place you can do that using this function. Give it a try!!
Fig 1.10

11. If you do use the "Blog This" feature, it basically transfers the details of that post across into a new post for you, so you can edit it, add your own details to it or whatever else you feel relevant - just hit the "Publish" button when you're happy to blog it.
Fig 1.11

How you can help FreewareBB

Sat, 20 Aug 2011 10:22:15 +0000

Keeping the site active is what helps us most, it creates more interest and thus visitors - here's a few suggestions to help you help us

Link to us (Link to us page), Like us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter or recommend us anywhere else, we appreciate all links.

Say hello first - most regulars know that we have a welcoming, honest and knowledgeable community, although new members can often be reluctant to post, by saying a quick hello it can often reassure others to participate (Say Hello forum)

Post a comment on a download you found useful - this is generally the easiest and most effective way for others to determine how good a download is, the more comments, the more chance of someone else downloading it.

Participate in our forums - post a tip, something funny, or leave some feedback or suggestions - we have thousands of people hit the site each week and your post could be the one to solve their problem or make them laugh! (How to participate)

Recommend a freeware title - if you can't find it on our site then why not suggest it and we'll take a look and add it (Request and Suggest Forum)

Viewing New Content

Mon, 01 Aug 2011 17:13:59 +0000

In this thread, we'll be taking a look at how you can view what's new on FreewareBB or how to access those downloads and topics you've not seen yet.

1. You may have already noticed the "drop-down" menu which gives you an instant look at new Download Comments, New Downloads and New Updates on the site (Fig 1.1).

Fig 1.1

2. To view other new or unread content you would use the "View New Content" button at the top right of the screen as in Fig 1.2 below.

Fig 1.2

3. You may notice the first time you use the "View New Content" button that some of the results are considerably long. This is because the system will know which downloads or topics you have, or haven't viewed before. You can mark all downloads and topics as 'read' which will then only show you results from that point onwards. To do this for the download section, select the "View all" link as in Fig 1.3 below.

Fig 1.3

4. Next, take a look at the quote bubbles down the left hand side of all the download categories, you may see some which are very bold and some that are almost greyed out (see Fig 1.4). The one's which are bold mean you have unread downloads in that category and the one's which are greyed out mean you've seen all the downloads in that category. To mark all the files are 'read', simply click on the bold quote bubbles until they are all greyed out.

Fig 1.4

5. Similarly, head over to the forum section and do the same there. This will mark all topics in those categories as read.

Fig 1.5

6. Now, the next time you visit the site and click "View New Content" you will be able to choose options such as "Content I have not read" which will show you all the downloads you've not seen yet.

Fig 1.6

7. Similarly, choosing "Forums" will show you a list of topics you haven't read yet, or replies made since your last visit!.

Fig 1.7

Updating your notification options on FreewareBB

Fri, 14 Jan 2011 22:54:45 +0000

As a member on FreewareBB, you have a wealth of control over your user account and can change most things, including how you are notified of updates or changes and new items in the forums and download sections. Before replying to a post in the forums or adding a comment on a download we recommend checking your notification options first to make sure you will receive updates to replies and updates when and how you prefer them.

To access these settings, simply navigate to "My Settings" from the drop down menu next to your username (see Fig1.1).

Fig 1.1

Then, from the sidebar menu in the settings, choose "Notification Options" and you will see the various options to receive alerts and updates (Fig 1.2).
As a minimum, we would suggest ticking "Auto follow topics I reply to. Notification frequency:"

Fig 1.2

Simply tick the boxes which you want to apply and scroll down to the bottom of the page and click "Save Changes" (Fig 1.3) to complete your preference.

Fig 1.3

An introduction on participating on FreewareBB

Fri, 07 Jan 2011 00:47:17 +0000

FreewareBB survives because of you, and we always value your participation on the site although we realise that sometimes it can be a tad difficult to navigate sites which you may not be familiar with and that's the reason we've created this introduction on how to participate in the two main sections of our site, our forums and our downloads.

Downloads
Adding a download
Any registered member can add a download to our, already extensive number of listings. SEE HERE for a quick-start guide on adding a download.

Rating a download
Registered members can rate any download on the site using the 5 star rating system. You simply hover over the stars and choose how many, out of 5, you wish to give the software with 1 star being the least (and worse) rating possible and 5 stars being the most (and best) rating possible. Your rating helps other members decide what's considered the best in that category!.

Fig 1.1

Recommend or share a download
You can share the details of a download on our site with some of the popular bookmark and social networking sites such as Twitter, Facebook, digg, Buzz, delicious, Reddit & StumbleUpon using the small icons found near the bottom of the download page. You can also send details of the download to someone via email, print the details to your local printer and even download a copy of the page, all by using those small icons!.

Fig 1.2

Keeping an eye on a download or category
When you come across a download that you really like, you can keep informed of any changes or updates to the download and receive email alerts of this as well as any comments made on that download. To do this, you would hit the "Follow this file" button and choose your preferred options (Fig 1.3). You can access a complete list of the content you follow using the "Content I Follow" link on the drop down from your username (Fig 1.4). Similarly, when you find an entire category that you want to keep an eye on you can also choose to "Follow this category" and receive notifications of comments and updates (Fig 1.5).

Fig 1.3

Fig 1.4

Fig 1.5

Adding a comment to a download
Near the bottom of every download you will find a section where you can add your own comments and share your opinions with other members and visitors of FreewareBB!. Just click inside the box and start typing, when you're done all you have to do is hit the "Submit Review" button - why not give it a go!

Fig 1.6

Like a comment?
When you find a comment useful or really informative, you can "Like This" which not only encourages the commenter to continue posting on other downloads, but shows your appreciation.

Fig 1.7

Forums
Creating a new post
When you want to start a new post in our forums, first go to our main forum section HERE (or hit the "Forums" tab on our menu at the top of the site). From the available forums, choose which one best suits the nature of your post (i.e. you want to add feedback to our site then you would choose "Site Feedback & Suggestions"). Next, hit the "Start New Topic" button over to the right-hand side of the screen and begin your post by entering a title for your new post. Further down the page you will find a large blank box and this is where you enter the details of your post. When you've done this, you can then choose to upload a file to your post (depending on your member group).

Once you've entered all the relevant details, simply hit the "Post New Topic" button and your post will be sent to a moderator for review. If you have 10 or more active posts on the site, your new posts and replies will automatically be approved.

Fig 1.9

Replying to a post
Replying to a post is really simple, it's very similar to adding a comment to a download - all you do is scroll to the bottom of the last reply and click inside the "Reply to this topic" box and start typing. When you're done, hit the "Post" button and your reply will be viewed by a moderator before approval. Members with 10 or more approved post's don't have to wait for their replies or new posts to be approved.

Fig 1.10

When you like a members post
In the same way you can "Like" a comment made on a download, you can also "Like This" on a post - again, if the post is informative, useful or just plain hilarious, you can "Like This"!.

Fig 1.11

Recommend or share a post
You can share the details of a post on our site with some of the popular bookmark and social networking sites such as Twitter, Facebook, digg, Buzz, delicious, Reddit & StumbleUpon using the small icons found near the bottom of the page. You can also send details of the post to someone via email, print the details to your local printer and even download a copy of the page, all by using those small icons!.

Fig 1.12

How to add a download

Tue, 06 Nov 2007 08:52:59 +0000

You must be a registered member to add files to FreewareBB: REGISTER HERE.

Please make sure you read the rules of adding a download to our site before continuing (can be found at the bottom of this post).

Here's the quick-start way of adding a download to our site manually:
1. From the complete category view of the download section HERE, navigate to the most appropriate category and sub-category for your submission,
2. Hit the "Upload File" button,
3. Enter the details of your freeware (i.e. Title, description, direct link to the download, screenshot, etc),
4. Note that you can enter a link to your own site for the download and screenshot or if your file is around 10Mb or less you can upload it to our servers; you can also enter or upload more than one download location (mirrors, etc) as well as offer more than one screenshot,
5. Once done, hit the "Add Submission" button at the bottom of thepage and your freeware will be checked by a member of staff before being approved.

If you are the developer of any freeware we currently list here on FreewareBB and wish to claim ownership and editing rights, please see THIS TOPIC for more info on how to do that.

PLEASE ALWAYS ATTEMPT TO USE DIRECT LINKS TO FILES IN YOUR SUBMISSIONS (i.e. www.somesite.com/somefile.zip)

We can alternatively host your file for you free of charge if you are unable to provide a direct link or your file is too big to be uploaded to the site, and in this case please contact me once you have registered.

PLEASE READ THE FOLLOWING RULES BEFORE SUBMITTING
1. DUPLICATES: Please search for your software on our site before submitting it - if you find it, contact a member of staff and we can transfer ownership. Duplicate submissions will be deleted.
2. TRIAL SOFTWARE: If you are submitting a trial version which can be considered as freeware (i.e. has limited functions after the trial) YOU MUST include those details in your listing, and specify what the free version will continue to do. If you do not we will delete your software immediately and mark your software as unorthodox in our forums. Please don't try it, we do check!.
3. YOUR WEBSITE: Please make sure your website is not listed in WOT and SiteAdvisor negatively, if it is, it's unlikely we will accept your submission. Your beef should be with those site advisories, not us.
4. VIRUSES & COMMERCIAL SOFTWARE: If you attempt to submit spam, virused files or commercial software to our site, we will delete your software immediately and mark your software as unorthodox in our forums and ban you from the site - your choice !!. If your software is known to have a false positive, make a note of these in the Special Notes section and please try and include even a short explanation to help the members.
5. CONTENT: Both the content of your software and your website will be checked - FreewareBB is a family friendly site and as such your software or site should not make reference to adult content or otherwise inappropriate material not suitable for all ages.
6. MISLEADING SOFTWARE, "FREE DOWNLOADS" AND GENERAL BUGGERY: FreewareBB pride's itself on offering the most genuine, safe and trustworthy software on the net. We check, double check, report, ban and highlight those developers who attempt to trick us and our users. Your software and website should clearly indicate your software is free, with no tricky descriptions or "buy now" nonsense unless you provide clear descriptions on what's free and what's not - if you don't, we could interpret your software as misleading and will ban you, highlight your software in our forums and if relevant, rate you accordingly on WOT and SiteAdvisor - you have been warned!!