GYKD - South Africa Motorcycle / Bike forum, classifieds, reviews

The site has two menus, the main menu in the top bar and the sub menu in the bar below. The main menu includes all the main sections of the site which currenty include home, reviews, classifieds and forums. You will find that when moving between these main sections the sub menu will change to give you further options. As long as you stay within that section the sub menu will stay the same (the main menu will always stay the same).

Once registered (and logged in) the site can work to it's full potential. Many of the systems on the site are designed to work with registered users. Automatically as a registered user you inherit the following 'rights' :

• You can vote in polls. Each registered user can vote once in each poll.
• You can send and receive private messages (or pm's). Within the home section go to contact where your inbox and outbox can be viewed. From this area of the site you can also send pm's to other users.
• You get access to new areas in the classifieds section. You now have the options to check up on adds written by yourself and update them as well as many other options.
• You can now collect user points and acquire a user rating. (read below)

The purpose of user points is to reward users that regularly make useful contributions to the website. It works by giving each user a rating between 1 and 5 stars based upon their contributions (it is also possible to get half stars). As you acquire a higher rating you are rewarded by gaining access to new areas of the site and gaining new abilities on the site. When you are rewarded with a new star you will be informed of any new options. Your user rating is based upon the amount of user points you have. Note that one user point is not the equivalent of one star (nor any fixed amount of stars).The amount of stars you get is based on your UP's, however it works logarithmically. In other words the more stars you get the harder it is to get the next star.

Note: UP's are meant to be treated as a bit of fun and not a cause for concern.

You can gain UP's generally by making useful contributions to the site. For example when you make a post in the forum the UP system might give you a point for your general spelling and readability of the post. However if it thinks that your post was too short to be useful it may consider taking a point away. These are just a couple of examples of how the system works however there are many more things it considers before making an adjustment to your UP's. Generally don't worry about UP's as unless your name is Saddam Hussain (sp?) you will get points, slowly but surely.

If you look at the review section of the site you will see that there are currently 3 review areas. Please try and make sure that you post reviews in the right section. Once you enter one of these areas you will see a list of the existing reviews and the option to post a new review. You can browse through the reviews by clicking on the title of that review. Once looking at a review you may see that one review is made up of many reviews and that the ratings at the top of the page are an average of all the reviews on that page. This is called a review thread. If you wish to add a review to that review thread (i.e. you wish to review that same thing as in that thread) then you can click on post. If you click on post whiles viewing a thread it will add to the end of it, if you are viewing the overview of all review threads your review will start a new thread. Please try and keep all reviews for the same product in the same thread. Also notice that if you start a new thread you will be asked for some general information about that product.

Once in the classifieds section you will notice that the system is divided into two sections, buying and selling. If you are looking for a new bike or anything motorcycle related you have two options, you can look at existing adds through the use of a search or post a wanted add. Similarly if you are currently trying to sell something you can browse the wanted adds or post a new 'for sale' add. We would like to encourage you to look at existing adds before posting your own add.
Note: When posting an ad you have to fill in a bare minimum of what you are trying to sell and if you aren't a registered user some contact information. Also note that the more info you give in the add the quicker you will find a buyer/seller.

Once you have created an add the page 'My Ads' will be of use. From here you can edit you adds and check up on there success. When you have no need for the add (the item has sold or you have found a suitable item) then could you please mark the item as sold using the instructions on the page. This will save us some work and give us some feedback as to how successful the service is being.

If you have been to the forums page you will notice that there are 5 sections, general chat, technical, events, funnies and gykd admin. Again can I urge you to check that you are posting in the right area. Once a forum is opened you will see on overview of all existing threads and have the option to post. Using the post button in this state will start a new thread whereas using it once a viewing a thread will add to the end of that thread, much in the same way the review section works. I hope that it is relatively self explanatory.

Yes. You can either manually add them (most common emoticons have a picture attached to them). Or you can click on the smilies below the text field and that smiley will to automatically added. Note that the emoticon will appear at the end of the message if you do this.

Yes. Anything starting with http:// will be automatically linked.

Yes. Similarly, anything starting with http:// and ending with .jpg/.gif/etc will be automatically added. Currently there are no options to upload images from your desktop and you will have to find some webspace for them.

Currently yes. Use it with discretion as you rating will suffer if you use to much. If this becomes a problem I'll to forced to disable html.

Please note that if you want to use html in posts you have to include the [html] tag at the top of your post.
Please take care to post W3C valid html.