Frequently Asked Questions

Spiders are programs sent out by search engines to automatically look for new or updated content on the Internet. The spiders then feed the search engines with the new information and we get more visitors as a result. The spiders are called spiders because they crawl over the web, but they are also sometimes calle webcrawlers or bots (robots)

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For lots of really good reasons, images in the forum can only be linked from the Wild About Britain Gallery or the Wild About Britain Image Library and not external websites.

To add an image to your forum post:

1. Find the image in the Gallery or Image Library. and make sure you are viewing at full-size, rather than the small thumbnail image.

2. Right-click inside the 'Forum Code' box under the image and choose 'select all' from the drop-down menu - the code should turn blue:

[url=http://www.wildaboutbritain.co.uk/pictures/showphoto.php/photo/539]....[/URL]

3. Right-click in the box again and choose 'copy' from the drop-down menu

4. Go to your forum post and right-click in the text input area where you would like to add the image then choose 'paste' from the drop-down menu.

5. To add more images, press return a couple of times in your post to move down a couple of lines then repeat steps 1-4. 

When you press 'submit' to add your post to the forum, the code will create a thumbnail of the image that will link to the full-size picture in the gallery or image library. 

Note: To help find your own images more quickly, please use the 'My Gallery' and 'My Image Library' links in the forum post text editor.

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Only the gallery editors are able to edit or rename images in the Gallery and the Image Library. To notify the Gallery Editors, please click on the icon under the image.

Once uploaded, images cannot be deleted as doing so would break the forum threads and reference section links that are based on this conten. After the gallery editors have taken the time to organise images and members have also spent a lot of time answering questions relating to
posted images in threads etc, it's the least we can do to try and ensure that
the images and thread stay usable forever. There's nothing worse than
seeing a thread with 20/30 replies to an initial post about an image
that's now just a red cross.

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The reference section has a limited range of features to enable you to add basic styles to text. We've deliberately made the options minimal to ensure that the website's pages look uniform and will work well on a range of browsers and monitors.

Please Note: When pasting content into the text areas from Word, or other external programs, please use the Cleanup and RemoveFormat icons above the text edit box.

When adding text, you can use the text editing icons to make some of it bold, italicised, underlined etc, but please use these options sparingly.

You can also use the drop-down menu in the edit box to apply heading styles. Heading 1 should only be used for the page title, and is set automatically. Heading 2 and 3 should be used for sub-headings.

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Definitions

In the context of these terms and conditions, the following words shall have the following meanings:

"We" or "Us" means Wild About Britain Ltd.

"Website" or "Site" means any website under the control and/or ownership of Wild About Britain from which a link has been created to these terms and conditions.

"You" or "User" means the individual, firm, company, organisation or other entity accessing this Website

"Content" or "Material" means any information or data including computer code, text,
images, graphics, photographs, sound, video, messages or other material published, contained or available on the Website; or other material posted or intended to be posted on the Website.

About the Terms 

The Website is owned by Wild About Britain and any use of this Site (including registration, contribution and donation made via the Website), are subject to these Terms and Conditions. By using this Site, you acknowledge and agree to be bound by these Terms and Conditions which take effect immediately from your first use of the website.

Wild About Britain may, at its sole discretion, make any modifications or revisions to these Terms and Conditions at any time by updating the text of this page. Users are responsible for regularly reviewing these Terms and Conditions to ensure timely notice of such changes. Your continued use of the website after changes are posted will be deemed acceptance of this agreement and all modifications and/or revisions. If there is any conflict between these terms and specific local terms appearing elsewhere on the website then the latter shall prevail.

You may not transfer, assign or otherwise sub-license any of your rights or obligations under these terms and conditions to any other person or entity. No waiver of these Terms and Conditions or any provision of this agreement shall be binding except as set forth in writing and signed by a duly authorised representative
of Wild About Britain. We may transfer our rights under these terms and conditions where we reasonably believe your rights will not be affected.

If you are dissatisfied with any material on this website or with any of the terms and conditions of use of the Site, your sole and exclusive remedy is to discontinue using the Site. If you witness any breaches of these terms and conditions in the website, please notify us at tandc@wildaboutbritain.co.uk

These terms, together with the Website Privacy Policy, General Terms of Access, Notes, Rules and Copyright notices constitute the entire agreement between Wild About Britain and the User with regard to the use of this Site.

Use of the Website 

You agree to use the website only for lawful purposes, and in a way that does not infringe the rights of, restrict or inhibit anyone else's use and enjoyment of the website. Prohibited behaviour includes harassing or causing distress or inconvenience to any person, transmitting obscene or offensive content or disrupting the normal flow of dialogue within the website.

All copyright, trademarks, design rights, patents and other intellectual property rights (registered and unregistered) in and on the website and all content (including all applications) located on the site shall remain vested in Wild
About Britian or its licensors (which includes other users).

You may not copy, reproduce, republish, disassemble, decompile, reverse engineer, download, post, broadcast, transmit, make available to the public, or otherwise use the website content in any way except for your own personal, non-commercial use. You also agree not to adapt, alter or create a derivative work of any
content except for your own personal, non-commercial use.

The names, images and logos identifying Wild About Britain or third parties and their products and services are subject to copyright, design rights and trade marks of the Wild About Britain and/or third parties. Nothing contained in these terms shall be construed as conferring any licence or right to use any trade mark, design right or copyright of the Wild About Britain or any other third party.

The copyright laws of both local and foreign nations protect the content on this Site. Users may not breach the copyright or other intellectual property rights, moral rights or any other rights of Wild About Britain or any third party.

In order that the we can use your contribution, you confirm that your contribution is your own original work, is not defamatory and does not infringe any UK laws, that you have the right to give Wild About Britain permission to use it for the purposes specified above, and that you have the consent of anyone who is identifiable in your contribution or the consent of their parent / guardian if they are under 16. Please do not endanger yourself or others, take any
unnecessary risks or break any laws when creating content you may share with the website.

You agree to grant us a worldwide, royalty free, irrevocable, non-exclusive license (including the right to sub-license) to use, publish, distribute, perform, display, reproduce, translate, modify, adapt, create derivative works from any content (in whole or in part) you upload, post or email and/or to incorporate such content in other works in any form, media or technology now known or developed in the future. In certain circumstance we may also share your contribution with trusted third parties*. Copyright in your contribution will remain with you and this permission is not exclusive, so you can continue to use the material in any way including allowing others to use it.

*This may be shared with schools and other educational establishments who are prohibited from altering the material in any way.

All Content and works in the nature of databases attract database rights.

Disclaimers and Limitations of Liability 

The majority of content posted in the website has been created by members of the public. The views expressed are theirs and unless specifically stated are not those of the Wild About Britain. We are not responsible for any content posted by members of the public on the website or for the availability or content of any third party sites that are accessible through the website. Any links to third party websites do not amount to any endorsement of that site by Wild About Britain and any use of that site by you is at your own risk.

All content, including the information, names, images, pictures, logos and icons regarding or relating to Wild About Britain, its products and services (or to third party products and services), is provided "AS IS" and on an "AS AVAILABLE" basis. To the extent permitted by law, we exclude all representations and warranties (whether express or implied by law), including the implied warranties of satisfactory quality, fitness for a particular
purpose, non-infringement, compatibility, security and accuracy.

We do not guarantee the completeness, performance or timeliness of the website or any content. No responsibility is accepted by or on behalf of Wild About Britain for any errors, omissions or inaccurate content on the website. We do not warrant that functions or content will be uninterrupted or error free, that defects will be corrected, or that the website or the server that makes it available are free of viruses or bugs. You acknowledge your responsibility to
implement sufficient security procedures to satisfy your particular requirements for the accuracy of data input and output.

Under no circumstances will we be liable in any way for any content, including (without limitation) any errors or omissions in any content, or for any of the following losses or damage (whether such damage or losses were foreseen, foreseeable, known or otherwise): (a) loss of data; (b) loss of business, revenue or anticipated
profits; (c) loss of opportunity or time; (e) loss of goodwill or injury to reputation; (f) losses suffered by third parties; or (g) any indirect, consequential, special or exemplary damages arising from the use of the website or content regardless of the form of action.

You agree that you must evaluate and bear all risks associated with the use of any content, including any reliance on its accuracy or completeness. You also understand that by using our forum areas and our website there is a chance that you may be exposed to content that is offensive, indecent or objectionable. This website includes links to other websites or material which are beyond our control. We are not responsible for the content on any website outside of this website.

Nothing in these terms and conditions limits or excludes Wild About Britain’s liability for death or personal injury caused by its proven negligence.

General Conduct

All content, whether publicly posted or privately transmitted, is the sole responsibility of the person from whom the content originated. This means that you are entirely responsible for all content that you upload, post or email via the website. We do not control the content contributed by members and therefore do not guarantee the accuracy, integrity or quality of the content.

Contributions must be civil and tasteful. You agree that you will not use any part of the website to:

• upload, post or email any content that is unlawful, harmful, threatening, abusive, harassing, tortuous, defamatory, vulgar, obscene, libelous, invasive of another’s privacy, hateful, or racially, ethnically or otherwise objectionable;
• harm minors in any way;
• impersonate any person or entity, falsely state or otherwise misrepresent your affiliation with any entity or disguise the origin of any content;
• ‘stalk’ or otherwise harass another;
• collect or store personal data about other users;
• upload, post or email any content when you do not have a right to do so;
• upload, post or email any unsolicited or unauthorized advertising, promotional material, ‘junk mail’, spam’, ‘chain letters’, or any other form of solicitation;
• upload, post or email any content that contains computer viruses or any other computer code, files or programs designed to interrupt, destroy, or limit the functionality of any computer software, hardware or telecommunications equipment;
• violate any applicable national or international laws or regulations.

You acknowledge that we do not pre-screen content but that we shall have the right (though not the obligation) in our sole discretion to move, modify or remove any content that is available on or via our website generally.

General

We reserve the right to ban, delete or prohibit any content that we judge harmful to individuals, Wild About Britain or other entities. All incidents will be logged and our decision will be final in all cases.

Any breaches may result in us reporting your activities (to your internet service provider, employer or relevant authorities), or taking legal action against you, or to both.

In addition we may at any time move, modify or remove any content or take any further legal action as a result of breaches or suspected breaches of these rules or any applicable rules or regulations or where our
rights or third party rights are threatened or infringed.

You agree to indemnify and hold us and our officers, servants and agents harmless from or against any direct or indirect loss or damage (including consequential loss and loss of profits, goodwill or business opportunities arising from any third party claim in relation to any content you upload, post or email on the website, your use of the website, or your breach of these terms and conditions.

Miscellaneous

If you breach these terms and conditions and we choose to ignore this, we remain entitled to use our rights and remedies at a later date or in any other situation where you breach the terms and conditions. We shall not be
responsible for any breach of the terms and conditions caused by circumstances beyond our reasonable control.

A person who is not a party to this contract shall have no right under the UK Contracts (Rights of Third Parties) Act 1999 to enforce any term of this contract. This does not affect any right or remedy of a person who is not a party to this contract that exists or is available apart from that Act.

These conditions shall be subject to the laws governing England. We will try to resolve any disagreements quickly, but if you are not happy with the way we deal with any disagreement and you want to take court proceedings, you must do so within England.

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Wild About Britain works with Google to display adverts and raise much-needed funds that pay some of the core costs to run the website. To advertise on Wild About Britain you will need to register for google adwords account.

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www.wildaboutbritain.co.uk is a fast-growing website with a comprehensive online directory, newspaper, forums, gallery, events calendars, encyclopaedia and much, much more. The website is produced by volunteers from across the UK who provide a wide variety of essential services that help to constantly develop our web pages. We're currently working on many exciting projects and could always make use of an extra pair of hands. Here are just some the ways that you can get involved:

Reference Section

With literally tens of thousands of different species in the UK, the Wild About Britain encyclopaedia is an absolutely mammoth project that will keep us busy for many years to come. You can help to speed up the process by adding information to the encyclopaedia whenever you have a spare moment to hand. With easy-to-complete online forms, the whole process of adding information on a single species can take less than 10-15 minutes and will provide an invaluable resource for school teachers and their students.

Do It Yourself

If you're a keen DIY enthusiast then maybe you could create a simple guide to building a bird box, garden pond or even develop an entire conservation area. We receive many enquiries on all aspects of creating wildlife habitats and so your contribution would certainly be very well received.

Get Creative

If you're a keen artist then maybe you could help us to produce icons and logos, cartoons and animations, illustrations and designs for the web site. For the more ambitious programmers you could even get involved in producing a small online game or interactive puzzle based on British wildlife.

A little, often

By spending just a few minutes each day to add or edit the web pages on wildlife-related facts and figures, quotations, worksheets and resources for schools will be an enormous help in enabling us to deal with the backlog of work that is currently waiting to be undertaken.

There are literally hundreds of different projects that you could help us with, and you don't need to have any knowledge of web design or programming to become a valuable member of our development team.

We're always keen to hear your own suggestions as to how you could help Wild About Britain to please feel free to send us your ideas.

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Please Click Here to make a Donation via Charity Giving

A Great British Wildlife Charity

Wild About Britain is a registered charity that serves to promote wildlife, the natural environment and the great outdoors from every corner of the British Isles. In order to continue providing this free service we desperately need your support.

www.wildaboutbritain.co.uk

The Wild About Britain website is an online community that enables people to work together on wildlife and environment projects across the UK. The website enable members to share ideas, knowledge and resources through the forums, gallery and newspaper on subjects from birds, insects, mammals and trees to wildflowers, marine life, astronomy and the weather. In order to maintain and develop the website and meet the increasing costs of servers, developers and software we need urgent funding and support.

Your contributions will help us to maintain the existing website and further develop new features from online mapping and interactive videos, to puzzles, games and resources for schools.

From Little Acorns...

Wild About Britain continues to grow from strength to strength and we are already developing significant new additions to the website that will add great new features and facilties for the public to learn more about their natural environment.

More than just a website

Wild About Britain is an online community approaching nearly 20,000 members. However, we aim to develop many new projects that will see the chairty promoting British wildlife and the environment through a wide range of media to reach every demographic throughout the UK. With your help we aim to develop awareness through television and radio, newspapers, events and presentations and exhibitions across the British Isles.

Great Value for Money

Wild About Britain was recently short-listed as just one of three finalists for the British Environment and Media Awards 2006 - standing alongside some of the most distinguished international environment groups, newspapers and broadcasters in the UK. With a budget of less than 0.00001% of some of the above organisations, the charity continues to show that it is able to punch well above its weight and is great value
for money.

All funds are currently used to develop this website and cover the cost of dedicated servers, software and techinical support. This enables us to serve approximately 1 million unique visitors and over 100 millions hits a year.

Making a Donation

You can help to develop Wild About Britain by clicking on the link at the top of this page to make a secure online donation using Visa, Mastercard, Switch, Delta or Solo. It only takes a few moments and you can make either a single donation or set up a monthly contribution by standing order.

Alternatively, you could send a cheque to Wild About Britain, 17 Northway, Pickering, North Yorkshire YO18 8NN

Thank you for your support

Stuart Diston-Hunter
Charity Trustee
Wild About Britain
Charity No. 1104184

Gift Aid Donations

Did you know that if you are a tax payer, Wild About Britain can claim an extra 28p from the taxman, for every pound that you donate to the charity?

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Despite having made considerable progress with extremely limited resources, Wild About Britain has only just scratched the surface of our aims and objectives. As such, we are currently looking to source funding that will enable us to implement a number of innovative projects that will strengthen the wildlife, environment and outdoor communities, and help us to promote these topics throughout the British Isles. 

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Early research showed that today's children are more familiar with species of the African national parks, Arctic tundra, Amazonian rainforests and tropical oceans, than the nature that can be found in their own back garden, local parks and woodlands. Moreover, whilst some children and young adults were aware of national wildlife organisations that cater for specific interest groups, few had any knowledge of local environment issues or the facilities that were available to them on a
local level.

In direct response to the above problem, and with the help of family and friends, Stuart Diston-Hunter started the Wild About Britain project and launched the website in the autumn of 2004. Since then, Wild About Britain has helped to promote the invaluable work of the UK's small local wildlife groups, provide information and resources on a wide variety of environmental topics, and helped to raise awareness of the incredible nature than can found throughout the British Isles.

To date, Wild About Britain has published thousands of news stories on every aspect of British wildlife from every corner of the UK. We regularly promote hundreds of events each month and our online gallery now displays thousands of wildlife
photographs, the vast majority of which have been taken by visitors to the web site.

With an invaluable team of volunteers from across the British Isles, wildaboutbritain.co.uk now contains more than 250,000 pages on British wildlife and has become one of the leading online resources to information on the UK's natural environment.

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www.wildaboutbritain.co.uk serves to provide information on every aspect of wildlife, the environment and the great outdoors across the British Isles. We aim to provide a stylish, efficient and interesting website that can actively compete with leading leisure and entertainment sites with stunning visual content and frequently updated pages.

wildaboutbritain.co.uk also aims to act as a central hub of information to the wider world of wildlife websites, with links to relevantcharities, clubs, societies and institutions throughout the UK.

By providing facilities that enable wildlife groups across Britain to more easily communicate with each other, we aim to provide a resource that will develop a more holistic approach to tackling British wildlife and environmental issues. In doing so, we hope to strengthen the wildlife community in Britain, where we can all work together toward a common goal - the study, enjoyment and conservation of our natural environment.

wildaboutbritain.co.uk has established itself as a leading British wildlife magazine, with daily news, forums, galleries, events calendars, encyclopaedias and much, much more.
 

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Wild About Britain is a registered charity - No.1104184 - that aims to raise awareness of wildlife, the environment and the great outdoors, throughout the British Isles.

Wild About Britain covers a wide range of topics from birds, insects, marine life and trees to geology, climate change, astronomy and the weather; as well as lots of related activities from photography to camping.

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Wild About Britain has always got lots of development projects underway at any one time. The following are just some of the things that we're working on at the moment. Under the sub-titles the lists are hopefully in order of priority. Some of the listed items are easy enough with only a few hours work, but some will take  days/weeks/months to complete. To really get the charity/site to grow we need to give priority to raising lots of funds to be able buy resources - hardware,
software, staff etc are just the start of future development.

General

• Upgrade/move server to best value option
• Optimise google ads design and positioning across the site
• Build internal banner ads/notices to promote other areas of the site - inc banner rotation software
• Setup google referal ads system
• Sort all SEO across the site
• Promote donations
• Recruit volunteers for news, wild places, reference
• Develop teams
• Small videos

Forums

• Upgrade to latest version
  • check smilies and email notification issues
• Move FAQs to reference area
• Breakout and develop environment forums
• Post new thread notices on titles
• Post main notices on videos, quick rules, donations, all areas
• Post new member notice - make new registrations only
• Search outgoing links and delete spammers
• Add nest pics info to FAQs
• %1%2 error above forum images

Gallery

• Check upgrade changes
• Editors choice
• Create notices for upload pages - UK for unid'ed, correct sections, format etc
• Move forum images and unidentified off the front page
• Create more unidentified categories
• Upgrade to photopost pro

Directory*

• Complete rebuild on CMS to enable commercial posts, mapping
  and more categories - potentially good way of attracting substantial
  funding
• ID more categories with bespoke listing forms
• Big promotion and marketing to potential listers

Events

• Move to CMS and include mapping etc

Reviews

• Fix templates
• Fix scoring
• Upgrade to latest?

Reference

• Fix validation error bug - workaround by not loading browser pages
• Repair broken links from section frontpages
• Detailed page for each type of habitat
• Create video pages and sort rules/guidelines for uploading
• Setup cron for search
• Build Natures Calendar
• Create species forms for amphibians, fungi, plants, insects, moths, weather, bats etc
• Create quotes system
• Create blogs and/or myspace-type system
• Develop content links system
• Fix quick view error
• More video tutorials

Links

• Rebuild links section
• Promote link exchange UK & abroad

Wild Explorers

• Complete development

Calendar

• Design
• Choose images
• Create online shop
• Find best value/nearest supplier, possible complete package from design to dist?
• Sort distribution - volunteers posted in the forum thread

Badges

• Design from site logo
• Get merchant account
• Create online shop
• Find best value supplier
• Sort distribution - volunteers posted in the forum thread

Offsite*

• Create promotional material - bookmarks, brochures, calendar?
• Write to patrons
• Create DB of potential govt grants, companies and trusts and other funding from 1000s

Other

• Go to work 9-5 Mon to Fri

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Yes.
We respect your privacy and the following information sets out how we will handle any personal information that we receive from you.

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Wild About Britain is keen to help promote wildlife and environment groups around the world, and we know that you'll obviously be keen to help promote us too.

If you have a non-commercial wildlife or environment related website, please click here to submit your link

*****

British Wildlife at Wild About Britain

Information on British butterflies, wildlife, nature and the
environment with forums, news, photography, events calendars,
interactive maps, product reviews and a wildlife directory - covering
everything from British birds, insects, wildflowers, fungi and trees,
to astronomy, geology, marine life and the weather.

*****

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To add a news story, simply click on the 'News' link in the 'Create
Content box on the top-right of this screen and follow these
guidelines:

Title: Please enter a short title that contains keywords about the story.

News Publish Date: Please enter the date the article was first published and not today's date.

News Source: Choose a source from the drop-down list

News Section: Choose the single most relevant section for the story

News Region: Choose the region
News Content:
When

News Image: If you have a suitable image to accompany the story, please upload it here. Please do not include adverts.

News Content: Please enter only original content or press
releases from original sources such as the Forestry Commission, RSPB,
Wildlife Trusts etc. Do not enter stories copied from other news
agencies, papers, websites or magazines such as The Times, the BBC
website etc

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There are lots of good photo editing packages around, but a simple and free one is Google's - www.picasa.com - which enables you to easily view, edit, crop, sharpen and resize your images. For information on more commercial packages, ask for advice in the forums and you'll no-doubt get plenty of tips from the other members.

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Image uploads must be at least 800x600 pixels. 600x800 are not wide enough. Uploads also  need to be less than 1mb in filesize and ideally a lot smaller so that they load quickly for all visitors to the site. 

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There are two ways. Firstly, you could use the gallery's search and
choose to search by username. Secondly, whenever you're viewing an
image in the gallery it'll show the member's details underneath. Below
their name is an icon that looks like ...click on that to see all of their images

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The original photographers own the copyright to their images, so you will need to contact them if you would like to use their photos. In our experience, almost all of the photographers will allow free use of their images in non-commercial projects in schools and charities, but please check with them first.

To contact a member, you'll need to logn to the forum, click on their name and choose 'Send a Private Message...' from the 'Send Message' link

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The gallery is only for good quality images of British wildlife and the countryside. Essentially, this means that we don't usually include photographs of pets, buildings, garden flowers etc. However, you can upload these type of images to the image archive if you need to post them in the forum.

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The Wild About Britain gallery has lots of stunning photographs with some of the best British wildlife images to be found anywhere on the Internet. In order to maintain these high standards, we have produced the following guidelines to help all members display their photographs in the gallery. 

*****Please Do Not Post Images of Bird Nests***** 

Are My Pictures Good Enough?

The Wild About Britain gallery has high standards, but there's no reason why almost everyone shouldn't be able to post pictures, as long as they have a decent camera and basic photography skills. We don't expect members to be professional photographers and if your images meet the following guidelines, then there's a good chance that they will be included in the gallery.

If you would like to upload an image that you don't think it is good enough for the gallery, please upload it to the Image Library.

Quick Guidelines

A good gallery needs good photographs, but it also takes a lot of hard work to keep everything organised, with images properly named and in their correct categories. Thankfully, we've got some superb volunteers who work as Gallery Editors that keep it looking so good. However, to help them on their way, please ensure that your images are submitted exactly as set out below.

• Please use capitals in the correct places and format the title as:
  
  Common Name - Scientific name (gender) <-- if known

For example:

Zebra Spider - Salticus scenicus (male)

• Include the dash between the Common Name and Scientific name
• Do not add any_extra_characters, "quotes", question marks etc???.
• Ensure that there are correct spaces between the words in your title and not titlesthatlooklikethisandarehardtoread.
• Add relevant keywords in the keyword box.
• Only use the 'Photography Comments' box for info about
  camera equipment and the techniques that you used. All other info about
  the weather, where you took the photograph, what you did that day etc.
  should go in the main description area.

Image Quality

Images must be in focus, well-lit (not too light or too dark) and clear; so that the subject is easily identifiable.

No Advertising

You are allowed to include a small, short and discreet copyright or name to your images, but do not add corporate names, website names, email addresses or other contact details

The Main Subject

Ensure that the subject of your photograph adequately fills the frame, unlike the buzzard in the following photograph

Image Sizes

Images should be at least 800x600 (not 600x800), and can be as large as you like, but they'll be automatically resize to a maximum width or height of 1600 pixels. On occasions, we may accept smaller photos if they are of rare subjects or unusual circumstances.

Editing

Images may be enhanced to make them clearer, but not modified to add or take anything away. Please avoid over-editing images with too much sharpen, contrast, brightening etc. If jagged edges or speckles appear in the image (like those in the green area below) then it has probably been sharpened too much.

Similar Images

Please only upload 2 or 3 images of the same subject, and only if they're quite distinctly different, rare or showing unusual behaviour. For example, the following 3 images are virtually identical and so only 1 should be uploaded to the gallery.

Big or Artistic Borders

Please do not add borders or artwork to your images.

No Pets Allowed

This is a picture of my dog 'Honey'. Unfortunately, she's not part of British wildlife so she can't go in the gallery Please don't post photographs of your pets...and remember they're not just for Christmas .

File Compression

Please try to compress your files so that they are relatively small (ideally under 250kb), but not so much that it starts to noticeably affect the quality of the pic. This will help us save space on the server, make it quicker for viewers to see the images load on the screen, and also make it faster for you to upload your pictures.

Compressing jpegs to a level of 7 or 8 (70-80%) should do the trick. In the following images, the 75% compression has an almost indistinguishable level of detail to the
100%, but it has a considerably smaller filesize. However, the 50% is only marginally smaller than the 75% and yet it is heavily pixelated and a lot lower quality.

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Registered members can send each other private messages.

Private messages work a little like email, but are limited to
registered members of this forum. You may be able to include vB Code,
smilies and images in private messages that you send.

You may send a private message to a member of this forum by clicking the 'Send A Private Message' link in the private messaging section of your user control panel, or by clicking the button in a member's posts.

When you send a message, you have the option to save a copy of the message in your Sent Items folder.

All forum
rules apply to the content of Private Messages and members may not
publish the content of forum messages either on the website,
externally, or via the private messaging system. The forum
Administrators are able to read the private messages of all members.

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When members make a post, they can also automaticaly show a small image (called an avatar) next to their username. This helps other members to quickly recognise who's posted in the thread. If you're logged in, you can click here to add/edit your avatar.

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If you forget your password, you can click on the 'Forgotten Your Password' link on any page that requires you to fill in your password.

This will bring up a page where you should enter your registered email address, and an email will be sent to that address instantly, with instructions for resetting your password.

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You can add a signature to your forum posts via your Forum Profile Page, which you can also access via the 'Control' icon in the top left of the forum pages

Links in signatures can only be displayed by members who have made more than 25 posts and display an active link to Wild About Britain from their own website, or where members link to their WAB gallery images or blog page. Once you have added a link in your signature we will check that you have linked back to Wild About Britain from your website, and then either activate or delete your signature link where appropriate.

Signatures must be no more than two lines of default-sized black text and cannot advertise organisations, products or services, or highlight content with UPPERCASE, added characters ***>>> or 'Look at my website' style content.

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You can change your profile by clicking on the icon when you are logged into the forum and choose the various option from the 'Your Profile' menu on the left hand column.

Please Note: Members can only change their profile and add a signature once they have made a minimum of 25 posts. This limit has been put in place to stop the new members who were joining the site to simply advertise their own website and link from their profile without contribtuing to the community.

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Unfortunately, members can't change their username as many areas of the site are linked by username information that would lead to many broken links if the name is changed.

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The following guidelines should help to make the forum easier for everyone to use.

Thread Titles

Please use short, but meaningful, titles that explain the thread within a few keywords. For example, rather than making a thread title 'Where to go?' when you want ideas on travelling around Scotland to take photographs, please add a title like 'Places to Photograph in Scotland'

If you're looking for an identification, rather than 'What's This?', make the title something like 'Unidentified Green Butterfly'. This should help members and search engines to find your threads more easily.

Ask a Moderator

If you're not sure whether or not you can post a certain topic, add a link, promote an event etc, PM one of the moderators first, rather than having your thread/post removed. There's a good chance we'll allow the thread, but if we remove a thread, there's probably little chance of it being allowed back again.

Adding Images

After you've posted your images in the gallery or the Image Library, click on the 'My Gallery' or 'My Images' links 

Do Not Feed the Animals

It doesn't happen too often, but if you get into a heated debate with other members, it's some times easiest to just walk away from the thread. We invite members to post opinions from every side of every argument, and so there will always be disagreements. Occasionally, you may even come across a troll who will make controversial posts simply to get a reaction. If necessary, simply report the post and the moderators will deal with it.

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Wild About Britain has a stunning gallery and a pretty good image library that lets members post images for all the world to see, and include them in their forum posts. This is great because it means we don't have to use external websites to host images, which means:

No More Dead Links

You've probably seen it all over the Internet - 'Image removed', 'Image No Longer Available', 'Page Not Found', 'Error'...we've seen lots of it and it makes websites look rubbish. So we ask all our members to not post images from their external website, photobucket, flickr etc, to avoid those error messages where the images should be. We've got lots of pages like this from the early days and the bounce rate on these pages (the number of people who viewed the page then left straight away without viewing another page and never come back) is almost 100%.

We know that some people would like to post pics from their site and promise to never ever take the site down, or change the image's url, but you'll be glad to know that we don't believe them because we're smarter than that...actually it's because we've had our fingers burnt more times than we can count on our burnt fingers. And if you think it won't ever happen on the big image hosting sites, take a look at what happened to the millions of photos on Yahoo Photos..."What's Yahoo Photos?" we hear you say..."Exactly!" we reply...click here to see what happened to the massive image site

So after members spend a lot of time answering questions relating to posted images in threads, it's the least we can do to try ensure that the images and thread stay usable forever. There's nothing worse than seeing a thread with 20/30 replies to an initial post about an image that's now just a red cross...so we're spearheading the worldwide campaign to get rid of the red cross forever!

The Network Administrator Has Blocked This Image!

Thousands of people view Wild about Britain every day from their work PC, but many are unable to view sites like Flickr, Photobucket, Facebook etc because their system administrator has blocked those sites. This also means that images hosted on those sites cannot be shown on Wild About Britain, so we're left with hundreds/thousands of threads where members are talking about images that many visitors can't see.

Easier to Find

If all images are kept in the gallery/image library then they can be easily catalogued, searched and found later on. Having images all stored on the website will also help us organise the photos more easily and make searching a lot simpler than sifting through threads to find images of a specific species.

Faster

Wild About Britain runs on its own dedicated server that costs a bomb, but it does a great job of serving content to well over 1 milion visitors a year. The problem with external hosted images is that their servers can often be cheap imitations of WAB's monster. These other servers are often slow and take a long time to load the images, making it appear as though WAB is running slow, when in fact we're usually travelling faster than the speed of light.

Spam

What more do we need to say about spam? We hate it, you hate, everyone hates it, but not surprisingly we've found some unwanted members linking out to external sites as a form of free advertising to promote their website and increase visitors.

Risk

Finally, there have been a few examples in the past of external images being changed after they were initially posted. This presents a big risk to WAB as members could change their externally linked image to an advert, or even hardcore pornography, and if you multiply that by possibly hundreds of posts we would have a massive job on ours hands trying to deleted them all.

Sorry

We realise that it may be a bit more time-consuming for members to upload images to the site, rather than simply link to their external website/image host, but it will save the mods and gallery editors a lot of time and make it easier for all visitors to use the site. So the final score is Frowns 1 v Smiles 1 million+

To make life easier for all members uploading into the gallery, there is no moderating of images in the Image Library.

But...

In rare and special circumstances we may allow externally linked images, but if we think the system is being abused then we'll remove all of your links and possibly close your account, so it's best to check with a moderator before posting any.

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Wild About Britain allows occasional links to external websites, but we don't allow spam. We're keen to help promote wildlife and environment websites around the UK, but we also want to control the type and amount of links posted on the site.

With a few conditions attached (see below) we allow quite a lot links on the site via our link pages, forum signatures, directory, forum profile, news etc, but we don't want links to start filling up the forum threads because:

• Not surprisingly, we've found some members linking out to external sites as a form of free advertising
• Links can sometimes be a real community killer, stopping a conversation and taking it off the site
• The URL of links can often change and the 20/30 replies in the thread become a waste of time.
• It's easy to cut and paste content into the forum or reference pages, so there should be little need to link to external websites
• We don't want to link to unsuitable or illegal webpages and websites,and the content of the link page might change
• Lastly, if WAB links to blacklisted sites then we lose credibility and points with search engines, so we've added rel="nofollow" code to all links

  The Good News - Ways in which you can link from Wild About Britain

• You can link to your own non-commercial wildlife and environment website in your forum signature after you have made 25 posts - and you must first place a prominent link to WAB on your own site.
• You can setup a reciprocal link with us via our link pages.
• If you are an established wildlife or environment-related organisation, you may be able to list in the Wild About Britain directory
• You can advertise on the website via the google ads

We usually allow the occasional link to a good non-commercial site, but regular
link posts to the same site will usually result in all of the links
being removed.

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We do not aim to censor posts as long as they fall inside the rules and guidelines. We welcome debate and views expressed from every angle, and we do not take a stance for or against any wildlife or environment topic.

We reserve the right to move, modify or delete posts or threads, without explanation, and may take further action to disable the offender's account at the discretion of the moderators.

• One Account - You are allowed only one account
• No poaching - don't use this website to recruit members or content for other sites
• Be polite - respect other members and their opinions
• Don't be creepy! - You know the sort of guys we're talking about. Don't be one of those guys!
• Keep it legal - Do not encourage or promote any illegal activity.
• In English - All content must be in English and not abbreviated texting or slang
• No Offensive Language - including swearing, innuendo, abbreviations and substituting, adding or removing characters to disguise the above.
• Light-hearted - do not post heavily religious or party political statements.
• Privacy - Do not request or give out personal information
• Spam - don't advertise producs or services or promote external websites - also see external links
• Post Spam - don't post simply with the purpose of increasing your post count
• Bumping Threads - posting to deliberately take a thread to the top of the recent forum posts
• Hijacking - taking a thread off topic
• Colouring Text - do not try to hide content in the background

Private Messages

• All forum posting rules also apply to private messages
• The administrator has access to read all Private Messages.
• You may not make public the content of any other member's private messages without their prior consent.

Signatures

• Signatures must be no more than two lines of default-sized black text
• The signature should not be displayed in the text area of each post, but submitted via the signature box of the member control panel.
• Signatures can include a single reciprocal link to a non-commercial wildlife/environment website

Tips

• If you have problems with another member, please forward your concern to a moderator or administrator.
• Use emoticons/smilies to clarify the intended emotion of your posts
• Public posts debating these rules, terms and conditions and/or moderators' enforcement of such, may be removed without comment. However, we encourage feedback and invite you to contact us via PM if you have any questions or concerns.

Posting Forum Images

Avoid posting images or links to images on external websites. Instead, upload your images to the 'forum images' section of the Wild About Britain gallery, then cut and paste the 'Forum Images Code' under the photograph into your posts to show your pictures in forum threads - see External Images. In rare and special circumstances we may allow externally linked images, but if we think the system is being abused then we'll remove all of your links and possibly close your account, so it's best to check with a moderator before posting any.

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There are several ways that you can stop receiving notifications emails for threads that you've subscribed to in the forums. One of the easiest ways is to follow the - 'Unsubscription information:' instructions at the bottom of the email.

Alternatively, you can click on the icon in the forums and choose 'Edit Options' to change your account settings. Go to the box marked "Default Thread Subscriptions mode" and select an option from the drop-down menu. Scroll to the bottom of the page and 'Save' your new settings.

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If a member breaks the rules, or appears to have broken the rules, then
their account will be frozen until we are satisfied that any related
issue has been addressed and rectified.

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You may clear all your cookies by clicking here.
If you return to the forum homepage and you are
still logged in, you can have to remove your cookies manually.

In Internet Explorer 6 on Windows XP:

1. Click the "Tools" menu.
2. Select "Internet Options" from the menu that appears.
3. Click "Delete Cookies" on the dialog box that appears. It will be in the center area of the "General" tab.

In Mozilla Firefox:

1. Click the "Tools" menu.
2. Select "Options" from the menu that appears.
3. From the dialog box, select "Privacy" on the left.
4. Find "Cookies" on the main pane, and click the "Clear" button adjacent to it.

Your cookies should now be removed. You may want to restart the computer and revisit the forums to be sure.

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When a member makes a post their post count goes up. At certain milestones their title will change to:

Under 25 posts = New Member

25 posts = Active Member

100 posts = Wild Member

250 posts = Member of the Wild Empire

500 posts = Officer of the Wild Empire

1,000 posts = Commander of the Wild Empire

5,000 posts = Knight of the Wild Empire

10,000 posts = Knight Grand Cross of the Wild Empire

Just a bit of fun :D

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Members can edit their posts for 30 minutes after the initial posting, but they cannot delete their posts.

To edit your posts, click the button by the post you want to edit. After you have made your modifications, a note will appear, which notifies other users that you have edited your post. Administrators and moderators can also edit your messages.

The reason for the edit time window is that without it we used to have posts being made, then someone would add a reply, then the original poster would change their original post. This was fairly common in debates where someone would change what they originally said then claim they'd never said it :(

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In the forums, click on the title of the relevant category (Birds, Fungi, Insects etc) for your new thread, then click on the 'New Thread' button.

You can also click on the following link to view a video on starting a new thread:

How to Start a New Thread in the Forum.

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Moderators oversee the running of the forums to ensure that they operate smoothly and that members keep to the site rules. Moderators have the ability to edit and delete posts, move threads, and perform other tasks to maintain the forums.

The forum moderators are fourwings, fungijohn, glsammy, matt_xyz, nightshade, oy, stuartdh, tinkerbell and wildone

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