RCSCALEBUILDER.COM

FREQUENTLY ASK QUESTIONS

Membership

1. Why do I have to register to view most of the site?
We started this site to offer a haven to modelers that are TRULY interested in advancing their skills and advancing the hobby. In order to cut down on “lurkers”, “spammers”, “trollers”, and to encourage folks to participate, individuals have to register on the site in order to access the resources. Your information is private and not shared or sold to vendors. It is used exclusively to help us make the site better.

2. How do I join?
Simply click on the Register link on the menu and you will be stepped through the process of joining. Be sure and enter a valid email address as you will have to activate your account and the activation email will be sent to the address you registered with. This is very important. If you do not enter a valid email address your account will not be activated and you cannot access the site.

3. I registered on the site but have not received an activation email. What do I do?
First, if the ISP you are using has spam protection, check the spam folder of your email account. Sometimes the activation email gets treated as spam email depending on the ISP. If it is not in your spam folder simply drop us an email with your username at webmaster@rcscalebuilder.com and I’ll manually activate your account.

4.  I received my activation email and clicked on the link to activate my account and got an error saying to contact you. What happened?
This can be caused by several things. First, if the link in your email breaks to a second line the entire link (URL) is not being sent to the server to retrieve the activation page. So it gets confused and returns an error. Try copying the ENTIRE link URL using copy & paste into your browser and click the “Go” button and see what happens. Another common issue is some folks “double-click” on the link instead of just single clicking. When you double-click you’re essentially going to the activation page twice and since it activated you the first time you get an error the second time you visit the page. IF you continue to get the activation error follow the instructions and email us with your username and we will look into it.

5. Ok, my membership is activated, but why can’t I login?
This could be a lot of different things but is ALWAYS is something about the way YOUR pc is configured NOT THE SITE. Some things you might want to check are; Make sure you have cookies enabled in your browser. Try emptying the browser cache and deleting cookies (not while you’re on the site). Make sure your personal firewall software is not blocking cookies (this is the #1 reason for these errors). If you still cannot login please email us at webmaster@rcscalebuilder.com with your username and the exact error you are receiving when trying to login and we will try and help you to solve the problem as best we can.

6. What is this "Cookie Error" I am getting when I try and login?

This problem creeps up from time to time and it always ends up being one ot two issues.

1. Corrupted Cookie on the client pc.

2. New software/firewall blocking cookies

RCSCALEBUILDER.COM uses "Cookies" to perform a variety of functions for our members. Cookies are pieces of information generated by the web server that are stored on your computer to help enhance your browsing experience. For example: Cookies can help you login automatically so you don't have to enter a password every time you return to the site. let me make something perfectly clear. Cookies are kept on YOUR PC not the site.

If you use Microsoft Internet Explorer 6 and you are experiencing "Cookie Problems" when you try to us the website, please try the solutions that are presented below.

Please note that this issue appears to be limited to the Internet Explorer (version 6) web browser and was introduced by Microsoft with Internet Explorer Service Pack 1. The Cookie problem you are experiencing is not a defect in the site service, although it affects your ability to access the website.

Step 1: Delete any existing RCSB Cookies

Go to any other site besides RCSCALEBUILDER.COM
In IE go to the Tools/Internet Options... menu item
On the general tab click on the "Delete Cookies" button
Close the dialog
Try logging back into the site with your username and password

Step 2: Change your Internet Explorer privacy settings

Click on the "Tools" menu item in Internet Explorer's toolbar and choose "Internet Options".
Click on the "Privacy" tab.
You will see a slider showing your default privacy settings for Internet sites you access.
Move the slider to "Medium" (or lower).
If the slider is set to "Medium", "Low", or "Accept All Cookies," you should be able to fully access the RCSCALEBUILDER.COM website.
Click on "OK" to close Internet Options and confirm your new settings.
Step 3: Add RCSCALEBUILDER.COM to your trusted websites

As an added precaution please add rcscalebuilder.com to your Internet Explorer trusted/managed websites by performing the following action:

Click on the "Tools" menu item in Internet Explorer's toolbar and choose "Internet Options".
Click on the "Privacy" tab.
Click on the "Edit" button "To override cookie handling for individual websites".
In the resulting "Per Site Privacy Actions" window, enter rcscalebuilder.com in the "Address of Website" text box.
Click the "Allow" button and rcscalebuilder.com will move into the "Managed Web Sites" list.
Click the "OK" button to close the "Per Site Privacy Actions" window and confirm your new Privacy settings.
Click on "OK" to close Internet Options and confirm your new Internet Options settings.

If none of these work then there is an issue of something blocking the cookie. This could be a new piece of software, a firewall update, etc. Netscape does not have these issues because of the cookie security is not as complex as in IE.
 

7. Why do you ask for donation for the site?
Contrary to what most people think, hosting a high traffic web site is not cheap or free. There are hosting cost, hardware and software cost, support cost, and of course my time. RCSCALEBUILDER.COM only asks for donations to cover these costs. The advertisers help out and the member donations pick up the rest of the bills.

8. Who do I contact to advertise on your site and what is the cost?
If you’re a vendor that is interested in advertising on RCSB you can contact me at webmaster@rcscalebuilder.com for more information about the specifics of advertising on the site. As far as cost we offer several different packages and flexible payment plans.

9. What methods of Payment do you accept for donations and advertising?
Unfortunately I only accept Pay Pal (you can use your credit card or checking account). I cannot accept checks or money orders.

Rules and Etiquette

1. Why are your rules so strict?
As you well know the World Wide Web is a lot like the Wild West. There are many individuals with many different motivations surfing the web, but we only want individuals who are TRULY interested in R/C Scale on this site. We try and offer a safe, non-confrontational environment to share techniques and thoughts for both modelers and vendors. While it is no means a utopian site, we try to keep it on-track as much as possible. While the rules may seem strict they are there for yours and everyone else’s benefit.

2. Why do you not allow negative posts about vendors?
As stated in the last question, I am trying to provide a “community” atmosphere to share ideas and methods, not a place to promote or bash vendors. If you want to do that there are other sites that allow you to do that. While I agree that other modelers need to know about a vendor who gives bad service the number of illegitimate post would FAR out weigh the legitimate ones. Unfortunately there is no way to police this so to cut out the “bashing” we have to not allow legitimate completes also. You can thank your fellow modelers who do this for this rule.

3. What is “trolling” and why don’t you allow it?
There are some folks on the internet (just like in real life) that like to stir up trouble and controversy. These are called “trollers” (as in trolling or fishing) and they create post that will generate arguments, bad mouthing, strong opinions, etc. As stated in the site rules. This is NOT allowed on this site.

Posting

1. How do I post a new topic?
First make sure you are in the appropriate forum. For example, you should not post a question about a Top Flite kit in the Dave Platt forum. After navigating to the appropriate forum, simply click on the “New Topic” button to post a new topic.

2. How do I upload a picture into my post?
Once you have started typing your post and you want to add an image to your post there are a couple of things you need to know. First, we only accept .jpg and .gif format images. Secondly, all images must be under 60K in size. You can use an image editing program to resize and adjust the resolution of the image. How to do this is outside the scope of this FAQ and you should consult someone with the appropriate knowledge if you are not familiar with editing images. Also, please make sure the image width is no greater than 800 pixels so not to throw the page layout all out of alignment.

Next simply press the enter key at least twice after your text (or the test will wrap around the image) and click on the image upload button. Then you will be prompted to select a local file to upload by clicking on the “Browse” button in the file upload window. After selecting the file to upload click the “Ok” button to start the upload. Once it is complete you should see the image in the edit window.

3.  I added an image to my post but when I submitted the post all that showed up was a red “x” where the image is supposed to be. What happened?
This is caused by one of two possible problems. First, make sure you used the Image Upload button and not the Link Image button. If you accidentally used the link image button it is trying to link to a image on your hard disk and no one can see it. A more common problem is the image filename has one or more “special” characters in it like & or ? or + or =. These characters are use by the protocol the web uses and it confuses the web browser then they are in the filename. Make sure your image filenames are made up of nothing but alphanumeric characters (A-Z and 0-9)

4. How do I use the spell check while composing my post?
First, you must be running Internet Explorer 6 to use the spell checking add-on. The first time you click on the spell check toolbar button in the editor while posting you will be prompted to go and download the spell check add-on (it’s free). Go ahead and download the add-on and then once you go back to the site the next time you click on the spell checker while editing your post you will get the spell check.

5. I noticed someone had quoted a previous post in their post. How do I do this?
You will notice in the upper right corner of every post there is a “Quote” button. When you press this it will send you to the “New Post” page with the contest of the post you were in inserted in to the page. This feature is intended to answer specific questions in a post or if you wish to comment or answer a post a few posts back from the end of the thread.