Website hints...

* ADD AN AVATAR! Avatars are the small personal images which appear beside all your posts in the forums. To add one, first sign in to your account, then click on ‘My Account’ in the box at the top of the left column.
Click on the ‘Edit’ tab.
In the section headed ‘Picture’, click on ‘Browse’ to upload an image from your computer. Once done this will appear automatically in the forums.
Ignore the given maximum dimension figures (85 x 85 pixels and 30kB), the system will resize your image for you.

* UPLOAD PICTURES IN THE FORUMS! Immediately beneath the comment box where you write your text is a green symbol (a + sign and a picture if you’re wondering what it’s supposed to be). Click on this and a new window will appear called Add Image. This gives you the option of browsing images you’ve previously uploaded, or to ‘Upload a new image’. Click on ‘Upload’ and you will see a small field called ‘Title’ and another below it called ‘Body’.
Sorry, they shouldn’t be there and soon we’ll stop them from appearing! But for now you need to give your picture a title, so enter something in the Title field.
Then enlarge the window by grabbing the bottom right corner until you see a field called ‘Image:’ with a ‘Browse’ button to the right. Click on this to upload an image from your computer in the usual way, then click ‘Save’.
You are then presented with a window including the picture you’ve uploaded. Ignore the size and alignment option menus, these don’t yet work.
Click ‘Insert’ and you’re taken back to the main comment window.
Click ‘Save’ and your text and image will appear. Note that as with the rest of the site, clicking on the image brings up a larger version over a smoked background.
This is still a little clumsy but we’ll be streamlining it soon.

* CONTACT ANOTHER MEMBER Below the user name, avatar and joining date to the left of forum posts is often a small envelope symbol. Click on this to mail another member directly. If the symbol is not there, the member has opted not to be contacted in this way.

* E-MAIL OPT OUTS If you've opted out of receiving mass e-mails because you don't want loads of junk to arrive, do note that the only mails you get when you choose to opt in are one or occasionally two a week telling you what's new on this website. E-mail addresses are not passed on to any other party and the only point of the mass e-mails is to save you coming back to the site to keep checking what's new. 'Mass' means I send them out to a mass of subscribers in one go, it doesn't mean that you'll get a whole mass of mail clogging up your inbox!

* PICTURE GALLERIES When you’re viewing the picture galleries (usually by clicking on the first picture in the main text of a test or feature) you don’t have to point the mouse at the Next button, just click anywhere on the picture itself and it automatically advances to the following image - it’s a lot easier this way. And any time you want to go back to the text, instead of clicking Close or pressing the Esc key you can simply click anywhere in the smoked grey zone off the picture. Note that if you scroll the text in the usual way it slides up or down beneath the image... pointless, but it looks pretty cool!

* MENUS If you click on Bike Tests in the main menu you get a sub-menu list (in the black bar immediately beneath the main grey one) of bike tests. This constantly changes because these are the most recent tests, with the very latest on the left and the oldest on the right. At the far right is the TEST ARCHIVE, where all the other tests are stored. The archive of every section - features, scooters and so on, is always located on the far right of each sub-menu. If you can’t see it there it’s because there aren’t enough features yet for an archive... but there will be!

*HOME PAGE The centre column beneath Website News (although this isn't always there) and Coming Soon is made up of boxes which link to the latest test and features, newest at the top, and there are more links in the Recent Features box on the right. On the left is the Recent Comments box.

* WHY REGISTER? Not to give me a list of e-mail addresses I can sell because I’m not doing that. It’s for two reasons, one so you can get those mass e-mails telling you what’s new on the site, and two so you can post comments as well as read them. As a registered user you also get to vote in the Poll in the right side column if you wish - nothing happens with that, it’s just for fun, but it’s interesting to see what people think of various issues too.
Note you can make comments after the tests and features as well as in the forums. This is useful if you have a specific question or observation which directly concerns what’s been written about.

* COPYRIGHT Everything written on this site is the copyright of the accredited author, which is usually me, Kevin Ash, although other writers are used occasionally. All of the pictures are used with the permission of the photographers or the image suppliers (often the press offices of the motorcycle factories or importers) and no copyrights are broken by me in this respect. So, while I would love you to link to this site and spread the word, and I’m happy for you to take quotes from stories here, please don’t steal entire features, tests or images, because that’s all it is, theft. If you’d really like something from here for your own site or use then get in touch with me instead through the site contact form, and I will do my best to help. It might not even cost you anything, I’m pretty easy going and if you’re pleasant and polite then you could easily win me over!