The Craftster Need To Know Guide
History of Craftster
Craftster Membership Settings
• Handy
Features for Registered Members
• Your
Member Profile
• Avatars,
Personal Text, Signatures
Structure of Craftster
How To Find Things on Craftster
• Search
Feature
What Kind of Information Goes Where
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Mechanics of Posting
• First
Step in Posting or Replying
• Using
Tags to Format Your Post
• Posting
Pictures in Your Message
• Using
Quick Reply Feature
• Quoting
Another Post in Your Post
• Editing
Your Post Later
• Moving
Your Thread to a Different Place
• New
Thread? How to Choose a Great Title
Tips for Posting a Completed Project
with a Tutorial
Personal Message System
• How
to Send a Personal Message
• Helpful
Personal Message Tips
Organized Swaps
Etiquette, Tips, and DOs and DON'Ts
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History of Craftster
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Craftster is an online community where people share hip, off-beat, crafty diy (do it yourself) projects. The term "Craftster" means "crafty hipster" and is also meant to be an homage to the pioneer peer-to-peer sites Napster and Friendster.
Craftster was started in August 2003 by Leah Kramer, a computer programmer and self-proclaimed craft junkie. Craftter has since grown to a readership of over 1,000,000 readers per month. Leah Kramer moved on from Craftster in 2010 but is still Craftster's #1 fan.
Craftster has been written up in numerous publications including Time Magazine, the New York Times and the London Guardian.
Craftster is the largest online community for what is now commonly known as "indie crafts." ("Indie" stands for independent as in indie music, indie art, indie film, etc.) Craftster is regarded by many as one of the cornerstones of the recent renaissance in crafting known as the "indie craft movement.
In December 2009, Craftster was acquired by Internet Brands. Internet Brands is a leading Internet media company that operates community and e-commerce websites.
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Craftster Membership
Settings
You don't need to sign up and become a member to use
Craftster but there are advantages to signing up. Signing
up is free! And your personal information will not be
given away or sold.
 Handy
Features for Registered Members
• Member can post. Guests
can only read.
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• Craftster keeps track
of which threads you've read and boards you've
visited. This is helpful because next time you
come to Craftster, you'll be able to see at a
glance what's new and what you've already seen.
 
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| • You can use the
Mark As Read feature to "trick"
Craftster into thinking you've read a thread,
a board, or the entire forum. You would
do this if you want use the Show unread
posts since last visit but have the
results be narrowed. |
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| • You can "collapse"
and expand the categories on the main page.
Whether a category is collapsed or expanded
is remembered from visit to visit. This
is helpful if you're really only interested
in a few categories because you can just
collapse the ones you're not interested
in. |
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Your
Member Profile
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The Profile button gives
you access to your account information and lets
you control how Craftster behaves in certain ways. |
Click these choices to change
many aspects of your profile:
• Account Related Settings allows
you to: create a "displayed screen name"
that is different that your login name; hide your
email address from being seen by other members;
change your password; etc.
• Forum Profile Information is where
you set personal information such as your Avatar,
Personal Text, and Signature.
• Look and Layout Preferences allows
you to change the way Craftster behaves when navigating
and posting messages. For example, you can turn
on a feature here called Quick Reply, which
shows a reply box on screen whenever you are reading
a thread so you can reply to that thread without
having to do the extra step of clicking the Reply
button. You can also change your Skin (called
a Theme).
• Notifications and Email provides
settings that come into play if you subscribe
to be notified when a thread is replied to.
• Personal Message Options lets you
set certain behaviors regarding Personal Messages
you get through Craftster. |
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Avatars,
Personal Text, Signatures
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If you click on the Profile
button and then click Forum Profile Information
you can change all of these things for your account.
For your Avatar You can (1) choose a picture
that comes with Craftster's software, (2) upload
a picture that is no bigger than 128x128 pixels
or (3) enter a URL to a picture on your own website
that is no bigger than 128x128 pixels.
Your Personal Text is meant to be a quick
statement of whatever you want.
Your Signature can be any statement you
want that's a bit longer. Some people put a link
to their online shop, website or blog here. Please
just keep it brief. And if you are going to advertise
your online shop, please keep it somewhat subtle.
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Structure of Craftster
The heirarchy of Craftster is as follows: CATEGORIES
-> BOARDS -> TOPICS -> POSTS
So an example of a category is KNITTING and within
that one of the boards is Completed Projects
and within that one of the many topics is iPod Cozies.
When you start a new topic on Craftster, this
is also known as starting a new thread. Any message
you write, whether it's a new topic or a reply to a
topic is a post. |
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How To Find Things
on Craftster
A huge part of what makes Craftster such a great resource
is it contains a massive amount of information on many
different types of crafting. Sometimes you may just
want to browse Craftster, but often times you may want
to find information on a specific topic.
It's tempting to just post a question about what you
want to know but it's a much better idea to search for
it first. Searching for it gives you access to all the
information already posted AND it helps keep Craftster
more organized.
Many threads about one specific subject are not as helpful
as one combined thread that has everything you need
to know! Please, please, please search before posting!
Search
Feature
There are three different ways to search for information
on Craftster.
1. If you just type a keyword or two into the
search box at the top of every page, then the entire
Craftster forum -- each and every board -- are searched.
2. If you currently reading a board then you'll
see a checkbox next to that search box which tells Craftster
to only search that particular board.
3. You can confine the search parameters even
further by clicking Advanced search. This allows
to to specific only messages posted by a certain user,
what date range to search through, and to limit the
search to just the boards you want.
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What Kind of Information
Goes Where
There are two simple but important rules for where to
put your posts.
1. A completed project with pictures and
a tutorial that describes how you made the item goes
into the Completed Projects board under the appropriate
category.
For many categories, there is a break-down between things
made from new materials and things made from
re-purposing items in interesting new ways. For
example purses made from newly purchased fabric vs.
purse made from empty juice pouches.
2. Any questions, tips, or other discussion
goes into the Discussions and Questions board.
Please remember to search first to see if what
are about to post has already been discussed.
Then there are several special folders which are described
right on Craftster's main page like swaps, crafting
for charity, crafty business ventures, etc. |
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Mechanics of Posting
First
Step in Posting or Replying
To start a new thread, go to the appropriate folder
and click the button that says New Topic. To
reply to an existing thread, click the Reply
button.
Using
Tags to Format Your Post
There are lots of ways to spruce up your message with
text formatting. You do this by using special "tags".
The concept of tags is well known to people who can
code HTML by hand but otherwise they can be a little
bit strange.
Basically the rule for using tags is: figure out what
tag you want to use; then make sure you put the "opening
tag" in front of the piece of text and the
"closing tag" at the end of the piece
of text. For example, the opening tag to make something
bold is [b] and
the closing tag is [/b].
You can just type the tags in as you go. If you are
unsure of what tags are available, try clicking the
formatting buttons and an opening and closing tag will
be inserted for you. But you must make sure the text
you want is typed between those tags.
Here's an example of some basic formatting (italics,
bold, underline, how to combine styles, and how to set
text color):
And here's what the results look like:
| To post an inline link,
use the [url=http://whateverurl.com]
and [/url]
tags like so: |
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And it will come out like this: |
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If you are unsure of whether
you are using the tags properly, you can click
the Preview button and check how it looks
before posting. |
Posting
Pictures in Your Message
If you want to post a picture in your message, you must
have web space somewhere and then you upload your pictures
there. Then in your message you enter the URL of the
image in between the image tags like so: [img]http://www.someurl.com/craftsterpics/purse1.jpg[/img].
If you don't already have web space, here's some suggestions
from Craftster members for free
or cheap web hosts. In particular, we recommend
PhotoBucket
which is free and you can also upgrade for a small amount
of money to have even more space if you run out.
Craftster also offers free picture hosting for Craftster
members! The pictures you upload there are for Craftster
Forum use only. I.e. not for personal use. This is a
great way save on your own bandwidth. Click here for
Craftster
Picture Hosting.
Please note that in order to prevent spam bots and spammers
from posting inappropriate pictures, you must post 10
times in the forum before you are allowed to post a
picture. In the mean time you are allowed to post links
to pictures.
Using
Quick Reply Feature
There is a handy feature called Quick Reply which
is not on by default. To turn it on, go to you your
Profile, then click Look and Layout Preferences,
and you'll be able to turn this feature on. This feature
shows a reply box on screen whenever you are reading
a thread so you can reply to that thread without having
to do the extra step of clicking the Reply button.
Quoting
Another Post in Your Post
If you'd like to respond to a post and include that
post in your response, click the Quote button
in the message you'd like to quote. This causes that
person's message to appear in your message with the
quote tags, [quote]...[/quote],
around it. If you want, you can delete some of what's
in the quoted segment in order to trim the quote down
to just the part you want to comment on. If the message
you are quoting has an image in it, it's a good idea
to remove this part of the quote so the bandwidth hit
that that image takes up isn't doubled.
Editing
Your Post Later
If you've posted a message and then you want to edit
it later, you can click the Edit button under
that message. You can also delete any message you've
posted by clicked the Delete button under that
message.
Moving
Your Thread to a Different Place
If you've started a thread and you realize that you
started it in the wrong board, you can click the Move
Topic button and choose the correct folder to move
it to.
New
Thread? How to Choose a Great Title
To help people locate the impressive craft projects
you post, carefully word the title of your posts to
make them as informative and descriptive as possible.
Here are some tips:
• descriptive words
– Use words to help describe the focus or subject
of your post such as: stencil, tutorial, pattern, do
it yourself, craft, design, recycled, instructions,
how to / how to make, handmade, reconstructed.
• methods –
What methods did you use to create your craft? Is it
embroidered, knitted, or woven? Include that in the
title.
• materials –
It never hurts to incorporate your materials using words
like beaded, felt, or polymer clay, candy wrappers,
etc.
• item - Describe
your item. Is it a circle skirt, a purple bracelet,
a bottle cap necklace?
Now use the materials and/or
method, item,
and descriptive words together
in any order:
Examples: satin handbag tutorial, floral embroidery
napkin design, recycled cassette tape wallet, reconstructed
pink pencil skirt pattern, making embroidered vintage
slips, do it yourself crochet flower necklace, woven
duct tape purse tutorial, how to make, knitted cargo
pants, handmade squeaky pet toys, blue and green beach
glass crafts
And that’s it! You’ve created a title that
makes it easy for others to find your work! |
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Tips for Posting
a Completed Project with a Tutorial
This section is coming soon! |
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Personal Message
System
How
to Send a Personal Message
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When you are looking at a message
someone has posted, you can click on the speech
bubble to send that person an Personal Message.
If the speech bubble is blue it means that
the person is currently on Craftster. If it's
gray, that person is not currently on Craftster.
You can send them a message either way and they
can read it whenever they want.
If you want to just send a Personal Message to
any member whose username you know without finding
a message of theirs and clicking the bubble, then
click on the link in your User Info box
to access your Personal Message area, click the
New Message button, and type that user's
name in the To field. |
Helpful
Personal Message Tips
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To get to your Personal Message
area, click the link in your User Info box. |
• When sending and Personal
Message to someone, you can keep a copy of your sent
message by checking Save a copy in my outbox.
• To see the message you've sent (if you opted
to save a copy), click the Outbox button.
• It's a good idea to delete messages you don't
need from time to time. Some users have had problems
when the total number of message goes over 100.
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Organized Swaps
Craftster members can start Swaps where, according
to some theme, people can trade crafted items. Over
time, based on experience with lots of different issues
that can arise, a set of rules for organizing or participating
in a swap has been developed. These are all outlined
in the Swap
Info Guide.
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Etiquette, Tips,
and DOs and DON'Ts
Please see our updated Rules for more information.
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