MagicBunny.co.uk

So, you're new to MagicBunny and you have no idea where to begin? First, take a look around the site and see what you think. We are sure that you will be pleasantly surprised at how easy it is to navigate and how high is the quality of postings. The first places to visit are the forums. These are where all of the main discussions take place. Register with the site by hitting the button at the top left, follow the brief instructions and then you're off. Before posting, it would be good if you told us a little bit about yourself first of all. Begin by visiting the Introductions forum and here you can post your intro. There's also a template at the top of the forum to help you ... don't be afraid! Next, have a look around the other forums, seeing what there is in each one. If you want to say something, post it. This is how discussions work. Remember to respect other members’ opinions and, likewise, they will respect yours. You can also have a look at the other areas of the site using the links at the very top and bottom of every page. Have fun!

Each member has a different label to distinguish who they are and what they do. There are Moderators (explained below), Guest Speakers, New Members, Members and Senior Members. Guest Speakers are professionals who have participated in an interview or a question-asking period. You can read about these by following the link at the very top or bottom of any page. New Members are members with less than 5 posts, Members are those who have between 5 and 50 posts and Senior Members are those with more than 50 posts. There are also special labels for some moderators, for taking on specific roles in the running of the site. Some of these include Director, Librarian and Technical Support.

In order to gain access to the Secrets, Trading and Library forums, a member must first reach a post count of at least 50 over a period of at least one month. They then may submit a Private Message to any moderator. This must include a brief paragraph about the person, their interest in magic and some links to a few posts that they have made.

This post of Mike's may help explain things further:

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Michael Jay wrote:

Hi Member,

There are several criteria that we look for in choosing to allow someone into the secrets area.

1) We like the applicant to be a senior member, which is to say that you must have at least 50 posts. We do watch the posts and if someone gives a lot of one word posts, we disregard their application as it is obvious they are posting merely to achieve secret area status.

2) We require that the prospective applicant has been around on the boards here for at least one month. In this way we can judge the applicants sincerity to stick around and be an integral part of these boards. This also helps in that you don't need to get out you 50 posts in an unreasonable amount of time, like two or three days. Just stick around and post and you will find that you have 50 in 30 days, easily.

These two rules are "loose" rules, presently. We do make rare exceptions, based on the application of the prospective member (and we don't consider owning a magic shop or being a pro magician as reasonable exceptions - status does not get anyone a free ride). Rule #3 below, though, we don't make exceptions for...

3) The application submitted must show a desire to be a part of the secrets area. The applicant, through his/her application, must overwhelmingly convince us of his/her wish to be part of an area that we hold very dear. How do you accomplish this? By what you say in your application. In other words, if you apply with a one or two sentence introduction of yourself and then say, "I think I should be in the secrets area" we will summarily reject the application. The application should be thought provoking and sincere. I suggest no less than two paragraphs. Include with it several examples of posts you've already made, so that we can easily find the posts that you'd like us to consider as being some of your best.

I hope this information helps you. I'd like to see you here for a while and you should have no problem getting in, once you are established here at Magic Bunny.

I am sincerely yours,

Mike.

---

The Secrets forum is a forum where members may expand into more detail about tricks and can describe and share methods and moves. The revelation of commercial tricks is not advised in any part of these boards. This forum is restricted in order to prevent "secret seekers" for coming in and trying to find out how tricks are done. We, as magicians, do not want to reveal how tricks or sleights are performed.

This is a hidden forum to all but the Moderators & Administrators. In this forum issues about the boards are discussed and voted on, people are granted access to restricted areas, new parts to the boards are created, disciplinary issues are debated and so on.

The moderators are a group of people who have the ability to move, edit and delete posts of the members. They are here to keep the boards organised and in control and to filter any offensive or unsuitable material. More importantly, they form the governing body of MagicBunny and they are the decision making body of these boards.

The moderators are all unpaid and all of the work that is put into the site is entirely voluntary.

The moderators' main jobs are keeping the general peace of the board, removing posts that are insulting, breaking up minor arguments (which rarely occur) and moving topics to their correct places. Most importantly, these roles are exercised in moderation. An important ethos of MagicBunny is that freedom of speech should be respected wherever possible. This means that you will rarely have any of your posts moved or edited unless they are insulting or give away something that the general public should not see.

If you are considering the use of the phpBB software to generate your own forums, you may find this link of use if you wish to adopt this software for your own private purposes. We would certainly recommend this software as there have been very few problems with it and the support community is large and helpful.

Some members enquire about the names that appear in the list of members that have access to the Secret Area.

You may like to know that every “Special Guest” is given full access to all parts of the site as a mark of respect for the enormous amount of input that they have set aside in their role as “Special Guest.” Many of these world famous professional magicians remain active on this site after their visit and it is only right that they should retain their access to this feature. You may like to know that, after their input has been moved to the “Guest” link at the very top or bottom of each page, their original postings are deleted from the database and hence their descriptor does not show a true value of the vast input that they have previously made to the forums.

Other members have requested that their original accounts be deleted after some problematic software conflict and these members have also been reallocated their original full access. Again, their new descriptor does not truly represent the input that they have already made to the forums.

There are a relatively few number of members who were granted access in the early days of the board, before the request for “Senior Member” status was initiated. Some of these members have not become fully active but it would be wrong to support a cull of their access, solely to the change in application procedure adopted by the boards.

You can rest assured that the Governing body will endeavour to grant access fairly, in accordance to the guidelines of the Constitution.

The settings for the Trading Forum are set as to only allow members of the Restricted Area to post new topics to advertise their wares and to reply in order to make a purchase. It is strongly recommended that payment be received before an item is dispatched. The moderator, Rich, is the person to contact regarding problems with this and he may be found here.

If you have problems in downloading one of the past TopHat ezines you may find further details here. (You may want to know that one of these ezines is not stored as a *.pdf file but as a thread on our forums. This is not a mistake but due to unforeseen time constraints for one occasion.) If you have a query regarding the TopHat ezine, Michael Jay, the Director, is the person to contact. He may be found here.

If you wish to volunteer your services as a moderator, we would like to thank you for your interest but we apologise that we are unable to process any new applicants at this time. Currently, we have a full quota of moderators who help out with the various functions on the boards and, when a moderator retires, it is our policy to contact individual members privately, to see whether they are willing to assist in this role.

If you are asking about the location of a subject that you want to locate you will find the search button here.

Please feel free to add a graphic, if you wish, as part of your avatar by simply typing the address of the required picture. This may be done in the 'User Control Panel' link found at the top of the screen. Note that your image must be uploaded to your own servers as we do not have space to host avatars on our servers We would politely request that you do not add graphics in signatures however, as the loading of multiple graphics can very quickly slow access to each page and lead to a very cluttered experience for all members.

140 x 140 maximum

You are welcome to select an avatar for your own personal use on these boards but please remember that this is primarily a magic discussion board and not a graphical design forum. The use of an excessive size for an avatar makes it very difficult for other users to browse these boards because the disproportionate size of the avatar readjusts the margin settings for each page, causing text to be squashed to the far right of the screen. For the comfort of other users, you are requested not to link to avatars that exceed 140 by 140 pixels.

By following these basic guidelines, the margin settings for each page will remain unchanged, pages will load more rapidly and the forums will retain their professional appearance.

If you have posted a topic and then subsequently cannot locate that particular thread, there may be several reasons why this should be so. Most usually, members fail to push the “submit” button. In their haste, the “preview” button is selected and then that member fails to notice their error before moving to another part of the boards. May we recommend that you always wait until you see your post appear on the screen before you before you navigate away. If you are convinced that the post was submitted correctly, it may have been moved to a more appropriate forum by one of the moderators. Try conducting a search for your thread. A common error is the posting of material in the incorrect forums and moderators are always helpful in moving the thread for you. If these solutions fail to solve your question, it is probable that the thread was deleted for a breach of the forum rules. Normally a moderator will contact you regarding this but, if you wish, you may want to contact the appropriate moderator of that particular forum for further guidance. A list of moderators can be found here.

If you have a problem with the post of another member, please may we ask you to contact that member privately before drawing this to the moderators’ attention. Should the member be unhelpful in replying to your concerns, please refer the matter onto a member of the moderating team. It is essential (and polite) that the first contact should be a private one between you and the member concerned. Normally, the issue will be solved in this way before contacting one of the moderators.

If you spot a thread that you feel is offensive or inappropriate, please email or send a private message to one of the moderators of the forum in which the thread may be found or use the appropriate reporting icon on the thread in question. Next a moderator will attend to your problem quickly and professionally.

If you have your own magic Internet site and you wish to establish a cross-link, you will find full details of our existing links and how to establish a link on our Links page.

If you have logged on to find that the boards are down, please simply leave the forums until another time. We use an external server and are unable to act on emails telling us that the boards are not functioning. In the past, such problems are very rare indeed and they are usually resolved in a mater of minutes.

There are only 2 real rules:
* Please refrain from using profanity or any offensive material
* Please refrain from posting secrets in the public forums

These aren't really rules, just guidelines to which you should adhere if you don't want to annoy people:
* Please refrain from mass advertising in the forums. We don't mind an established member occasionally plugging their site but we don't look kindly at people joining and then immediately posting about their site.
* Please don't use "txt spk". A lot of the members dislike this type of posting, and you will find that if you take the time to use proper English and grammar, people will be a lot more friendly and willing to help.

If you still need help, please post your question in the relevant forum (Off Topic for non-magic enquiries) and someone will be glad to help. You can also email or Private Message a Moderator. A list of contacts can be found here.

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Ranks, which appear below your username, indicate the number of posts you have made or identify certain users, e.g. moderators and administrators. In general, you cannot directly change the wording of any board ranks as they are set by the board administrator. Please do not abuse the board by posting unnecessarily just to increase your rank. Most boards will not tolerate this and the moderator or administrator will simply lower your post count.

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To post a new topic in a forum, click the relevant button on either the forum or topic screens. You may need to register before you can post a message. A list of your permissions in each forum is available at the bottom of the forum and topic screens. Example: You can post new topics, You can vote in polls, etc.

Unless you are a board administrator or moderator, you can only edit or delete your own posts. You can edit a post by clicking the edit button for the relevant post, sometimes for only a limited time after the post was made. If someone has already replied to the post, you will find a small piece of text output below the post when you return to the topic which lists the number of times you edited it along with the date and time. This will only appear if someone has made a reply; it will not appear if a moderator or administrator edited the post, though they may leave a note as to why they’ve edited the post at their own digression. Please note that normal users cannot delete a post once someone has replied.

To add a signature to a post you must first create one via your User Control Panel. Once created, you can check the Attach a signature box on the posting form to add your signature. You can also add a signature by default to all your posts by checking the appropriate radio button in your profile. If you do so, you can still prevent a signature being added to individual posts by un-checking the add signature box within the posting form.

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The limit for poll options is set by the board administrator. If you feel you need to add more options to your poll then the allowed amount, contact the board administrator.

As with posts, polls can only be edited by the original poster, a moderator or an administrator. To edit a poll, click to edit the first post in the topic; this always has the poll associated with it. If no one has cast a vote, users can delete the poll or edit any poll option. However, if members have already placed votes, only moderators or administrators can edit or delete it. This prevents the poll’s options from being changed mid-way through a poll.

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Attachment permissions are granted on a per forum, per group, or per user basis. The board administrator may not have allowed attachments to be added for the specific forum you are posting in, or perhaps only certain groups can post attachments. Contact the board administrator if you are unsure about why you are unable to add attachments.

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If the board administrator has allowed it, you should see a button for reporting posts next to the post you wish to report. Clicking this will walk you through the steps necessary to report the post.

This allows you to save passages to be completed and submitted at a later date. To reload a saved passage, visit the User Control Panel.

The board administrator may have decided that posts in the forum you are posting to require review before submission. It is also possible that the administrator has placed you in a group of users whose posts require review before submission. Please contact the board administrator for further details.

By clicking the “Bump topic” link when you are viewing it, you can “bump” the topic to the top of the forum on the first page. However, if you do not see this, then topic bumping may be disabled or the time allowance between bumps has not yet been reached. It is also possible to bump the topic simply by replying to it, however, be sure to follow the board rules when doing so.

BBCode is a special implementation of HTML, offering great formatting control on particular objects in a post. The use of BBCode is granted by the administrator, but it can also be disabled on a per post basis from the posting form. BBCode itself is similar in style to HTML, but tags are enclosed in square brackets [ and ] rather than < and >. For more information on BBCode see the guide which can be accessed from the posting page.

No. It is not possible to post HTML on this board and have it rendered as HTML. Most formatting which can be carried out using HTML can be applied using BBCode instead.

Smilies, or Emoticons, are small images which can be used to express a feeling using a short code, e.g. :) denotes happy, while :( denotes sad. The full list of emoticons can be seen in the posting form. Try not to overuse smilies, however, as they can quickly render a post unreadable and a moderator may edit them out or remove the post altogether. The board administrator may also have set a limit to the number of smilies you may use within a post.

Yes, images can be shown in your posts. If the administrator has allowed attachments, you may be able to upload the image to the board. Otherwise, you must link to an image stored on a publicly accessible web server, e.g. http://www.example.com/my-picture.gif. You cannot link to pictures stored on your own PC (unless it is a publicly accessible server) nor images stored behind authentication mechanisms, e.g. hotmail or yahoo mailboxes, password protected sites, etc. To display the image use the BBCode [img] tag.

Global announcements contain important information and you should read them whenever possible. They will appear at the top of every forum and within your User Control Panel. Global announcement permissions are granted by the board administrator.

Announcements often contain important information for the forum you are currently reading and you should read them whenever possible. Announcements appear at the top of every page in the forum to which they are posted. As with global announcements, announcement permissions are granted by the board administrator.

Sticky topics within the forum appear below announcements and only on the first page. They are often quite important so you should read them whenever possible. As with announcements and global announcements, sticky topic permissions are granted by the board administrator.

Locked topics are topics where users can no longer reply and any poll it contained was automatically ended. Topics may be locked for many reasons and were set this way by either the forum moderator or board administrator. You may also be able to lock your own topics depending on the permissions you are granted by the board administrator.

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Administrators are members assigned with the highest level of control over the entire board. These members can control all facets of board operation, including setting permissions, banning users, creating usergroups or moderators, etc., dependent upon the board founder and what permissions he or she has given the other administrators. They may also have full moderator capabilities in all forums, depending on the settings put forth by the board founder.

Moderators are individuals (or groups of individuals) who look after the forums from day to day. They have the authority to edit or delete posts and lock, unlock, move, delete and split topics in the forum they moderate. Generally, moderators are present to prevent users from going off-topic or posting abusive or offensive material.

Usergroups are groups of users that divide the community into manageable sections board administrators can work with. Each user can belong to several groups and each group can be assigned individual permissions. This provides an easy way for administrators to change permissions for many users at once, such as changing moderator permissions or granting users access to a private forum.

You can view all usergroups via the “Usergroups” link within your User Control Panel. If you would like to join one, proceed by clicking the appropriate button. Not all groups have open access, however. Some may require approval to join, some may be closed and some may even have hidden memberships. If the group is open, you can join it by clicking the appropriate button. If a group requires approval to join you may request to join by clicking the appropriate button. The user group leader will need to approve your request and may ask why you want to join the group. Please do not harass a group leader if they reject your request; they will have their reasons.

A usergroup leader is usually assigned when usergroups are initially created by a board administrator. If you are interested in creating a usergroup, your first point of contact should be an administrator; try sending a private message.

It is possible for the board administrator to assign a colour to the members of a usergroup to make it easy to identify the members of this group.

If you are a member of more than one usergroup, your default is used to determine which group colour and group rank should be shown for you by default. The board administrator may grant you permission to change your default usergroup via your User Control Panel.

This page provides you with a list of board staff, including board administrators and moderators and other details such as the forums they moderate.

There are three reasons for this; you are not registered and/or not logged on, the board administrator has disabled private messaging for the entire board, or the board administrator has prevented you from sending messages. Contact a board administrator for more information.

You can block a user from sending you private messages by using message rules within your User Control Panel. If you are receiving abusive private messages from a particular user, inform a board administrator; they have the power to prevent a user from sending private messages.

We are sorry to hear that. The e-mail form feature of this board includes safeguards to try and track users who send such posts, so e-mail the board administrator with a full copy of the e-mail you received. It is very important that this includes the headers that contain the details of the user that sent the e-mail. The board administrator can then take action.

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You can add users to your list in two ways. Within each user’s profile, there is a link to add them to either your Friend or Foe list. Alternatively, from your User Control Panel, you can directly add users by entering their member name. You may also remove users from your list using the same page.

Enter a search term in the search box located on the index, forum or topic pages. Advanced search can be accessed by clicking the “Advance Search” link which is available on all pages on the forum. How to access the search may depend on the style used.

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Visit to the “Members” page and click the “Find a member” link.

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To subscribe to a specific forum, click the “Subscribe forum” link upon entering the forum. To subscribe to a topic, reply to the topic with the subscribe checkbox checked or click the “Subscribe topic” link within the topic itself.

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