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Improving the Bugs and Help & Support forum

Hi all! It seems I've never properly introduced myself.

I'm Blunion05, my alter ego for the Internet.

I began playing iGP Manager three years ago, going back to August 2014. Today, I'm still playing iGP Manager! For three months now, as many of you are already aware, I have been providing support on the forum. What you may not know is I also answer the messages players send to iGP Manager on Facebook plus the e-mails sent to support@igpgames.com. My role is essentially customer support.

With that out of the way, here comes the thinly veiled excuse to flex my moderator powers!

First, thank you to players who help other players in various topics.

There isn't much effort I have to put in to provide support. One downside though is the amount of information I look through, when unorganized, has my brain really slow down and struggle to process the information. I've taken some steps to help improve the forum's efficiency in the Bugs and Help & Support forum. Unfortunately, it hasn't worked as I had hoped.

What are the problems? To list a few:

Players still occasionally report bugs or ask for help in threads that they shouldn't be posting in.
There are terrible, undescriptive thread titles.
Barely anybody reports bugs the way I'd like them to.
Few people read the FAQ in the Help & Support forum.

What now then?

I've been hesitant to do anything because I don't want players feeling like requesting help to be a chore.

But I think I've figured out a way to get the change I'd like to see.

Beginning today, here are actions I will take against posts not following the guidelines outlined in the forum:

- Threads with bad titles will be permanently closed and the original poster will be requested to create a new thread with a more descriptive title suggested to them

- Bugs not reported in the format following the guidelines for writing bug reports the original poster will be requested to edit their post to follow the format and the thread may be closed and will be re-opened once the post has been updated

- Threads whose answers can be found in the FAQ will request the original poster to read the FAQ and the thread may be closed

The situation isn't as bad as this post may make it seem. But this will help with my ability to efficiently provide support as the game grows in the future, at least until the forum can get a revamped layout for the important meat of things that players need to be able to readily see and read when they are on the forum's home page.

That's all I can think of that needed addressing right now.

Gonna have to do something about the Suggestions forum at some point too...

now we know you ;)

well mate, i did it by mail but let's do it in public. no no, not that :P just want to say thank you for the time, for the dedication and the fast answers you always have.

good job! thanks again mate

You're welcome :D

If you come across something I wrote, don't bother asking for a rewrite just delete it.
Lack of sleep or a feed of drink in me at the time of writing it.
Most likely not make sense! It's fine in my head but see putting it in writing

You ask for screen shots. Nobody knows how to post a screen shot except James Greer and a very few other "old timers". I don't know how and am angry that I should have to look that up on Google. Everybody that plays this game is not a computer geek. There is an incredible lack of basic instruction included with this game. That is something that was promised during beta phase and has yet to be provided. And that is something that is and has been extremely damaging to the success of this game. It requires no programming or development team. It should not require a tedious search through the forum where differing opinions can cloud the issues and the simple basics of the game are lost in the shuffle.

Are you asking about how to embed just any image or embedding screenshots? I sometimes explained how to embed images, but not screenshots.

I provide support on the forum, why not just ask me how to do it? If I am the one asking for it I don't mind being asked how to do so. Asking for technical support is okay here too. Most times I did not explain how to embed images or screenshots is because I felt like I'd insult the intelligence of the player I requested to post a screenshot.

There definitely is a dire need for attention on certain things, but I have no control over it. I hope Jack can address some of these things as soon as possible.

Off topic, but I agree that the game lacks a proper tutorial that would allow new players to comfortably get used to the game's mechanics in a reasonable amount of time. Joey did good writing up his guides for all to see, but that's only visible to those who are on the forums, and it's not an "in-game tutorial" where players can, for example, see tooltips in the live race viewer telling them about push levels and what to watch out for in their tyre temp gauge, check for the pit in light, and so on. You can argue the help section covers quite a bit though.

Still, that and perhaps a "how to embed pics and other stuff for dummies" guide could be handy, since I suffer from computer dumb too at times. :D

Boomer, that is pretty much what the second half of my rant was about. It was triggered by the idea that all the game players will somehow just magically know how to post a screen shot. One time, back in beta trials Jack mentioned how to post image's and links. But I dont remember how now. The other forums that I have frequented have embedded tools to do that kind of thing but I would be happy just to have a list of commands and clear instructions on how to use them. As far as insulting my intelligence, I feel more insulted by hearing that I should include a screen shot and not hearing how to do that. If I have some instructions and can't figure out how to do it, then my intelligence should be insulted. But not including instructions is just pure arrogance.

Well, for now, the way to embed images is to type [img] and [/img] and paste the direct link to the image in between.

I asked google this question

you are on a Computer:
1) Send the screenshots to yourself via Email, Facebook Messenger, etc.
2) Download your screenshots onto your computer.
3) Go to imgur.com
4) Click "Upload images".
5) Select both of the screenshots you just downloaded and then click "Upload".
6) After they have finished uploading, hover your mouse over the image and you should see 3 little dots that are side by side, you should see a list of links to choose from, copy the BB Code(Forums) link. It should look like this: [img]i.imgur.com/XXXXXX.jpg[/img] or [img]i.imgur.com/XXXXXX.png[/img] - Note: You will need to copy the BB Code from both pictures but you can only copy one at a time (if you can't find those 3 dots, look on the right side of the page next to the picture and it should give a list of multiple options) ALSO for the BB code to work properly, make sure it has "http://" at the very beginning of the link or else it will NOT work as you can see in the example links.
7) After you have copied the BB Code, you will need to go to your ORIGINAL post on this thread and click
EDIT which is located down the bottom right of your post.
8) Paste in the BB Code link and go copy and paste in the other photos BB Code right under the first one (on separate lines of course)
9) Click SAVE and you're done!

If this is it you are never getting a screenshot from most of the people who play this game.

Some of the steps at the beginning are redundant... When I am at a PC I will post better, shorter instructions.

If you are on a computer using Windows:

1. Press the Print Screen button on the keyboard. Generally next to the Scroll lock key or paired with another key and activated via the Fn (function) key (on smaller keyboards).

2. Open Paint. Paste the image into paint by pressing CTRL + V or by clicking the paste button in Paint. Save the image.

3. Go to imgur.com and click on the green button that says "New Post." In the window that opens inside the page, click browse and search for the image you saved in Paint. Open the file by double clicking on it or clicking once on the file name and then clicking open. The image will begin automatically uploading.

4. Right click on the image on the new page that loads. Click "Copy image address."

5. On the forum post you'd like to insert the uploaded image into, type [img], press CTRL + V to paste the image address, then type [/img]. It should look like this: [img]i.imgur.com/XXXXX.png[/img]

6. When you post your reply, the image will be embedded into the post.


If you are on a mobile device the steps are altered only slightly:

1. Taking a screenshot on mobile devices is generally performed by holding down the Power button and Home button at the same time. For some Android devices, this may be different, requiring one of the Volume buttons pressed down at the same time as the Power button or pressing one of the Volume buttons at the same time as the Home button.

2. Open your phone's browser. In the address bar, type prnt.sc and press go to load the URL. Tap on "Browse images." On iOS, select Photo Library. On Android, select Documents. Look for the screenshot you took. On Android, the photo may be located in the Gallery section. Tap on the photo. The upload will begin automatically.

3. The page will say "Success!" with a link to the completed upload underneath it. Tap on the link.

4. On the new page, you will see the uploaded image. Press and hold down your finger on the photo. A prompt will appear. Press "Open image in new tab." In the Safari browser, the option to tap on will be "Copy". On Android, after pressing "Open image in new tab," go to the tab with the image open in it and press and hold your finger down on the URL. Press "Copy." from the selection choices that appears on the screen.

5. On the forum post you'd like to insert the uploaded image into, type [img]. In Safari, tap directly after the bracket that comes after [img], then press Paste. On Android, press and hold the space directly after the bracket that comes after [img], then press Paste. Then type [/img]. It should look like this: [img]i.imgur.com/XXXXX.png[/img]

6. When you post your reply, the image will be embedded into the post.

Wow, very clear. Now not even a whiny old fart like me can do it. Thanks

Not to sound like a whiny old fart or anything, but is the "not" in your sentence supposed to be there? :P

https://imgur.com/a/8G02K

https:[img]imgur.com/a/8G02K.png[/img]

Hi Carlos, you have to include the https:// with the link.

Sorry, that not isn't supposed to be there. But I can screw stuff up even when it is easy.

A couple of tries to do it and don't skip "open image in new tab" but success.

Samsung Tab S3 Android 7.0