FAQ (Answers to Frequently Asked Questions)


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FTX FAQ: Answers to Frequently Asked Questions

FTX is a text-based publishing format for making web pages on LUGNET. Pages can contain text, lists, images, hyperlinks, and more. For detailed information, please see the FTX User Guide.

1. Can I store my pictures on LUGNET?

Not currently. The associated costs are relatively high, but falling. Users are encouraged to investigate image-hosting services on the Internet, most notably Kevin Loch’s BrickShelf.com.

Since your images will still appear to be on LUGNET as they load into your member pages, you should always make sure that you have permission to make direct embedded links to any images that you include.

2. What about copyrights and disclaimers and stuff?

To some extent, these are taken care of for you automatically. LUGNET shows a general legal disclaimer and copyright notice at the bottom of every page you create. (This does not necessarily protect you from liability of copyright infringement, however; you still need to act responsibly.)

If you own an image or a body of text, or if it is in the public domain (meaning that it is not copyrighted), then of course you may use it. If not, always obtain permission from the copyright owner prior to using something which you do not own.

An exception is linking to web pages on LUGNET: You may freely link to any web page on LUGNET, including other members’ pages, even if you do not first obtain permission. You may also transclude (include copies of) other members’ pages into your own pages using the special FTX page-transclusion feature. When you do this, their name will also appear at the bottom of your page showing that you have included content owned by someone else. A viewer is also able to jump directly to any transcluded page, making it effectively impossible to “steal” content from others without giving them credit.

3. Does LUGNET own the stuff I put up?

Unless you specifically transfer copyright ownership: No, it does not.

When you create personal pages on LUGNET, you retain copyright ownership of the data you input (assuming you own it in the first place). As part of LUGNET’s Terms of Use Agreement, you grant LUGNET, among other things, a non-exclusive license to adapt and publish your content on the World Wide Web. Thus, LUGNET does not own your content but is a publisher of it.

You are free to use or publish your content (specifically, the data you input) elsewhere or license it to others at your own discretion. Note, however, that the license you grant to LUGNET when you input data is perpetual (meaning forever), irrevocable (meaning that you can’t later change your mind and reverse the grant of license), royalty-free (meaning that LUGNET does not pay you for your content), worldwide, and applies to any communications medium.

4. Why won’t HTML code work on my page?

LUGNET Member pages use a special format called FTX rather than HTML.

5. Why use FTX over HTML?

FTX is more streamlined than HTML. A typical block of HTML may contain a mixture of text and many “markup tags” (<TABLE>, <UL>, <BR>, etc.) and “character entities” (® © " ™ etc.), while the same block as FTX content would likely show your text with any formatting characters included inline with your copy. That makes FTX more compact and more legible when editing.

It is important that everyone in the LUGNET community feel comfortable about creating their own web pages. Many people have no experience in this field. If methods are kept as simple as possible, it is hoped that everyone will become publishers.

6. Can FTX and HTML do the same things?

It depends on what you want to do. If you expect only to write paragraphs of text, include hyperlinks, create simple tables, and show a few images, then they are much the same.

But FTX wasn’t designed to be as general as HTML. FTX is a fast way to write formatted text or hypertext documents. Pages are quick, clean, and consistent.

FTX cannot do everything that HTML can do. However, it does have a few new tricks of its own. For example, FTX pages may include copies of whole other FTX pages through a special kind of hyperlink which does not exist in HTML.

7. Have you considered offering a restricted subset of HTML for those who are comfortable with HTML?

It may be offered someday. For now though, we wish to give this simpler system a complete test.

8. What about tables? And colors?

Simple two-dimensional tables are possible in FTX (See the User Guide page for more details). Complex layouts or nested tables are not available in FTX code, although a future version of FTX may include stronger table support. We’re also thinking about how to handle colors.

9. Are there any size limits?

Currently, for practical reasons relating to HTML forms, a single page is limited to 65,000 text characters of FTX code. However, you can create larger overall pages using the page transclusion feature, which imposes no limits on the sizes of composite pages.

There is currently no system-enforced limit on the number of FTX pages that you are allowed to create.

10. Can a friend and I work on a page together?

Currently, no. However, it is technically possible. We may enable you to open some of your pages to editing by other LUGNET Members. You would have control over which pages and who you would allow editing access.

11. Can I sell stuff through my pages?

If:

It is legal for you to sell it, and
It is related to LEGO® toys, and
You don’t do anything which goes against LUGNET’s Terms of Use Agreement,

then Yes. Otherwise, No.

However, even if the answer is Yes, you still mustn’t ever spam anyone via email or post messages about your sales to discussion groups excessively. That is, a few messages to discussion groups are OK (so long as the groups permit this in their charters), but an excessive level is not. (You’ll probably find out quickly if you annoy someone.) Sending direct email solicitations to anyone regarding pages you create is also a big “no-no.”

12. I’m an associate seller for Foo.com. Can I build a virtual store on LUGNET?

See previous question and answer. Also bear in mind that LUGNET is an Amazon.com Associate with links to books, LEGO® sets, and other items using the Amazon.com Associate ID lugnet. Thus, if you make links to items for sale using a different associate ID, you may take potential commissions away from LUGNET.

Incidentally, if you would like to help LUGNET, you are more than welcome to make links to products for sale at Amazon.com using LUGNET’s Amazon.com associate ID. For example, if you wanted to include a link to The Ultimate LEGO® Book (ISBN 078944691X), you would make a URL like this one:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/078944691X/lugnet/

13. Can I display banner ads (like ILE)?

If you can figure out a way to display them, yes, you may. However, LUGNET’s Member pages facility is not intended as general-purpose web hosting. Please keep your pages tasteful, on-topic, and of interest to the online LEGO® enthusiast community.

14. Can I register my pages with a search engine?

You could, although doing so would probably have no effect. Since nearly all webpages on LUGNET are dynamically generated, web crawlers can have a noticable impact on the server, especially when accessing URLs representing alternative views of pages. Thus, LUGNET has a robots.txt file which asks crawlers to steer clear in many cases.

What we’d like (separate from having an integrated search engine for Member pages right on LUGNET) is to find a way to submit specific pages to major search engines and allow them access to these specific pages, while still turning away problematic crawlers. Solving this problem may be easy for some search engines and difficult for others.

15. Do the initials FTX stand for anything?

FTX is short for “formatted text” (or, if you prefer, “fancy text”).

(By the way, HTML is short for “hypertext markup language.”)

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