Forum Questions

[Not-so-sunny-lane]

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I have found so many great ideas and pictures of props I'd like to do in the future here. How can I bookmark them or save them so how so that its easier to go back and find them? It seems like it takes me forever to go back and find a post of a particular prop that I saw a month ago.

[Dragonomine]

Fav places? That's what I do. I've got a TON of links in a Halloween file.

[Terra]

I have a bookmark section on my browser (Explorer) that I have organized into categories (Resources - Forums, How-to's, Stores, Pictures). Then those have sub-categories. For example, in How-to's I have 3D, Mad Scientist, Static Props, General, Sets-tombstones, Animatronics - sound, Spiders, Lighting, Dummy - sculpting.

Plus, I use the search feature a lot too. Just a minute ago I was curious about people's ideas of what kind of UV lights to use and found an awesome thread made last year that actually had comparison pictures! Really helped a lot. By the way, I am going to go with 48" florescent tubes.

[Frankie's Girl]

I have a bookmark section on my browser (Explorer) that I have organized into categories (Resources - Forums, How-to's, Stores, Pictures). Then those have sub-categories. For example, in How-to's I have 3D, Mad Scientist, Static Props, General, Sets-tombstones, Animatronics - sound, Spiders, Lighting, Dummy - sculpting.

Plus, I use the search feature a lot too. Just a minute ago I was curious about people's ideas of what kind of UV lights to use and found an awesome thread made last year that actually had comparison pictures! Really helped a lot. By the way, I am going to go with 48" florescent tubes.

I have the same basic thing. Firefox Halloween folder I created in my faves - bookmarks categorized into things like costumes, tombstones, lighting, general ideas...

[Zombie Machairodont]

Or, if you don't want ten-zillion bookmarks, you can also subscribe to a thread without commenting by clicking "Thread tools" and then "Subscribe to this thread" in the drop-down list on the bar below the "Post Reply" button at the top of the page. That way, you can reference it by finding it in your subscribed threads.

[Ghost of Spookie]

If you've posted to a particular thread, you can also do a search by your name and pull up all the posts that you created. That has saved me tons of time when I know I also posted to the thread. Of course you can limit your searches by a certain time frame, another big help.

I use a Mac and take advantage of the iPhoto application. I have albums set up for halloween ideas within iPhoto and save pics I want to remember to those albums. I try to remember to annotate the picture title with what it is, followed by who posted it, and where. For example I liked the painting technique on one of Terra's props: "Plywood metal_Terra_Halloweenforum" was my picture title. I use a similar system for things I've seen in stores or online: "Worm Food_1020008_FrightCatalog" which is the name of the product, item number, and store carrying it. Big time saver when I want to go back and revisit a thread created by someone or go to a website to find a product again. If I know it was something Terra did I can then always search by her name on the forum' search. A picture in iPhoto is worth a thousand hours of searching...but only if it gives you a clue where you got it from so you do need to be diligent in labeling it.

I also have folders set up on my hard drive for Halloween. I'll save things to .pdf and pray that Adobe's format survives as long as I do halloween haunts. In the past I would save the weblink and then find out later it got pulled leaving me with really nothing to remember. So far .pdf has been a good working system for me and doesn't require that the site's still is up when I want to check out the page. The .pdf format also seems to be a good format because it preserves the page as is and people do end up pulling their pics for space reasons and such.

My General Halloween Idea Folder that is a catch all, and I try to clean up and organize periodically. Within it are subfolders for certain prop ideas, hacks, resources, educational stuff.

My method is no means a perfect system but has been an invaluable resource when I wanted to go back and revisit something. Oh and I also have a folder for Great Websites and I just drag the URL address to there and the Mac puts an icon in the folder for it. I can click on the icon and launch the website. Again it's great as long as the website is around at that address. Really it's like a bookmark system and I still do occasionally save some bookmarks to my web browser but found that my bookmarks folder which I use "for the rest of my life" was getting too large to scroll through so opted for this system to keep them separate.

Finally there's the backup system of printed pages. I still find it preferable in many instances to have certain things printed out. I bought two large capacity 3 ring binders last year and have a future project to organize all my printouts and file them in a binder with tabs.

[larry]

You can also go to "Thread Tools" and subscribe to the thread. Then in your user/cp, there is a "List Subscriptions" function. However, you will receive an email each time any of those threads are replied to.