Freedom Torch Survival Guide

8/6/2019 Freedom Torch Survival Guide

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The UNAUTHORIZED

FreedomTorch

Survival Guide.

Please note that some functions of the web site may change and we will try to keep up. We assume nolegal liability in the use or misuse of the information contained herein. Use of FreedomTorch has been

known to cause squeamishness in laboratory liberals.

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Table of Contents

Your Window on the World........................................................................................................................5

DYNAMIC MENU BAR...........................................................................................................................7

STATIC MENU..........................................................................................................................................8

Forums...................................................................................................................................................8

Polls.......................................................................................................................................................8Blogs......................................................................................................................................................9

Groups.................................................................................................................................................10Events..................................................................................................................................................10

Videos..................................................................................................................................................11

Audio...................................................................................................................................................11Documents...........................................................................................................................................12

Photos..................................................................................................................................................12

Size Does Matter.............................................................................................................................12

So how do I lower the size of the Pictures?....................................................................................13Chat.....................................................................................................................................................14

Podcasts...............................................................................................................................................14Sharing.....................................................................................................................................................14

Add Photo............................................................................................................................................15

Add Link..............................................................................................................................................15

Add Audio...........................................................................................................................................15Add Video............................................................................................................................................15

What you can do with your posts........................................................................................................16

Settings................................................................................................................................................16BLOGS.....................................................................................................................................................18

Blog Basic...........................................................................................................................................19

Toolbar.................................................................................................................................................20

INSIDE TIPS FROM OLD PROS!..........................................................................................................21Back up your Facebook information...................................................................................................21

Tired of all of the messages?...............................................................................................................21

SUMMARY.............................................................................................................................................22

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FreedomTorch Survival Manual

Good morning, Mr. Phelps, or whatever your name is. Your mission, since you allready accepted it, is to use this manual to hopefully make your membership onFreedomTorch more productive and enjoyable. As always, if any of yourFreedomTorch team is captured, remember to blame Jonathan. This manual willnot self-destruct. You must burn it or eat it. Or, you know, you could just delete itoff of your hard drive.

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TIP

Strewn throughout this

manual you will findtips that I have found

useful in boxes like

this. I have no TIPJAR. You'll have to

send a money order.


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Your Window on the WorldWe will presume (because we never assume here!) that you have already learned how to sign up

and log in. Otherwise, you would probably not have figured out how to get to this guide.

On the Home screen, you will find a dynamic menu,static menu, some advertising and the

wall. We will eventually cover all of these areas; some in more details than others. What I call thedynamic menu is updated on a regular basis. I refer to the blue menu as thestatic menu as it does notchange or give you updated information on your status. It simply sits there patiently waiting for you to

utilize its potential as a powerful navigation force for your

FreedomTorch experience.

In the Announcements section you will see... Well,

announcements.You see the Facebook Status Update first. That is the area

Johnathan uses to suggest what you might post on your Facebook page.You can cut and paste it into your wall on another site that you might

still be associated with, though I don't know why.

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TIP

I have found it easierto use View Recent

Updates to accept

friendship requests.


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Under that is the What's New section or the news feed. This is where Patriots share

information. We will explain about posts later. Notice that there is a warning indicating 1 new updateavailable. This is different than the Updates on the dynamic menu, which we will discuss later. This

indicates that someone shared a post while you were away. Click on it and you will see the new post,or posts.

Another thing to remember is that you can LIKE a post

and COMMENT on a post. When you do either, you will get anotice on the dynamic menu bar. If you do both, you will get a

duplicate message, i.e. so-and-so commented on a post you likeAND so-and-so commented on a post that you commented on. Ifyou want to prevent duplicate notices about posts, you can either

LIKE orCOMMENT, but don't do both. That will save you

some clutter especially if there has been a busy night after you

went to sleep.On the liberal side

(left), you will see

another menu. The topitem is to View RecentUpdates. The Updates

on the menu bar will listthe latest nine items. If

it indicates ten updates,

you can click on View

Recent Updates to see

all of the updates. ViewMy Profile takes you to

your Wall showing allof the brilliant bits of

information that you

have shared throughout your history on the site. You can doeverything to your own posts from here that you can do in the

What's New section of the home page, i.e. Like, Comment,

Delete, Add posts, etc. Edit My Profile allows you to change information and your Profile Picture.Below that, you can browse for members to see if your friends are on FreedomTorch. If not, ask them

Why not? Finally, you can click Invite Friends which will take you to a page allowing you to enter up

to ten email addresses and personalize a message that will send your friends flocking to the site.

Below that menu is a button that allows you to share the site on your Facebook page.Below that you will find the most recent blog entries that people have made. Blog entries are

for use when you want to post articles that are too lengthy for the Comment block or articles with a

specific focus. We'll discuss blog entries later.On the conservative side (the right), you'll find a list of the most recent videos posted. Then the

network stats, which is self-explanatory. Below that are recent documents that people have posted to

the site. If you click on Documents on the static menu, you will be taken to a list of all of thedocuments added to the site by various people from various sources. There is also a Library group if

you click on the Groups menu. This also contains many interesting and historic documents. I believe,

though, that a group can be pulled at anytime by the person who started the group (Don't you dare,Jonathan!).

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I have found that the View Recent

Updates can get rather lengthy. Youmight find it useful to list all of the

updates. Start at the bottom new

update and RIGHT CLICK on it to get

the menu. Then select Open in New

Tab to see that update. You can go

back and forth to eliminate the list.

You can then mark all read and start

fresh. That helps when you get a lot of

updates while your are asleep. Though

I cannot believe anyone could sleep

with such exciting updates happeningall night long.

Illustration 1:

Text 1: If you get a friendship

request, you can click on Some

Body's name and you will be takento their profile where you can

accept their requests.


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DYNAMIC MENU BAR

We will now cover the dynamic menu bar briefly.

At the top of your FreedomTorch screen on the right, of course, you will find a gray bar which

has UPDATES MY PROFILE MESSAGES SETTINGS SIGN OUT next to a search bar. Thismenu appears on your browser on most pages. In fact, the whole top section does including ads. Hey,

gotta pay the carbon taxes.

As you sit enamored by a topic that interests you, you may see the UPDATES turn red and give

you a number. The number is the number of updates. By

clicking on it, you will be presented with a list ofUPDATES such as messages received, when other people

post on posts and blogs entries that you have posted to,make comments on what you have posted and when people

have asked to be your friend. Remember that in this section

you will find message notifications and friendship requests.So review this section carefully. You can click on View All

Updates and it will take you to the same page as ViewRecent Updates on the menu in the left sidebar.

Clicking on MY PROFILE takes you to your profile page

the same as the link on the menu to the left

If you have received a message in yourinbox , you can click on MESSAGES to godirectly to your inbox. The MESSAGES

center is pretty easy to figure out, so we

won't go into detail on it.Settings is another important area in

FreedomTorchton. Okay, that did not come

out as smooth as I had hoped. Anyway,when you click on SETTINGS, you will be

taken to My Settings page.

The General tab allows you to set or

change your login email, set your time zoneand your language. Just press 1. You can

Change Password by using that tab.

I have not tried Networks, but I presumethat you can set up a network of friends

through the site to communicate with. (Starker. This is Kaos. We don't assume here!)

The two tabs that I believe most important here are the Privacy and Notification tabs. The

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Privacy tab takes you to a screen which explains how to Block Members and the result. Simply go to

that members profile and click on the Block Member button. You can get to that members profile by

clicking on their profile picture next to one of their posts. This will block your content from that

members view. This is useful for people you find annoying or harassing you .You can click the option.... Wait a minute. Why did my

screen go blank? I'll figure that out later. As I was saying, you can

click the option to remove your name from searches, membersearches and the Online members list at the bottom right hand of

your screen.

Next comes the Privacy Policy where you can select whocan view your profile.

Below that, you can decide what items concerning you that

you want to appear in the Recent Activities (What's New) section

of the Home screen. You can help clear up a lot of clutter byunchecking some of those items.

Then comes the button that we hope you will never have to

use. Sign out. Unless, of course, you've said all you have to say. We understand that sometimes peskylife gets in the way. You know, eating, the need for water, maybe a shower....That sort of thing.

Do I have to explain SEARCH? Really?

STATIC MENU

Have you ever felt depressed, confused and alone in the world? When you left the comfort of

your parents chambers and loving arms into a world that spins you around and inundates with media

images, books, magazines that simply show you a world gone mad! Yet, you always knew that therewas a place were you could go for comfort, love and warmth at your old home.

Same here. Just press the Home button to return to the main page if you get befuddled.

Remember as we go through this section, some of these activities can be affected by uncheckingitems in the Settings Privacy page.

Forums

The Forums button will take you to the Forums page. Most helpful to new personnel are

probably the Help With Site and Introduce Yourselfin the Miscellaneous section. The forums here

work like forums everywhere else.

PollsThis is a relatively new option which caused me to have to update this manual. I didn't get the

memo, Jonathan!

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I recommend that under thePrivacy Policy that you, at

least, select All Registered

Members. That way no one

visiting the site can view

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At any rate, now you can ask the burning

question.... Whatever question really burns in

your mind, I suppose.

Like most options, it is pretty self-explanatory. You click on the Polls option to see

what polls there are, check the progress of your

polls or create a new poll.A Poll Title tells people what your poll is

about. You might want a poll such as, How

many people think that the Second Amendmentgives people the individual right to keep and bear

arms, as has even been decided by the Supreme

Court, or think that it is a collective right as those

Communist, left-wing nuts believe who alsobelieve that the National Guard is the Militia?

It might be better, however, to simply entitle it

Second Amendment Poll and re-write the restof that into a paragraph for the Descriptionsection which follows. Just sayin'.

The description gives you an opportunity toask your question and, perhaps, give a brief

description of why you want to know. This

section displays as the Poll question.Of course, you have to supply the multiple

choice questions. You will notice that there are only two text boxes to begin with. What happens if

you have more answers? Simply click on the Add another option linkand a new text box will appear

like magic. Or as the computer program directs, if you prefer.There is an eighty character limit to your

answers including spaces.

Privacy and Comment Privacy, likeother options, gives you the opportunity to

choose who can see and answer the poll and who

came make their snide remarks. Pleaseremember to include me in that category. And

you can check whether or not this poll should

show up in the search results.

Finally, you can create your poll. Orcancel it. Which seems a pity after all of the

work you put in on it, don't you think?

Once created, you can click on the My Polls tab to delete or edit the privacy selections. Youcannot add or subtract answers.

Blogs

Blogs is an important section in which you can write full length articles on topics of which only

you have vast superior knowledge. Or opinions. Or fun stuff. It does not have to be all political. It

can be recipes, opinions, a humorous story from your vast life experience, a movie review or whatever.

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You could express your opinion on the Constitution, Supreme Court decisions or whatever. While the

site generally does not censor, it should be remembered that it is conservative and there are many

Christians as members. You should remain within the boundaries of good taste. Opinions in Blog

entries are the views of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of other members or thestaff of FreedomTorch.com (but most probably do).1 We'll detail how to make blog entries later.

GroupsThe Groups menu item takes you to a list of groups of people with special interests. You can

join a group or start your own. The menu items, here, are self-explanatory, so we won't go into detail.

Events

Events are events that you can join in on. They could be online or at areal, live physical place. You can see Past Events, My Events (meaning, of

course, your events), or you can Start Event.

When you are first brought to this screen, you will see what events arecurrently in the works, who is running it and what it is about. Click on the title

and you will be taken to a screen where you can opt to join the event. You can

add comments and join in on the discussion with those who will be attendingthe event. Events are good for very focused topics. You could start a TEA

Party event for your State. That would connect members from across the State

to trade ideas on elections and strategies. You could have a reunion for all of

your shipmates. You could have a prayer or Church service. After all, the FirstAmendment here does not mean the same as out there! We know better.

Whatever the case may be, you can set up your own event. If you set up a

TEA Party meeting for your State, for example, you will, of course, have tonotify them that it exists and that they will have to become a member of FreedomTorch to join in.

I have not used all of the features, but I have set up one event online. It appears that you can

attach a map to an event if you are holding it in your town. Or someone else's town. One thing to keepin mind is that when you set the time, it is based on the time zone that you have set in your profile. If

you set a time of 7 pm in Arizona, it will show up as 9 pm in New York. Or 5 am in Kenya. If, you

know, you want to invite someone special.

The text box to enter information about the event is limited. So you can enter the basicinformation about your event. Right next to the events menu (shown) you can enter more details where

it says, Post Something... You can post rules, directions or whatever you could not fit into the basic

information block.When you initially start an event, you will get an option block that allows you to set the details

of your event and add a photo. After you start the event, you can go back to edit the event. You will

get a menu such as the figure on this page. Here you can edit event details which takes you back the

the same option block as when you initially set it up.If you know CSS, you can change the colors, fonts and other styles by clicking on this block.

You can delete the event (presumably to start over). The last three options are to promote your event

and get members to join.

1 That should cover us legally. Right?

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Videos

In the video section, you start with the Browse Video tab where you can search for videos that

have been place through shares on the site. The My Video tab lists videos that you have contributed.

You can view any of the videos from either of these tabs. You can, also, post a video from this section.When you post a video here, it does show up on the Wall, but not the same way as if you post it with

the Share button. When you post a video from the Share button on the New Activities section, the

video description from the source is inserted into your post. If you post a video from here, only yourcommentary that you type in is used.

Remember under Settings that you can choose to

prevent certain activities that you are involved in from being

posted in the Recent Activities of the Home page? If you goto Setting--->Privacy, you can unclick New Video at the

bottom to prevent the video you post from showing up. Be

sure to Save your changes before you move on.

Audio

Posting audiohere is essentially the

same as videos. You

can browse otheraudio tracks that

others have placed

online, check out your

own tracks or add audios. When you add audios, you can buildplay lists and the audios that you upload will all be associated with that play list. Again, the audios will

be placed in the Recent Activities section, but will appear differently than if you posted them using the

Share button.One thing to remember is that when you add an audio to your play list, it gets posted in the

Recent Activity center on the Home page. You can go there and delete it. To prevent your play lists

from being posted, you can go to Settings--->Privacy and unclick New Playlist about three-quarterway down the list. Make sure to Save Changes before moving on.

You can listen to audio while you check out the vast knowledge provided by your fellow

patriots. Simply press the arrow (circled on the figure) to get a pop-out player.

You can add audio to playlists to listen towhile you enjoy your time of FreedomTorch.

When you see a song that you want to add to a

playlist, click on the + sign next to the song. Youwill get a menu that will allow you to Create a

Playlist, if you have not already done so. If you

have playlists, they will be displayed in the menu.You can select an existing playlist or create a new one. You can make a playlist for, say, funny clips,

music or whatever your imagination comes up with. As Albert Einstein said, Imagination is much more

important than knowledge.

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You may find yourself wanting to listen

to one of the audio tracks or open one

of the videos. If you have a slow

Internet connection, audios and videos

will download slowly. Also, you might

want to listen to your audios while you

peruse the brilliants that emanatesfrom the home page. However, when you

go to the home page, the audio or video

will stop. What to do? You can get a

pop-out player by clicking on the icon in

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Documents

We explained the documents section earlier. Again, you can browse documents, see your own

documents or add documents. Sometimes document conversions fail or they are deleted by Scribd.

You can delete documents through this section, as well. You can try reloading if the documentconversion fails.

Photos

Photos are pretty much the same as the other menu items. If you add photos through the Share

on the home, they get put in a Wall Photo album. When you add photos from here, you can break themup into albums. All-in-all photos posted here become another brick in the Wall. Unless, of course,

you make the appropriate adjustments in the Privacy options.

Here's a secret I learned. I like to enter pics in my Blog entries. Remember, this is an advanced

Blog technique. We are still going to cover Blogs in a later section. To add photos to a Blog, I found ituseful to set up an album called Blog Photos. These are photos that I want to enter into my Blogs. You

can use the same method for any of your albums. I was just experimenting with keeping an album

private. Anyway, I click on the album that contains the image. I, then, Right Click it to get the menuand select Copy Image Location. I place my cursor at the point I want the picture to show in the Blog

and then click on the Image button. I then paste the image location that I copied into the image URL.

If you know how to do it, you can add the align= tag in the HTML mode.If this is confusing, don't worry. You may never use it. All will become clear when we discuss

Blog entries later.

If you have uploaded several Profile Pics because you like to confuse us, you can go to this

section to change your profile picture. You can, also, share photos that you have uploaded into a post.

Size Does Matter

I will try to get through this section without too much technical mumbo-jumbo. If you needsomething full of rambling sound-bites that are meant to daze and confuse, I suggest that you search

YouTube for the head of one of our fine government agencies such as the State Department or FederalCommunications Commission.

The best way to start is to explain that the size of the photos that you upload matters for a

reason. I take pictures with a 6.1 megapixel (or MP) digital camera. You may know that your camerais rated at 10 mp, or 12 mp, or 3 mp (if your still using your old camera). To break it down in a manner

which is easiest to explain, I download those pictures (or transfer, if you like), to my hard drive. My

camera saves them into a file that is 2832 pixels wide by 2128 pixels high. Some of you understandthat, some are scratching their heads.

To put it another way, the file size is 17 megabyte. When I first started computing, my first hard

drive was 1 megabyte. (NO, NOT in the Renaissance!) I thought it was something when I could storeten-megabytes of information. I never thought I would use that much space. Of course, you can seethat I could not even store one picture on my old hard drive.

I am not a FreedomTorch insider. I do not know the deals made by the cigar-smoking men in

the back room. I present this documentation from things I have learned and experimented with. Withsome ISPs they charge for hard drive space and ALL charge for bandwidth. I only tell you that because

you can see that adding large photos takes up hard drive space. Bandwidth, in simple terms, is the

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amount of information transfered over the line that you are using to connect to FreedomTorch, or any

web site for that matter. When you connect to FreedomTorch, you are using bandwidth when you log

in. FreedomTorch downloads the site, basically, to your browser cache and that takes bandwidth.

When you press share, comment, any of the menu items and, yes, upload or view pictures, you soak upbandwidth. Different activities take different amounts of bandwidth. You might notice that some

pictures take longer to show up in your browser than others. The larger the file size of the picture, the

longer it takes to download, and the more bandwidth is used. When you view a video, even linked tosayYouTube, it is being transfered, or downloaded, from YouTude (using up their bandwidth) to

FreedomTorch to your browser (using the bandwidth of FreedomTorch). Republicans, out there,

understand this as a consequence of the free-market economy. Somebodies gotta pay. Libertariansmight argue that it should be free and open to all, Liberals will argue that it should be shut down

except access to sites originating from Height Ashbury (you guys from the sixties probably understand

that reference) or Chicago. Jesse says Free Willey. Whatever your view of the matter, that is the way

of the world.(btw, Jonathan doesn't advertise it well, but there is a donate page at this LINK. Brother can

you spare a dime! I'm sure he'd like to keep it free like another social network that one might think of.

But keeping all of those annoying, useless aps and other crap off of the site costs.)The point is that to reduce costs, you have to reduce use. Perhaps the FCC is just looking out

for us after all. It could be that the ISP has a cap on the size of photos or that Jonathan has a cap.

Either way, it is not all that much of a problem. In general, an 800 x 600 pixel image is more thansufficient for Internet use. People can download and print the image to their hearts content. You can

look at my Test Albumto see what size photos I uploaded for this article.

So how do I lower the size of the Pictures?

That's relatively easy. All of the stuff above is not really

necessary to understand how to reduce file size. If you have a

graphic editor and you know how to use it. I use AdobePhotoShop. Open the file into your text editor. OnPhotoShop you go to Image-->Resize-->Image Size. Of

course, there is only one reason I included this picture. I'll bet

you can see rightthrough it.

The key is that

you get a box likethe one to the right.

I have Constrain

Proportions checked so that if I change the width, the height

changes automatically. So I change the width on my bigphotos to 800 pixels and the height changes accordingly. If I

have to crop a picture, for some reason, I do that first, then

change the size. Notice at the top it says Pixel Dimentions:and gives the size of the file. If you keep them down around

one-megabyte, you are probably in the ball park.

I did upload a couple of pictures larger than that to my sample photos for testing and so that you

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could see the difference. But I usually use between 600 and 800 pixels wide. You should check

pictures that you download from the Internet for size as well.

The advantages are the when someone looks at the photo and it is downloaded to their browser,

it takes less bandwidth and that makes the system faster and smoother for everyone.There might be times when larger is necessary. Phil Petty put up a series of photos from a

pamphlet called The Road to Serfdom. I add that link for two very important reasons. One,

everyone should look at it. 2ndly, I did not check the size, but they might be larger than 800 pixelshigh. But it is a readability issue. You can read the pamphlet pages. If you made them smaller, they

might not be as readable.

That brings up one more point. My discussion has been concerning photos in a landscapeformat; that is the width is greater than the height. If you are working with a portrait picture, the height

is greater than the width. Simply keep the height about 800 pixels and let the program set the width.

You menu choices may, of course, differ from PhotoShop, but your graphics program probably

has the same capability. Check your help file.

Chat

Chat will open a new tab and display the chat rooms. Currently, there is the Introduction andGeneral chat rooms. You cannot set up a private chat room that I have found. You can invite people to

chat with messages or make a general announcement on the Home page.

We're almost done!

Podcasts

Podcasts are podcasts made by the FreedomTorch founder Jonathan Cousar. You will noticethat this also opens up into a new window. Notice that there is no Dynamic or Static menu to be seen.

When he's got you, he wants to keep you! Actually you can just click on the X in your browser to exit

out of this window.Now, you are probably wondering why I mention Jonathan throughout this document. It was in

his wisdom that this site exist. Without his efforts, FreedomTorch would not be the conservative think

tank that it is today. And if I don't, he won't send me a check.2

Sharing

Sharing information is similar to that ofother social networks that shall remain

nameless. When you sign in, you will seethis box. You will not always see one ofmy posts directly under it.

2 DISCLAIMER: Just to make it clear, that was a joke. There is no financial arrangement specified between the

aforementioned parties in the writing of this guide. So, we don't have to worry about those 1099's thanks to Obamacare

in January.

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Place your cursor in the box, and you

should see the following:

From here you can add photos, links toweb sites, audio and video.

Add Photo

To add a photo, click on Add Photo and youwill see the menu. Clicking on Select File

will bring up a separate window to allow

you to select a file from your hard drive.Find the file and click on it and the photo

will appear. Press on the Attach button, and

it will put the photo into your share. Photos are limited in size, so you may need to resize them before

the web site will accept them.

Add Link

To add a link, press Add Link and you will

get a text box. Simply copy the link you

want to share from your browser addressbar and paste it in this text box. Select a

thumbnail or none and press Attach. Then

you can make remarks in the text box thatsays Post Something.

Add Audio

Adding audio is essentially the same as

adding a photo in that you upload the audio

from your hard disk. The procedure is thesame as for adding photos. You cannot,

yet, add an audio from an online source.

You have to download it to your hard drive,then upload it to FreedomTorch. PLEASE NOTE: You should not upload photos or audio that you do

not have theLEGAL right to use. Check the web site you are downloading from for their terms of use.

We do not need to leave any sticky wickets that the NWO can use to shut down the site. Please keep

that in mind.

Add Video

To add a video, click on Add Video and you

will get this configuration. Select the source

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of your video from one of two choices. Copy the link to the video from the address bar and paste it in

the text box. Click on Attach and your video will appear. Enter your comments and press share.

What you can do with your posts

If, for some reason, you get a double post or you decide not to pursue the activity, you can delete it.

Simply click on the Delete link. You will see a box thus:

Click on the delete button and it will delete

the activity. Note that it will delete the post

from the wall, but will not delete the video

or pictures that you have included. You will

have to go to appropriate location on the siteto delete it.

Settings

Somewhere along the line, I missed this

section. When you post something, you mightfind that people want to comment on your post.

Or if you comment on a post, others may

respond to your comment. Virtually any changesin a post that you create or that you associateyourself with will generate an email to the

INBOX of the email associated with your

account. This way, you can be notified for thingslike, when people like your post or people post

on your profile, and so forth. This way you are

not blindsided and you always know what ishappening with your posts.

Of course, that can be annoying to some. I

know this, because I see people asking about

this particular subject all the time. Especially ifyou go on vacation and get a load of emails

upon your return.

There is no way, that I know of, to changethe notification system internal to Freedom Torch. That is, the little red update button on the gray

dynamic menu. Not too far to the conservative (right) of that update notifier, in the middle of the

dynamic menu, is the SETTINGS button.

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Of course, you can make a lot of adjustments to your account settings from here. You will

notice a NOTIFICATION button. Click on it and you will get the menu in the figure that allows you

to adjust what notifications you will receive via the email.

Make sure you Save Changes.There is another method of controlling these demon emails as suggested by Jonathan himself.

So I placed that in the Inside Tips From Old Pros section near the end of this manual.

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BLOGSBlog entries are for long articles that

would fill up too much of the Home pageWall. They can be as long or as short as

you desire. As sophisticated or simple.Smoking or non-smoking. Paper orplastic. You can see just how many

decisions you have to make before you

attempt a blog entry.Blog entries contain articles for

which you have unique or first-hand

knowledge. (Remember, though, thatObama is watching.) Articles subjects

range from law and the Constitution to

fictional works. Any topic you consider

interesting is fair game within theboundaries of good taste.

This section is designed to assist you

in making effective blog entries. Thissection might improve in the future and

is not intended to be all encompassing. It

is simply to get you started and someexperimentation and further research will

be necessary on your part.

The headers of the various blocks are

self-explanatory. The Status block is a

drop-down menu. When you click onthe arrow, you can designate whether you

want to post this entry as a to be

Published orDraft when you post the

entry. If it is Draft, it won't show up to

the general population. It is not that weseek population control, but rather you

may want to re-read it for mistakes prior

to publishing. The line that says, If thisentry is published, it cannot be switched back to draft mode, might be a bit confusing. You will be

able to edit the entry if you need to update something. It simply means that it will remain published.

When I am editing a document, I save it in draft mode. I uncheckShow this blog entry in searchresults. I set Privacy and Comment Privacy to Just Me. I can work on the document at my leisurewithout prying eyes. You can change all of these settings back before you actually publish the

document.

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Blog Basic

The biggest block with the tool bar is what we will concentrate on now. This is the core of the

whole bloggingthing. You should have entered the title of your blog entry in the appropriate block

above, so you can simply start typing here. The thing toremember is that the preview and what you see may not

be what is posted. By that I mean, when you hit return

to start a new paragraph, it will show a space betweenthe paragraphs. When you view the blog in real world,the paragraphs might be run together. Pressing enter

twice to start a new paragraph should resolve that

problem.Another thing that you will notice is that there is no

formatting capability. You have to learn some hypertext

markup language (HTML)3 on your own and use theHTML button on the tool bar to do any formatting of the

text. This is really an advanced topic beyond the scope

of this guide. We might try to add some training on

HTML later. That covers the HTML button.There is another way to enter a blog entry with

headers, and circles and arrows and a paragraph on the

back of each one. With the use of the Word Documentbutton (the one without an arrow an on the graphic.

How did I miss that?), you can make your blog entry as

a Microsoft Office Document. This button allows you to cut and paste your blog entry from yourMicrosoft Office with formatting.

Perhaps you do not want anything to do with a

Microsoft product You do not want to support acompany that supports a new world order. Well that just

shows that you are an intelligent conservative.Fortunately, there is aFREEalternative. There is a

program called OpenOffice.org that you can downloadat OpenOffice.org. Go figure. The program is brought

to you by the same people who bring you Java. They

support the new world order, too. But you are notpaying for their program. It is a word processor, spread

sheet, presentation program, and much more, just like

Office. It also creates PDFs, if you need them. I use itto create many documents including this one. With this

program, you can cut and paste using the Microsoft

button. One thing to note is that you still might need anextra space between paragraphs to break up the paragraphs.

I tried WordPad, which comes with Windows, and WordPerfect. It does allow to cut and paste,

but you loose all of the formatting. Also, no graphics will be transfered. You must add graphics as we

discussed in the Photos section.

3 I explain that it is hypertext markup language only to make myself look brilliant. If you know about HTML you already

knew that. If you don't, you probably don't care.

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Illustration 2: An OpenOffice.org document I

experimented with.

Illustration 3: This is how it looked after the

Cut-n-paste.


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Toolbar

Most of the toolbar is self-explanatory. The two items are Undo and Redo arrows.

The little broom Cleans HTML code. If you are conversant in HTML, you will understand this

button. You can ignore it if you are not. What this is supposed to do is make the HTML code of your

blog entry nice and neat and compliant with WC3.The eraser removes formatting. If you cut and paste using the method described above, you can

remove the formatting of the document. Of course, that defeats the purpose of using the cut and paste.

The next button allows you to paste from Microsoft Word. Weren't you paying attention?The next button brings up a new window showing your blog in HTML format. As covered

earlier, if you know HTML you can adjust the look of the document. If you know cascading style sheet

(CSS),4 formatting, you might be able to add a style sheet to make the blog entry look anyway youwant. You can change the look of the headers, for example, or the text. You can place graphics more

precisely. You are limited to your own imagination. And of course, CSS formatting code.

Here is the media buttons are supposed to work. We have already covered the Insert/edit

image button in the Photos section. In theory, you can insert/embed a video into your blog. I have yet

to get it to work and you can embed videos or link to videos in the posts anyway. If you figure out howto use this button, you write a book, dog-gone it!

The next button toggles the screen between full-screen mode and... Uh, not full screen mode.When you first go to write a blog entry, you are in not full screen mode. I have seen little advantage to

toggling to full screen mode. But, hey, it's your blog entry. Do what you want.

And, finally, you can preview your work. The preview is slightly deceptive. Kind of like apolitician. It says your blog looks okay, but is it? If you have not double-spaced between your

paragraphs, the preview looks as though the spacing is all right. Yet when you view the real blog, the

paragraphs are all run together. If you double-space between paragraphs, it looks like there is a bigspace between the paragraphs. Viewing the blog shows a normal spacing between paragraphs.

Preview, however, is useful in that you can check links to other sources that you might have inserted

into your blog entry with hypertext markup language (there I go again). You can tell if pictures thatyou inserted show up generally where you want. It gives you a good overall view.

When all is written and done, you can post the entry with the Post Entry button. Well what

were you looking for. This isn't a government project, after all. We're not leaning on shovels here!

When you publish, the word goes out to all the world (at least, the FreedomTorch world) to see.Unless you made the appropriate changes in the settings.

4 See footnote 4.

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INSIDE TIPS FROM OLD PROS!

Here I come to the point where I jus' plain run outtainformation. Don't worry, folks at FreedomTorch has got yer

back. Here are some tips submitted by those older and wiser thanme. Or they might be younger and more foolish. Either way,here are some suggestions by your friends on FreedomTorch.

And, you know, by old pros I don't necessarily mean, you

know, old. And they might not be in the profession. It's justsome phrase I picked up somewhere.

Back up your Facebook information

Virginia Ginny Harper Graham

Login to your FB account. Go to "Account" then "AccountSettings" then scroll down and select "Download Your

information". Click on "Learn more". Follow on screen

directions. Save it to your desktop to find it faster. It will put

everything (including pictures) in a folder for you. Then go and get all your FB contact info like emails,phone #'s of family and friends to save to your ISP contact list, etc. Then you will be able to have peace

of mind if FB deletes you with no warning!

Tired of all of the messages?

This message comes from the old master Jonathan. Unfortunately, he used technical termswhich I will attempt to clear up in this section.

When you join Freedom Torch, you will start receiving a remarkable amount of emailage viathe notification system whenever people do things that concern you. Such as comment on your post,

comment on a post you like, join the Libertarian Party, post on your profile, or whatever. One way to

control this flow of information is, of course, through the SETTINGS item which you access through

dynamic menu.Now how much would you pay? Put that checkbook down (and just mail us your VISA card)!

There is, yet, another means of controlling that flow of traffic. It has to do with your email reader,

itself, called the FILTERS. This is not part of Freedom Torch, but your email software.For this section I must point out a few things. Why you wouldn't want to hear from your old

friends is beyond me. Second, this tutorial is based on the Thunderbird email software. Other emailsoftware may have a similar mechanism. To figure out its use, go to the help file. Then go to the website for the software. Explore the myriad forums covering the topic of how to filter messages. And,

finally, when you have exhausted all other avenues, give up and have your ten-year old set it up for

you. If you were drawn into using Hotmail, you are out of luck. They have no mechanism for filteringsoftware or for even blacklisting bad messages. I do not know about Yahoo! Mail, G-Mail or any of

the other government information collection agencies out there. If you are using WebMail through your

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Internet provider, there is, almost, certainly a means of filtering messages.

The following information may be

written too low-level for you Techies

out there. Bear in mind, please, that this iswritten to help our non-tech friends out

there. Remember, you might need their

assistance on an understanding of thebalanced budget amendment or some other

information to which they are privy,

someday. You don't wanna piss 'em off.To begin, open your email program

(Come on! Did I really have to tell you

that!). You need to create a folder for your

filtered messages. To do this inThunderbird, simply right-clickthe

account that you want the new folder in to get the

menu and select New Folder.The next step is to set up the filter, of

course. A filter will take certain phrases, email

addresses or whatever from you message and routethose messages to whatever folder you choose.

This works for any type of messages that you

choose, by the way. You could sign up formessages from the Democratic National

Committee, for example, just so that you can route

them to your trash folder. What fun. (I wonder if

that costs them money? Hmmm.)In Thunderbird, select TOOLS and then Message Filters. You should get a pop-up box.

In this box, you can select the email account

that the filter should effect in the Filters Fordrop-down menu. Then hit the New button.

Here, you will get, yet another, pop-up

menu. This menu is where you input theconditions which a message must meet to be

filtered and what to do with it.

I will tell you a little story. When I was

about ten-years old, I used to roam the streets ofYuma. I might ride my bike up the Eighth Street

hill to go to the swimming pool even though it

was crowded much of the time. There werethree convenience markets on my block. Two

were privately owned and then there was Circle-

K, which was American owned then. When I felt that I needed some cash to buy a soda or candy bar, Icould generally find a dime in one of the ten phone booths in my area or quarters in the change

machine at the local laundry or collect enough soda bottles to augment my meager allowance. Talk

about recycling, I could always find soda bottles, so they were off of the street. Today, if you findquarters on the ground at all you are lucky. Those soda bottles have to be taken to a specific recylcer to

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get anything out of them. And even when you do, try and buy two candy bars, a soda, and a pack of

gum for fifty-seven cents.

That story has, of course,

nothing to do with this topic. I justwanted to get the text down to the

next graphic.

There is a text box to namethis particular filter that you are

setting up and a drop-down menu to

select when you want the filter toapply.

The first drop-down menu

below that allows you to select things

like, but are not limited too, who themessage is from, the subject line or

body of the message. The second

drop-down menu allows you to selectcontains, doesn't contain, is, isn't,

begins with or ends with. This will be clearer in a moment. The last section is a text box that allows

you to enter the search phrases that you arefiltering.

In the example that I show here, it should be

easy to see that if a From line of a messagecontains freedomtorch.com, I want the

email program to do something very special

with it. But what to do?

That is the purpose of the block just belowit. In this case, I want to move the message to

the Freedom Torch folder that I created. Thus,

I select that folder.You might notice that there is a lot of room

in these blocks and may wonder why. If you

click on the +, you will see that you getanother block through which you could filter

even further. For example if you click on it, you can add a filter to see if the Body of the message

contains Jonathan Cousar. If it does, you might want to set up another filter with that addition to move

it to a folder entitled, Words of Wisdom, or something like that.As for the Actions, you can not only move messages to folders, you can automatically forward

them, copy them to other folders or delete them altogether, among a dozen other things.

You will have to experiment to see all of the wonderful things that you can pull off with thefilter mechanism of your software. Enjoy.

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SUMMARY

This is the First Edition of this guide. Quite frankly I just slapped it together to help you getstarted. If further editions are needed, I will update this file and republish. I probably won't change the

cover because that would be a pain each time. I will simply upload new editions and you will receivemore information. It will be subtle. You will not even notice---Constitution---that we are twisting---Constitution---your mind with subtle---Constitution---messages.

If you find anything in error in this edition, ignore it an move on. You could let me know with a

message, of course.So we hope that this is helpful. If you have specific problems, you can always go to the Forums

section and post a question.

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Freedom Torch Survival Guide

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