1. new users

If you're new to the site, start with the country, city, local  and group links, always found on top, finding if your place is in the list or not.

Get a feel for the place.

If you stick around for a while, you'll get a feel for what types of things are posted here as links, and if you find something amazing and/or enlightening on any of the topics on Bighow, or relevant to your location, please post it.

Take a look at these seven important pages before you choose to participate in the Bighow conversation:

A. Bighow features

B. Bighow FAQ: All the important questions - what is bighow, what does it do and much else...

C. How you can use bighow depends on who are you are and what you do

D. Our guides to online journalism  [link always available on top]

E. Writing well on bighow [link always available on top]

F. Our guiding principles

G. Our core beliefs

2. using Bighow
Things you can do without registering: browse, vote in polls, forums.

You need to register to post items, add comments, save items in your folder, flag items, send messages and do more. To register, click on the always present Register link along on the top right corner.

3. membership
Bighow is open to all and it doesn't cost anything. Anyone can join. All you need is a valid email ID.

We hope you join Bighow and take responsibility for publishing, aggregating and sharing all the links relevant to your community and interests.

4. changing username

No, you cannot change your username. Usernames are your identity in the community and carry a lot of weight with others that read your postings and comments. If you are changing your username you are effectively disappearing from the site and reappearing anew. Unless there is a grave and life-threatening reason to change your username, you cannot get it changed. If you are really unhappy with your username, you can sign up for an all new account.

5. changing email address

You need to register a working email address in your profile. Only site admins can see that and may use it to contact you, as well as send password reminders.

You can edit your email address and the rest of your profile details by clicking on the edit profile link at the top in your profile page when you are logged in.

6. one user, multiple accounts

As long as you are not using it to abuse other users, only using to make funny comments and for other harmless pursuits, it is okay to have Sock Puppet accounts. They are common on social and user generated content sites and are used by users to boost up their posts in the rankings.

7. problems while submitting names of cities, area/locality and tags
Our wild hope is that people submit appropriate and correct entries for cities, areas/localities and tags, thus making it easier for other users to find relevant content. Presently, our coding capabilities is limited and we can't accept special characters like '\', ':' and others and in such cases we either discard these special characters or the link for the relevant keyword (city, area, tag) doesn't work properly.

Through our Flagging system, users tell us all the time about incorrect/problematic keywords and in some cases, if we find a particular user 'abusing' the system in this manner, she/he runs the risk of being banned from Bighow.

8. using Bighow Groups
The page for any group aggregates the latest postings made where users have chosen the same topic.

Group members can comment about the topic on the group's page and can even subscribe to the latest comment taking place in that group.

The Navigation bar on the right shows details about the group: when was it created; by whom, how many members, active members, all members...

9. navigation issues
Bighow is very easy to use.

A. The Home Page: It is not different from a regular sitemap. Users can access the home page anytime by clicking on the Bighow logo (top left and bottom right of any page)

B. Top Navigation: Right next to the Bighow logo on top left are links to Localities, Cities and Listings which lead to tag clouds (showing how often users have entered localities, cities and countries while submitting their items). Users can click on any item in the tag cloud and will be taken to all news, classifieds and listings fro that particular locality, city or country. Moreover, they can subscribe to the related RSS feeds as well.

The bunch of links on top right are meant for users for registering, submitting items, RSS feeds for Bighow, accessing user's submissions (only available to the logged user).

C. Topic Pages: If you click on say 'Jobs' on the home page, you are taken to a URL that is like http://bighow.com/jobs - the main display is on left and shows the latest job postings. Options to Browse and Search are on the right column.

10. finding user items on Bighow
Users can see a record of their activity on Bighow by clicking on the 'Your Items' link on , when logged in.

finding other Bighow users
You can add their username to the end of a string like this:

http://www.bighow.com/users/joydeep

This works with usernames with spaces or some with other odd characters and is not case sensitive

http://www.bighow.com/users/hue&cry

An easy way to find more about an user is to find a comment or post by that user and click on their username.
It keeps a record of and provides links to all postings made by the user across news, classifieds and postings. Besides, it also shows the comments made, the message center (see below).

11. editing postings
You can edit all your postings and do more. You can find the options in your dashboard section.
 

12. are flags anonymous?
Flags are not anonymous. Admins know which users are responsible for which flags.

13. being banned from Bighow
Users who have been banned will not be able to log in to Bighow.

If a user is already logged in, they will not be able to post on the site. Banning is usually temporary, but sometimes permanent.

If you find that you have been banned, you may get in touch with the admins.

At times, a ban may have been done to discourage a user from spamming anymore.

Tell the admins you won't spam or abuse anymore and they might give a second chance.

For an idea of banworthy offenses, refer to Don'ts on Bighow.

14. admins, moderators ...
Bighow was created by Pramit Singh (pramit.news@gmail.com).
He manages Bighow along with developer Joydeep Bhattacharya from a sparse one room res-cum-office, which we fondly call our 'hang out garage', in New Delhi.

Together they do all the dirty work - watching the flagged posts pile up, reading funny and weird comments, deleting questionable posts, occasionally posting to the Bighow blog, and settling any disputes that might arise.

You can email them using the feedback page or contact Pramit personally through IM- pramit.news@gmail.com.