How Do I Post Content?
The first step is to either register or login. Once logged in, you will have a link to “MYBRINK” among the array of navigation icons in the top section of the site. Clicking "MY BRINK" will lead you to your account’s home base. You can do many things here, but in order to post content you should be looking for your “DASHBOARD.” The "DASHBOARD" is a flash-based application that allows you upload and store all your media (your photos, audios and video" on our servers to your "LIBRARY".
Once your content has been uploaded to your "LIBRARY" you can create “PAGES” using a suite of custom Brink page templates. The page creation interface is extremely convenient to use – most of it is drag and drop. "PAGES" can contain audio, video, text, and photos.
Make sure you upload your photos, etc. first, before you attempt making pages with them.
At this point we recommend that you go to your Brink "DASHBOARD" and play around with it. Sometimes that is simply the best way to learn a new web application. You can read more about the "DASHBOARD"here.
After you have “PUBLISHED” your "PAGES" through the "DASHBOARD", a randomly chosen jury of your peers will assess your content’s worth. Submissions that violate the Brink terms of use will be sent to an administrator for verification and ultimately trashed if they do indeed violate said terms. Content that is unoriginal, uninspired, nonsensical, or just plain bad may be denied Brink publication by the jury. The user may choose to appeal the Juries decision if the user completely disagrees with the verdict.
If you would like to learn more about the appeal process, click here.
If the jury accepts your content, then you will be notified of its successful publication. On Brink you are paid for your contributions based on how the community reacts to it, and various other criteria including your user ranking.
Back to top
What Is The Dashboard?
The "DASHBOARD" is a flash-based application that lets you store all your media on our server and also generate custom pages using a suite of custom Brink page templates. If at this point you are confused then you haven’t checked out the “MYBRINK” link appearing in the top navigation (once you have logged in).
The "DASHBOARD" will serve many functions as Brink evolves, but it primarily has two. One is to be a web-based data storage area for your images, audios, text and videos. Using the upload button you can browse your computer for the supported file types listed in the upload window. Upon choosing the file, it will be uploaded to the Brink servers and hosted safely in your library.
The second function is to publish Brink content. We have an innovative, state-of-the-art, page creation tool that utilizes media from your library to create custom pages.
You can access the dashboard by clicking the dashboard icon shown below:
Back to top
Can You Give More Page Uploading Details?
When you are in the DASHBOARD/LIBRARY first upload your images by selecting UPLOAD FILE (at bottom left of page).
Then tab over to DASHBOARD/PAGES by selecting PAGES (next to LIBRARY at right hand top of page).
Once you are in PAGES section, select CREATE A PAGE (at from bottom left of page).
Then select your TEMPLATE (scroll through using the arrows). Then enter your HEADLINE and your BODY TEXT. Then Hit NEXT STEP. Now you can DRAG AND DROP images from your LIBRARY into the TEMPLATE BOXES provided for images. Then when the images are entered you will get another NEXT STEP to select.
On that last page you can SAVE AND CLOSE (if you want to go back to it later for editing), or you can select PUBLISH TO MYBRINK and then PUBLISH PAGE (lower right) and it will, WITHOUT GOING TO A JURY, go live on your MYBRINK page.
If you select PUBLISH TO BRINK COMMUNITY (upper left) and then PUBLISH PAGE (lower right) it will go to the BRINK JURY.
Back to top
What Is The Brink Jury?
The Brink Jury determines whether your pages should be published on Brink. If you are asked to serve on the Brink Jury it is because we want your help maintaining high quality content. Brink is self-authored and self-edited by each and every member. Before we let anything get to the front page of the site, we require a thumbs up from a group of users – the Brink Jury.
If you accept the call to jury duty, you will serve a full week. It will be a week in which you are expected to pass judgment on many different kinds of submissions. Your active and legitimate participation in the Brink Jury will result in a higher user rating for you, lack of acceptance or poor participation will result in a lower user rating.
If you are concerned about the commitment, don’t be. We will make every reasonable effort to keep your “case load” to a minimum.
Back to top
The Jury Ruled My Content Was Not Publishable, What Now?
Now, you can either agree with the jury, scrap the project, and work on something new, or disagree with the jury and appeal their decision. If you appeal and do not win the appeal your user rating will go down.
The appeal process is outlined in an email you will be sent once the jury rules against your content. Follow those instructions and officially ask for an appeal. At Brink there is no supreme court to hear your arguments, just a fresh jury.
If this new jury agrees with the previous jury and denies the content, the process ends there. You can not appeal the same material twice.
Back to top
How Do We Prepare Photos To Upload?
We recommend uploading images to your library in the one megabyte range, can be larger or smaller as well. Our system will resize them to fit the page template you pick. For them to be picked up for use in the widescreen slideshow on the homepage they need to be either 1000 pixels wide or 666 pixels wide. If the width is not there they won't be used on the homepage.
The dimensions used on the site are as follows: 374 x 1000 (widescreen homepage slideshow) 374 by 666 (second tier homepage slideshow and many page templates) 350 wide by any height (some of the page templates)
We will automatically crop your images if they go over, but if you want them to look their best you should edit them yourself.
To really control how your photos will look run them through some sort of “web ready” program like Image Ready in Photoshop, that would be a good idea. We recommend a much simpler program like CLICK TO CROP in PC and in MAC you can always use iPhoto which comes with the operating system. The idea, in most cases, (unless you are trying for the 1000 pixel wide homepage slideshow) is to reduce your digital image to 666 or 350 pixels wide and 72dpi. If it’s a jpeg you want to compress it a bit as you are saving it (try 70% – if that doesn’t look good go up to 80%). If you’ve never done this (edit a digital photo) get someone who has done it to show you how. Once you’ve seen it done, it’s very, very, simple. The bottom line – even if you don’t prepare them for the web – our system will accept them.
Back to top
How Do I Get My Image On The Front Page Slide Show?
First, upload a picture to your library. If you want the picture to take up the total width of the slideshow, make sure it is at least 1000 pixels wide. We do not stretch images, but we will scale down and crop, so just meet the 1000 pixel minimum. If you want it featured in a grouping on the front page slide show, the minimum width is 666 pixels. The actual sizes are here if you want to try for perfection.
Full slideshow: 1000px X 374px (a unique aspect ratio that will most likely require special cropping)
Slideshow grouping: 666px X 374px (very close to 16:9, will crop 1 pixel off the bottom to fit perfectly)
We use state of the art image processing tools on our servers to scale and crop your images to fit in various zones throughout the site, including the slide show. We maintain your image’s aspect ratio because it would look terrible if we stretched or squashed your image. Because of this, your image may be cropped (meaning we will chop off the edges of your picture to fit the given space). If you would like to control the crop of your image before it is placed on the slideshow, we recommend you upload it to the guidelines above.
After you upload the image, create a new page that features the image somehow and publish it. If it passes a jury and makes it on your site, the image should find its way on to the slide show eventually.
Back to top
How Do I Get My Images On My Profile Page Slideshow?
To get your images into the slideshow on your profile "MYBRINK" page, create a "GALLERY" in your library by clicking the "+" sign next to "GALLERY". A new gallery will appear and you can hold your mouse on it to name or re-name it.
Now go up to your "LIBRARY (ALL)" header and select "IMAGES". Images that you have uploaded will appear here. Once you have uploaded images (by hitting the "UPLOAD FILE" icon at the bottom of the page), you can drag and drop images from the ALL folder into your "GALLERY" folder.
Once you photos that you like in you gallery, select "SAVE TO PROFILE" and that gallery will become your Profile Page Slideshow.
Back to top
How Can I Promote My Content?
On Brink there are useful tools like ‘Send To A Friend’ and Social Networking promotion tools that enable you to get the word out. We encourage you to actively promote all of your Brink content.
- First, make sure you have all the media you will be integrating into your page uploaded.
- Next, click the “Create a Page” button. From there you will go through a well-documented multi-step process that will allow you to choose a template, write a headline and article, drag and drop your media into the page, categorize, and finally publish the page.
Back to top
Is My Data Safe On Brink?
Your personal data is in a secure database. Passwords are encrypted. No credit cards are stored. We don’t sell your email address to third parties.
Note that we do not use Secure Socket Layers so we cannot guarantee the data being transferred over the browser is not being intercepted. That is why we do our payment processing through PayPal in a fully secured transaction gateway and do not ever ask for your credit card number when you are on our servers. We store basic information on you that can probably be found with a Google search anyways, so don’t be too concerned.
Some other notes:
We cannot guarantee the security of your account if you use weak passwords that are hackable. We recommend more than 6 digits and variation between letters, numbers, and punctuation.
We will never ask for private information through email so do not give it to us, because chances are it’s not us asking. The Internet is a dangerous place full of bad people with terrible intentions. We recommend you always go straight to the Brink.com homepage before managing any of your private information to be sure you are on the proper site.
Our library is designed for sharing and publishing. File storage through the library cannot be guaranteed absolutely secure.
We may enhance our capabilities in the future to include credit card processing and guaranteed secure storage. If such enhancements occur, we will clearly alert all of our users of the new features and what to expect with their privacy.
If you want to learn more, read the Privacy Policy and Terms & Conditions.
Back to top
What Is Mybrink?
It is the control center for your account. You can view and edit your Brink profile, administer your library, check your brinko payouts, renew/upgrade your subscriptions, use the messaging system, manage friend and foe requests, and much more. You can access MyBrink by first logging in or registering, then clicking the navigation icon found at the top frame of every page.
Back to top
How Do You Accept And Make Payments?
Paypal (www.paypal.com). Get an account and the rest is intuitive. If you have problems with their system, read their FAQ.
Back to top
Why Does The Site Look Funky In My Browser?
You have an uncommon or out-of-date browser. We can only test in so many different browsers and we guarantee it works on these: Windows IE 6 and 7, the latest Windows Firefox, the latest Mac Firefox, the latest Windows Safari, the latest Mac Safari. If you are using one of these browsers and are still having a problem, file a bug report on the page with the problem (found on the footer).
Back to top
Who Funds The Site?
We do so far. Hopefully YOU will soon. Who are we? We are Brink Media. We build web sites. If you are looking for a supremely talented and insanely creative boutique company to handle your next web job, check us out: www.brinkmedia.com
Back to top
What Are Those Arbitrary Groupings Of Clickable Words?
They are tag clouds. They are the most common key words on the site sized based on frequency of use throughout site content. Clicking one brings you to an index that shows all content that uses the word in someway or another. Tags are designed to be fluid navigational elements to help you get around the site in a less structured manner. Because of such flexibility every user can carve their own unique path through Brink.
Back to top
Why Has My Content Been Moved Or Deleted?
Brink.com, despite being user driven by great people like you, does have super users like us and we can do anything we want to do. However, if we do delete your content, we’ll probably let you know why.
Back to top
So Are You A Magazine Or A Community? Which Is It?
Both. We are an automatic magazine. A community of people sharing content and... sharing revenue. CITIZEN JOURNALISM!!! We split 50% of our revenue with the people that upload content. That's the engine that keeps the content flowing. If YOU contribute content, a gallery of photos or an article, video or music, too, if you contribute ANY of that, we'll pay you. Is that clear enough?
Back to top
What Are The Playground Rules?
There are none. OK, maybe there are. We don't edit your submissions, however, if we think your submission is completely worthless, or rather if a jury of your Brink Peers thinks your submission is worthless, then your submission will not be published. People can upload just about anything, but, if the Brink Jury judges that it is not ready for prime time, then people are just going to have to take their knocks. The jury might also judge that the submission is not worth posting yet.... and can instead, send it back to the author for revisions. Think of Brink as an automatic magazine and writer's workshop all rolled into one.
Back to top
Who Are You?
We are you. You are us. We are all together. We are the Walrus. Being here now means you've come far enough to be a part of it. Of what? Of it, this, THE BRINK. You are on it, now.
Back to top
Are There Differences Between Mac And PC?
Well... on this site??? Well yeah, sort of. First of all we are assuming that you have maintained and updated your browsers and that your computer was made in this decade. So let's see, differences. PC's using IE (Internet Explorer) or Firefox should have no issues what-so-ever using any of the more advanced posting features. So that takes care of about 92% of the people on this site. So now, you remaining 8% on a Mac or some other Operating System. If you are running LINUX or something, you should be an advanced enough user to post on our site. Back to Mac users, poor little Mac users. Above all you Mac users, STOP USING INTERNET EXPLORER!!! Microsoft stopped supporting it years ago and IE for Mac truly fucks up with modern CSS (stylesheets). We are tired of writing work-arounds for you less than 1% of users still on Mac IE. Get Real. What you need to use is the LATEST version of Safari or Firefox. Safari is a great browser for mac - especially OSX. (Is there a system 9 version of Safari??? Not sure. I think on system 9 Mac you should try Netscape. Let us know if you have issues) Anyway, Safari or Firefox on OSX should solve your problems. Just don't use IE for Mac. Ever.
Back to top
How Do I Clear My Browser Cache And Why Do I Want To?
If things are acting strangely or your browser seems especially slow, It's always a good idea to clear your Browser cache. What follows is how.
Internet Explorer 7
1. Once your browser is open, click the Tools menu and select Internet Options.
2. Make sure the General tab is selected.
3. Under "Browsing History" click "Delete"
4. In the new window, click Delete Files in the Temporary Internet Files section
5. Alternatively, clear your cache for just the current page you're visiting. Press and hold [Ctrl] on your keyboard, then Press [F5] or click on the Refresh button (square button on the toolbar with opposite-facing arrows).
Internet Explorer 6
1. Once your browser is open, click the Tools menu and select Internet Options.
2. Make sure the General tab is selected.
3. Click Delete Files in the Temporary Internet Files section and click OK.
Firefox 1.5 / 2.0 / 3.0
1. Once your browser is open, click the Tools menu and select Clear Private Data
2. Remove checks from everything except cache. Leave cache checked.
3. Click Clear Private Data Now
Firefox 1.0
1. Once your browser is open:
2. Click the Tools menu and select Options.
3. Click the Privacy button and select the Cache tab.
4. Click the Clear Cache Now button.
Opera
1. Once your browser is open, select the Tools menu and click Delete Private Data.
2. Click the Details button.
3. If you do not wish to delete cookies, saved passwords, etc., remove checks from them in the list.
4. Press Delete.
Safari
1. Once your browser is open, click the Safari menu and select Empty Cache
2. Confirm the action by clicking Empty in the pop-up window
Konqueror
1. Once your browser is open, click the Settings menu and select Configure Konqueror.
2. Scroll down in the list of images and select Cache.
3. Click Clear Cache.
Back to top
You Seem To Really Like Cars... What's Up With That?
We like cars, fast ones and we like girls with big tits. Big real tits, not fake tits. We hate fake tits. If we want soccer balls we'll play soccer. We like girls with small tits, too, but we are sick and tired of girls with shaved bush. The country is going in the wrong direction with all these fake tits and shaved bush. Sometimes suicide girls are cool, but all these shaved twats is just a conspiracy started by the razor blade manufacturers. We urge you to see through it. A little bikini trim is maybe OK, but it has completely gotten out of hand. And guys who shave their pubes should be shot on contact. History will prove us right. It's just not sexy. If we are anything, we are devoted to bringing back the bush. Our God, of course, is Bob Guccione, the man who first brought us bush. We hear he's a bit over tanned now, but we invite him to guest edit The Brink any time and any place!
Back to top
