How to Post a Journal

[Ludachris]

This forum is not for posting questions. It's for posting build journals and race reports for your DSM. Questions will be deleted. When starting a Journal, think of it as a complete scrapbook for your car, not just one part of the build - for instance, you shouldn't start a Journal around an Engine Build, that should be one part of the overall build, one chapter in the build. When posting a journal here, follow these guidelines:

1. Post the Year and Make of the car in the Topic Title. If you're building a 95 Eclipse, an appropriate title would be something like "8-second 95 Eclipse Build" or "95 Eclipse Time Trials Beast" - at the very least specify 1G, 2G, and GSX, TSi. Your initial post should contain the plans, the goals, and a summary of the entire build. Subsequent replies/updates should contain the actual build updates and photos of the work.

2. Be detailed and always add photos to your updates. An update without photos makes it difficult to follow along with the build. We all want to SEE what you're doing.

3. Be sure to add substantial updates in one post instead of several small updates spread across several small posts in the thread. This way, it's easier for people to follow along with the build. If you're going to post an update about one aspect of your build, like say, the suspension, try and post the entire suspension build in one reply if you can - or a good portion of it. A good way to do this is to write your update in Microsoft Word or a similar program so you can copy it and paste it into a reply when the article is ready.

4. Every time you add an update to the thread, please go back to the first post of your thread and edit the post so that you can add links to your updates throughout the thread, or at the very least make a note of the post numbers where your updates can be found in the thread for those who don't want to have to sift through the all the replies to find all your updates. And let us know what type of update will be found there (ie. Post 54 - Brake Install). That way we can have something close to an index of all your updates in the first post of the thread. And add a title to each update when you reply to the thread, like "Engine Build" or "Exhaust Fabrication" up near the top of each update. Make each update look like a journal entry.

5. Please report any needless replies in your build journal - for example, replies that say "good job" or "subscribed". We want to keep the journals clean and will delete replies like that.

[Ludachris]

Following along with a build can be inspiring. Trying to follow along in a thread can be a pain in the ass. In order to help us keep these build threads clean by not cluttering up the thread with useless replies. For example, no replies that say "good job" or "subscribed". If you like the build click the "Rate Thread" menu and give the thread a rating. If you subscribe to the thread, no need to reply and let everyone know. We want to keep the journals clean and will delete replies like that.

If you want to read only the updates from the Build Thread author but don't care to see all the replies, you can click on the Search Thread menu and click "Find Thread Author's Posts". This will return a list of all posts within the thread by the original author. It's not the ideal solution but it's still pretty useful.

Be sure to add ratings to each build thread to help people find the best builds easier. This can be done when viewing a build thread by using the Rate Thread menu in the top right portion of the black title bar. Click that menu and a Rating option will appear. By building up ratings, users will be able to sort this section by Rating and quickly find the favorite journals on the site.