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  =                     Parlor House BBS for Linux                      = 
  =                             Version 3.0                             =
  =                       By Asu Pala and Loreen Lacy                   =
  =                            Copyright 1995                           =
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The following is a summary of some commands for the BBS.  Most of the
answers to basic questions can be found in the help files. This summary is 
to give a little more detailed help for your use. 

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ADVANCED 
When your higher level users issue this command, they will get a list of
the advanced commands available at their level and below. 
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BAN 
Once a site is banned, the only way to unban is to manually edit the
hosts.create.deny and hosts.login.deny files.  The host line with the host
IP must be deleted, then resave the file. 
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CHANNEL
Typing /c main from any channel will return you to "Parlor". Level 8 and 
higher can see the names of secret channels both in lists and in user 
profiles.
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FORCE
The user being forced will *not* see the command or text output.  If a 
command is being issued that would ordinarily generate a message, it 
will be supressed for that user, but other users will see it as 
appropriate.  Also, you can not force a user to issue commands they are 
not able to issue in regular situations. The only exception is any user 
can be forced to kick another user, even Level 10 can be forced kicked.
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HELP FILES
A full set of help files have been included, but you may find you want to
change them for appearance and or wording.  Also, adding or deleting help
files is very easy with this BBS.  You simply create the files, place them
in the HELP/ directory with the filename ext of .help.  Then, edit the
"help.topics" file in the DATA/ directory by adding the name of the new
files (without the .help extension), tab over and put a number one number
below the userlevel you want to be able to view the file.  If you add or
delete files, remember you will also need to edit the "HELP/commands.help"
file which lists all available help files by name. 
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HINTS
The BBS will show "hints" intermittently to your users.  You can make the
hints whatever you want.  To do this, simply make a file of text items you
want to show up to your users and save it as hints.list in the "data" 
directory.  The lines can be any length.  The BBS will wrap the lines to
fit the screen, however, the items *must* be one item per line of the file
and the file must be 100 lines.  The BBS will randomly choose lines, so
you can duplicate lines you want to show more often. A starting hints.list
has been included for your use. 
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KICK 
Each higher level can kick any user up to 1 level below their own. 
However, Level 6 and Level 7 can only kick a user after that user has
received one warning at least.  Higher levels can kick users whether the 
user has been warned or not. 

Once a user is kicked, they will not be able to log back on for 5 minutes 
and will get a message telling them this.  Level 9 and 10 do not have 
this limitation, because the assumption was that they would never be 
kicked off.  To get a user back before the 5 minutes has expired, you can 
raise their level to 9 and they will be able to log in immediately.
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LEVEL 0
The Level 0 was designed as a restricting or punitive level.  When a user
is set to this level, they loose access to some commands and functions. 
They will get messages telling them they can not use those commands as a
penalty for their level.  If they try to use the witness command, they
will get a message alerting them to contact a higher level user if they
are having a problem. 

The following commands are not available to Level 0:

profile 	whisper
witness  	name
zoom
some set options
some list options

In addition, they will not be able to use special characters or colors.
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LEVEL 10
When a user tries to issue certain of the commands that only level 10 can 
use, they get a message, "Sorry, no such command".  If there is another 
command starting with that letter, they will get whatever message that 
command would give or output of that command.  For example, if a user 
issues /logoutall, they will get the result of /list. The abilities of 
Level 10 can be kept to you or put on a "need to know" basis as you 
decide.  Of course, if you have lowered the level access for these 
commands, they will see whatever message is appropriate to the situation.

The following commands are hidden from users below Level 9:
Advanced set other than extra profiles and job titles
Logoutall
Shutdown
Turnon
Newuser

Force is hidden from all users.
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LEAVING MESSAGES
You can leave a message for any user to see on login using the MESSAGES 
directory and saving a file with their username.mesg format.  It can be 
of any length.  Also, any special characters can be used such as color 
codes, solid lines or blinks.

USERNAME	ILLUSTRATES
--------	-----------
Testuser7	This user shows how to use the message function.
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LIST
There are several different list options.  Those listings which show
channel names will show the word "secret" in place of the channel names
for users who are on secret channels.  Levels 8 and higher will be able to
see all channel names, but topics of "secret" channels will never display. 
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NEW USERS
New accounts will get an additional message reminding them to turn on 
colors and solid lines after they complete the new account login procedure.
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OWNER 
Levels 6 through 10 are default owners of all channels.  They can set
topics or give ownership to other users.  All other users can only give
ownership of channels they own already or create. 
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PORT ASSIGNMENT
The Shareware BBS is defaulting to port 1900, but you can assign it to
whatever port you need by editing the file data/bbs.port.  Type a new port
number and resave the file. 
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PROBLEM SITES
You have "WARN" and "KICK" and "Level 0" to stop annoying users.  Once a
user has proved to be too troublesome, you can twit their account.  This
will keep that user from logging in again.  However, this does not keep
them from creating a new account or using someone else's from their site.
In that case, you could choose to ban their site from logins and or new
accounts.  Note, this must be an IP, NOT a hostname or you will have
problems with other users logging in.  If you manually insert an IP in the
"hosts.create.deny" or "hosts.login.deny" files, it will work as if you
had used the "/BAN create" or "/BAN login" command. 
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PROFILE 
When a user is profiled, they will see a message saying who is profiling
them on their screen unless the profiling user is Level 7 or higher. 
Higher levels will see profiles for all levels below their own.  You can
use "/p ." to profile the last person you whispered to. 

The user profile will show the information about the users as well as
what channel they are currently on.  If the user is on a "secret" channel,
that channel name will not show to users below Level 8.

Levels 8 and higher have an additional profile parameter of "f".  Issue 
/profile user f and the information the user has hidden with "!" will 
display.  Level 10 will see all the user information including their password 
with this option.

If you profile a usernumber less than 1, the BBS gives an error, but if 
you choose a number higher than the number of BBS users, the BBS will 
display the last user account.  Typing a very high usernumber is an easy 
way to see how many accounts have been made to date.

There is also an option for "save" when creating the lines at the 
bottom of profiles.  Type /s p save and the lines will show to you along 
with the line numbers.  This is an easy way to cut and paste to make 
corrections or changes.

The testusers included show how profiles can be personalized by your users 
to be interesting and fun to read.

Username	Illustrates
--------	------------
Testuser1	This user has an extended profile: Text art.
Testuser2	This user's profile shows how special characters can be used.
Testuser3	This user has an extended profile:ascii art.
Testuser4	This user has hidden their realname and email address.
Testuser8	This user shows greeting text which displays during login.
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SHUTDOWN/TURNON  ******CAUTION NOTE******
Issuing this command will log out all users below Level 9. If you disable
logins with the SHUTDOWN command, be VERY sure to re-enable them
**BEFORE** you logout.  If you logout without issuing TURNON, you will NOT
be able to login again and neither will anyone else.  Hopefully, this will
never happen, but if it does, send an email telling what happened, your
name and registration number and include the zipped exec file as a binary
attachment.  Parlor House will send you a new exec file, but only once and
only to the registered owner.  The second time, you will have to purchase
a new copy. 
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SOLID LINES 
To assist you in formatting files such as help files and profile lines, use
drawing.help and dexam.help to see how to use the ansi characters for
solid lines. 
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TAB KEY
As a shortcut to typing usernames, if you type the first letters of the 
name, then hit the <TAB> key, the BBS will fill in the rest of the 
username for you.  This will work for typing on channel or on any command 
line.  If more than one user is online with similar names, you will have 
to type as much of the name to make it unique before hitting the tab 
key.  If the BBS finds more than one match, it will show a list of users 
and or channels with that name.
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TOPIC 
Topics are limited to 70 characters in length.  Special characters can be
used in topics as well as colors, but the second line will wrap without
colors or special characters.  The special characters will have to be
duplicated at the wrap point. 

Topics for secret channels will not show in the /list channel command.
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TWIT 
Twitting a user who is currently online results in them being twitted and
removed (kicked) from the BBS. (see Testuser6) Special care must be taken
when twitting or untwitting users.  The BBS will change the attribute of
the user's level during this process.  If you are twitting a user who is
not online, you must verify the user is not already twitted before you
issue the command.  If you twit a twitted user, they will show as twitted,
but the account attribute will be incorrectly positive (see testuser5). 
The reverse will be true for untwitting.  To fix this, if twitting, the
user must re-issue the twit command.  If untwitting, they must re-issue
the untwit command. 

Username	Illustrates
--------	------------
Testuser5	This user was incorrectly twitted.
Testuser6	This user was correctly twitted.
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USERNAMES AND USERNUMBERS
Usernames can be any alphanumeric characters except for:
            [\\]/<>?@#%^&()|`':,;\{}*~+=|
Usernumbers are assigned in the order the account is made.  If you want to
change assignments of usernumbers, rearrange the order of the usernames in
the "allusers" and "passwd" files.  For example, the testusers are numbers
1-8.  If you want your account to be account number 1, put the line with
your info on line 1 of both files. Make sure you have the same users per
line in both files or you will get error messages when they try to login. 
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WHISPER
In addition to typing /w username, users can type /w . to whisper to the 
same user last whispered to or they can use the shortkey combination, 
CNTRL-W.
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WARN
When a user gets 3 warns in one session, the system generates a kick and 
they are removed from the BBS.
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