Help

A short guide to buncol. If your question is not answered here, get in touch.

Logging in · Projects · Roles and permissions · Forum settings · Inviting and joining · Reporting · Account standing · Backups · Deleting your account

Logging in

On the login page, enter your e-mail address and we send you a six-digit code. Enter the code within 2 minutes and you are in. If you are new, this is also how you sign up.

You can ask for a new code every 2 minutes. Check your spam folder if it does not arrive.
After three wrong codes within an hour, logging in is locked for 24 hours, to stop people guessing.
After a code you have full access for 4 hours. Then you stay logged in with limited access for 30 days after your last visit, so a login you keep using does not run out. Choose other lengths under Your profile, Login settings, which also says how this browser is logged in.
Limited access may do what you tick in the login settings: by default writing, building the world, uploading images, creating projects and taking part in forums. Anything else, such as deleting or changing who may do what in a project, asks for a fresh code first, and then you are back where you were. If someone ever gets hold of your login, that is all they can do.
On a computer other people use too, untick Keep me logged in when you enter the code: you are then logged out when the browser closes. Or log out yourself.
If waiting for a code is a bother, set a password, or just a PIN, in your login settings. It logs you in with limited access, and by default only on browsers you trust there, so strangers cannot even try it. Five wrong passwords pause it until you next log in with a code, and we e-mail you when that happens.
Or add a passkey in your login settings: then your phone's fingerprint or face, or your computer's PIN, logs you in, with nothing to type. Your device keeps the key; we keep only its public half. A passkey gives limited access too, unless you let it give full access.
Set a username under Your profile, Edit profile: it is the name people see on your posts. There you can also make your profile public or private and turn on e-mail backups.

Projects

Everything you make lives in a project. Your projects are on the homepage, with invitations to accept or decline and a link to create a new one. You are the owner of every project you create.

Inside a project, the top of each page shows the project's name, your role in it, and these sections as tabs. You only see the ones your role allows.

Overview - the project's introduction and description. People who are not members can join or ask to join here.
Writing - epics, stories, notes and snippets, and importing text.
World - the 3D world builder: objects, scenes and locations.
Forum - sections, threads and replies.
Members - who is in the project and their roles, invitations and requests to join. A number shows how many requests are waiting.
Audit log - who created, changed, deleted or restored what, and when. It lists which fields changed, not their content, and can be filtered by area. It only names what you may open yourself, and what site moderators did shows as "Site moderators".
Settings - name, introduction and description, forum and access settings, and deleting the project.

What happens when something is deleted depends on what it is:

Writing, world items and forum sections are marked for deletion first and can be restored for 3 days. Then the daily clean-up removes them for good; a forum section goes with all its threads and posts.
A project marked for deletion is hidden from Explore and takes no new members, but it is not removed: take the mark away under Settings to bring it back.
A forum thread deleted by a forum moderator is removed at once and for good, with all its posts. There is no undo.
A forum post you delete is hidden, not removed: readers see that it was deleted by its author, while the project's forum moderators and the site moderators can still read it.
Roles and memberships are removed at once. Members of a deleted role fall back to Member.
Your account is removed at once and for good, with the projects you own: see Deleting your account.

Roles and permissions

Every member has exactly one role, and a role is a set of permissions. The owner always has every permission and cannot be removed. Each project starts with two roles:

Admin - every permission. It cannot be changed or deleted.
Member - the role new members get. You can change what it allows, but not delete it.

People with permission to manage roles can create more roles under Members, for example "Writer" or "Forum moderator". If a role is deleted, its members fall back to Member. The permissions are:

Manage project - edit the name, introduction and description, change the forum and access settings, delete and restore the project.
Invite members - invite people to the project.
Manage members - approve or deny requests, change members' roles, remove or ban members. Without Manage roles too, only roles, and people with roles, that allow nothing beyond what you may do yourself.
Manage roles - create, edit and delete roles.
View audit log - read the audit log.
View writing / Edit writing - epics, stories, notes and snippets.
View world / Edit world - objects, scenes, locations and pins.
View media / Edit media - the project's images, which writing and the world use.
Moderate media - hide the project's images with a reason, and show them again. A hidden image is a placeholder for everyone but moderators. Roles that could moderate the forum before this permission existed have it too.
Copy media - copy the project's images to your own media, or to another project where you may edit media. Only when the project's media settings allow copying, which is off until someone turns it on. Only the Admin role has it until it is given to another role. A copy shares the stored image: it counts towards the storage of the project it goes into, but takes no extra space on the site. Hidden images are never copied. Your own images you can add to any project where you may edit media.
View forum - read the forum. (The project overview opens with any of these permissions.)
Start threads / Reply - post in the forum.
Moderate forum - pin, lock, hide and delete anyone's threads and posts.
Manage forum - create, edit, reorder and delete forum sections.

Forum and access settings

Under Settings, people who can manage the project choose who can see the forum, who can post and how people join. By default a project is private: only members can read and post, and people join by invitation.

Visibility - who can read the forum and the overview: Members only, Any logged-in user, or Everyone, including visitors who are not logged in.
Posting - Members only, or Any logged-in user who can read the forum. Visitors who are not logged in can never post.
Joining - Closed (no invitations or requests; people who manage members add others directly, by username), Invite only (members who may invite can invite people), On request (anyone logged in can ask to join and managers approve; invitations still work) or Open (any logged-in user can join straight away as a Member).

In the forum, threads can be pinned to the top or locked. A locked thread takes no new replies, except from moderators. Posts are written in the same editor as the project's writing, with formatting, lists and links; whoever may read the writing can mention it with @, and readers who may not see only what kind of writing it was. You can edit your own posts while the thread is open, and delete them: others then see that the post was deleted by its author (moderators can still read it). Moderators can hide threads and posts with a reason that readers see in their place, move threads to another section and delete whole threads for good. What the site moderators hid, nobody in the project can change, show again or delete.

Inviting and joining

Inviting: under Members, enter someone's exact username (never an e-mail address, which stays private). They see the invitation under Your projects and can accept or decline it.
Asking to join: on the overview of a project that accepts requests, click Request access and add a message if you like. The project's managers approve or deny it under Members.
Open projects: click Join on the overview to become a member right away.
Leaving: members can leave a project at any time.

Managers can also remove members or ban them from the project, and ban someone who is not a member (for example a stranger posting in a forum open to all logged-in users) by their exact username. A banned person can no longer join or post in that project.

Reporting content

If something breaks the Community Guidelines, use the Report link next to the post, thread or person. Pick a reason (spam, harassment, hate, sexual content, violence, illegal content, impersonation or other), add details if they help, and send it. A site moderator reviews it. The person you report is not told who reported them.

Problems that stay inside a project, like a disagreement about how it is run, are for the project's owner and the people who manage it to sort out.

Account standing and appeals

If a site moderator acts on your account or content, you can read what happened and why on your account standing page, which also lists the reports you have filed and their status. (What a project's own forum moderators hide in their forum does not show there; the post itself says why.) While your account is suspended or banned, a banner at the top of every page links there. You can still log in and read, but you cannot post or change anything.

You can appeal each action once with its Appeal button. A moderator reviews the appeal; if it is accepted, the action is reversed. If you cannot reach the page, e-mail info@llmpeeters.com.

Backups and exports

buncol is a hobby project, so keep copies of anything important.

E-mail backup: turn on e-mail backups under Edit profile. Once a week you get an e-mail with a file (backup.json) containing the epics, stories, notes and snippets of every project you own. Each e-mail has a link to stop them.
World builder: the backup does not include world data. Download objects as GLB files and export locations as JSON from the world builder.
For a full copy of your data, e-mail info@llmpeeters.com.

Deleting your account

Under Your account, choose Delete your account. The page lists what goes with it, and you confirm by typing your e-mail address. If you only stayed logged in from an earlier visit, you first get a new login code, so nobody else at your computer can do it for you. It happens at once and cannot be undone; make a backup first if you want to keep anything.

Projects you own are deleted with everything in them, including what other members made there. If someone should carry on with a project, e-mail us first so we can hand it over to them.
Other people's projects: your memberships end, and the text of your forum posts is erased; they show as deleted by their author. A thread you started stays with its title if others replied in it, and is deleted if nobody did. Writing and world items you added stay with the project.
Where your name showed, the site shows Deleted user. Audit logs keep the username you had at the time, and moderation records are kept, as the Privacy Policy explains.
While your account is suspended or banned you cannot delete it yourself: e-mail info@llmpeeters.com from the address you log in with.