Ten cool things you can do on the new F1 Fanatic
F1 Fanatic
Join in the F1 Fanatic community
A host of new features were introduced two weeks ago on F1 Fanatic and already many readers have been making use of them.
Here’s a look at ten of the most popular new features to help you get the most out of the new site.
Note that in order to do these you need to be logged in with an F1 Fanatic account. You can sign up for an F1 Fanatic account here if you haven’t got one.
Find out who supports the same drivers and teams as you
Are you a passionate tifoso? A lifelong Schumacher fan? Now you can show your colours and find out which F1 Fanatics support the same people you do.
To set which drivers and teams you support, log in and go to My Account > Profile > Edit then select F1 teams and drivers. Pick the driver or drivers you support and do the same for teams.
Your driver and team choices are displayed under My Account > Profile and you can click on each of them to discover who supports who. Here’s a few examples:
You can also find out who started watching F1 the same year as you.
In an upcoming article I’ll take a look at what this data reveals about who gets the most support among F1 Fanatic readers, so get updating those profiles!
Share videos
The F1 Fanatic Forums now allow you to embed videos very easily. Just post a link to a video from a major video sharing site and it will appear.
YouTube (public videos only), DailyMotion and Vimeo are among those supported. Here’s a few examples:
Share pictures
You can also add images from Flickr in much the same way – just post a link to the image in the forum and it will appear.
Been to an F1 race this year? Upload your images on Flickr and show off your snaps in the forum.
Plan your next F1 race visit
New place to discuss your race weekend plans
Speaking of going to an F1 race, the new F1 Fanatic Groups offer us a great new way of bringing together F1 Fanatics who are heading to the same race.
The old discussion pages for this purpose had almost 1,000 comments in some places. While this is a terrific amount of feedback, it’s not very helpful for a new user arriving at the site to find it all on one huge page.
With that in mind, each race now has dedicated discussion groups you can join. Find them here:
- Going to the Australian Grand Prix at Melbourne
- Going to the Malaysian Grand Prix at Sepang
- Going to the Chinese Grand Prix at Shanghai
- Going to the Bahrain Grand Prix at Bahrain International Circuit
- Going to the Spanish Grand Prix at Circuit de Catalunya
- Going to the Monaco Grand Prix at Monte-Carlo
- Going to the Canadian Grand Prix at Circuit Gilles Villeneuve
- Going to the European Grand Prix at Valencia Street Circuit
- Going to the British Grand Prix at Silverstone
- Going to the German Grand Prix at the Hockenheimring
- Going to the Hungarian Grand Prix at the Hungaroring
- Going to the Belgian Grand Prix at Spa-Francorchamps
- Going to the Italian Grand Prix at Monza
- Going to the Singapore Grand Prix at Marina Bay
- Going to the Japanese Grand Prix at Suzuka
- Going to the Korean Grand Prix at Korea International Circuit
- Going to the Indian Grand Prix at Buddh International Circuit
- Going to the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix at Yas Marina
- Going to the United States Grand Prix at Circuit of the Americas
- Going to the Brazilian Grand Prix at Interlagos
These can all be found via F1 2012 > 2012 F1 calendar.
The old pages will remain open for the time being. The comments will be closed at the end of this season, but will remain available for people to view.
Search everything
New-look search results
The revamped search box doesn’t just rummage through articles – it now also returns results on forums, members and groups that match your search terms, and breaks them down accordingly.
You can further refine your search in each of these four different sections of the site to find what you’re looking for.
The search box remains in view at the top of the page so finding exactly what you’re looking for is only ever a quick search away.
Use the name you want
Didn’t get the name you wanted when you signed up? No problem, you can customise your name exactly as you like.
Just go to My Account > Profile > Edit and tweak it accordingly.
Add a picture next to your name
A persistent source of confusion with the previous version of the site was how to set your avatar. Now it couldn’t be simpler.
Go to My Account > Profile > Change Avatar and you can upload and crop a new picture accordingly.
Get your inbox under control
By default you will receive an email when people send you replies of friendship requests.
You can alter which kind of notifications you receive and even turn them off entirely. Simply go to My Account > Settings > Notifications.
Leave the house
All the features of the regular site are available in the new mobile site, designed to work with the current generation of smartphones.
Keep track of your conversations
You can quickly access all the forum topics you’ve started through your own profile.
Click on the Forums tab to see which of your topics has been updated.
Bonus 11th tip: See everything that’s new on the site
If you’re a compulsive F1 Fanatic-checker there’s now a single page where you can keep track of all the new articles, comments, forum topics, activity updates and more going on across the site.
Go to Community > Activity and you’ll find all the very latest content that’s been posted by all users.
Suggesting changes to the new site
Tweaks and improvements are being made all the time so if you’d like to suggest one you can do so here. If you’ve discovered a problem with the site you can check the list of known problems and report a problem here.
What have you been using the new site for? Have you got a favourite new feature? Has it changed the way you use F1 Fanatic? Have your say in the comments.
Enigma (@enigma) said on 20th October 2011, 15:44
@keithcollantine I clicked on Jerome D’Ambrosio (first tip) and it doesn’t find anything! Some sort of spelling mistake or something?
I love the new F1F. The whole community is much more enjoyable (and custom) and I haven’t spent so much time here in a long while. Thank you for everything.
Enigma (@enigma) said on 20th October 2011, 15:48
Also, haven’t seen the community/activity thing before, lovely. There’s always someone online to talk to :)
Keith Collantine (@keithcollantine) said on 20th October 2011, 15:51
@Enigma Ah, it doesn’t like the apostrophe in d’Ambrosio. Will have a look how to remedy that. Thanks.
PieLighter (@pielighter) said on 20th October 2011, 15:53
Keith the new features are awesome, you deserve many beers. :)
driftin (@driftin) said on 20th October 2011, 16:15
You should add Photobucket support.
BasCB (@bascb) said on 20th October 2011, 20:10
I have been testing it beforehand, and i am here quite often, so I am getting more and more familiar with all the possibilities, but there’s still so much to discover and learn how to best use!
Murraytastic (@sharon) said on 20th October 2011, 20:49
Keith, the updates are great, thanks! I’m trying to figure out how the name change works. Am I correct in thinking it just changes your display name and not your actual username? My username is Sharon and I’ve just edited my profile for my name to be Murraytastic, which I use on another site and also used to use for F1F predictions championship in the days before it was linked to my login. In the address bar, it still shows my profile name as Sharon, and if I log out and try to log back in I have to use Sharon. Murraytastic is successfully displayed next to my posts in the forum and it tells me that is who I am logged in as.
It’s not a problem, I am just curious as to how it actually works! Also, now I have changed my display name, will the @ feature still work? When I click on my profile now, it says @Sharon, so will I still be notified if people use @Murraytastic?
Thanks for any clarification in advance! :)
Jarred Walmsley (@jarred-walmsley) said on 20th October 2011, 20:51
No the @ feature only appears to be for usernames not profile names
Murraytastic (@sharon) said on 20th October 2011, 20:53
Thanks Jared, was just coming to the same conclusion as you posted!
Murraytastic (@sharon) said on 20th October 2011, 20:52
Hmm, now I have submitted the post, @Sharon is linked but @Murraytastic is not. It looks like I have to change my name back to Sharon for the @ feature to work. Could you check that out please? I think I would prefer the @ feature to work and carry on using Sharon.
Murraytastic (@sharon) said on 20th October 2011, 21:05
With a little more investigation I have found the answer in the site development group! Doh, should have searched before posting, sorry. I am going to change back to Sharon for now to make sure I don’t miss any @ messages.
BasCB (@bascb) said on 21st October 2011, 7:57
but there is no real problem with being called Murraytastic while having @sharon as a user name, just means people have to notice how to write your username when mentioning you!
AM (@am) said on 20th October 2011, 23:28
Well done Keith, you’re creating a real F1 community!
electrolite (@electrolite) said on 21st October 2011, 0:16
A triumph!
silencer (@silencer) said on 21st October 2011, 3:05
I’ve been following this site since late 2009; and wow.. so much improvement ever since, especially discussions and replies on every topic with many people all over the globe.
I still have one problem though… opera browser still can’t display full image on image gallery everytime I clicked on the thumbnail
mskii (@mskii) said on 21st October 2011, 9:37
It keeps getting better, well done~
I’m only sad that the ‘reply’ ‘report user’ buttons are so big – I’m nostalgic for looking at that big unbroken wall of text!
dirgegirl (@dirgegirl) said on 21st October 2011, 10:07
I second all the congrats above. This was already my favourite F1 site and now it’s even more sticky!
KeeleyObsessed (@keeleyobsessed) said on 21st October 2011, 23:19
Bit late, But I don’t suppose you’ve got any way of making it compatible with a Blackberry 8500??
KeeleyObsessed (@keeleyobsessed) said on 21st October 2011, 23:20
Apart from that, great job!