Help Files: How To Use This Site
Last Revision: September 30, 2009
Introduction: If you need good information to help you make good decisions then you need to master using the tools and finding the information offered by CubicYard. This page is your list of the tools available to you and includes instructions on how to use each of them to make your job easier and more profitable. Smart contractors will check this page every day. Take note of the Last Revision date at the top – it will change as changes are made and each paragraph on this page is dated with it’s last change date. The revised information will have the same date as the Last Revision date and will be orange in color. This makes it easy for you to find the changes: make a quick scan of the page and look for orange.
CubicYard is a serious website run by professionals experienced in the industry and considerable effort is made to provide you with a business sustaining and business building toolbox. Use this page as your guide to our services and give particular attention to any Help Files indented beneath this page on the Pages Menu as some tools warrant their own page of additional information.
July 21, 2009 – What Is It? CubicYard is designed to be the information center for property preservation industry professionals. Not only does the site contain considerable original information we have created, it also gathers in one place an enormous amount of information about the property preservation business and related industries. With continuous automated research, data gathering, indexing and organizing, this site offers hundreds of pages of information intended to help find property preservation industry information.
July 21, 2009 – How Does It Work? Our original information is presented in web pages pretty much like what you will find at other web sites. However, one of our site’s most interesting features is called Snoopers. Snoopers are like little computer programs running around the internet. We have them programmed to find information on subjects we think are relevant to the property preservation industry. When a vistor visits a page the Snooper is on, it’s like turning on the on switch – the Snooper takes all the information it has found and slices and dices it, sorts and grinds it, and puts the results on the page for you. Since the Snooper is always running around the internet looking for information, you may not get the exact same results if you turn the Snooper on again a few minutes later. So, Snoopers never give you old-fashioned static, dull and unchanging information. If you are interested in the subject matter the Snooper is reporting on, you many want to check it every day or so; even a couple of times a day. Users of this site don’t waste their time looking around sites that do not have the information they need. Instead, they can come to CubicYard and look in our original information or have our Snoopers go find the information for them.
July 21, 2009 – How Is Cubic Yard Organized? This site is divided by menu items into the following categories:
- About Cubic Yard
- Contractor Database
- Property Preservation State by State
- Cubic Yard Store
- Street Smarts
- Forum
- HUD Regulations
- Sponsors
- Company Snoopers
- Questions and Answers
- Snoopers
- Careers and Education
July 21, 2009 – About Cubic Yard is pretty much what you would expect. This is where you will find how to contact us, what the rules of the site are, fees for advertising, services we offer in addition to the site itself and so on. Be sure to read the disclaimer which contains some more fine reading: our privacy policy.
July 21, 2009 – The Contractor Database is used by other contractors and many companies to find you to have you perform services for them. There are usually over 500 inquiries per day to this site and many are looking for workers in specific areas. This is a good time to remind you that lists like the Contractor Database are also used by unscrupulous scoundrels to advance their evil plans. Putting your contact information in the Contractor Database will be good for your business but once this site is indexed by the search engines, that information will be available to thousands or millions of people within hours. It is always a good idea to be skeptical and be cautious of dealings with anyone that you do not know personally. If you need information on someone that contacts you because they found you here, the Cubic Yard Forum would be a good place to post inquiries.
July 21, 2009 – Property Preservation State-By-State is where we have tried to condense the HUD Regulations pertaining to Property Preservation down to one quick-glance page. If you are not too keen on reading and re-reading the HUD Regulations, you can find most of what you need to know on your state’s page. We have also started adding state specific information to these pages: bidding opportunities, court records links, etc… the kind of stuff contractors eventually have to know about their area. We also are taking posts, comments and Contractor Database entries and putting contractor information on these pages – it makes it a little easier for searchers to find you.
July 21, 2009 – Goods & Services is new. We are looking around for suppliers of the items that you cannot always find when you need it. We also try to find items that look like they would make a property preservation job easier or a property preservation business more efficient. Training manuals, HUD Regulations PDF’s and other informational products created by our staff or other businesses are also offered in the Goods & Services section. All items here are for sale and most are available for immediate download after purchase.
July 31, 2009 – Street Smarts are the information pages that are intended to give you ideas on where to find extra business. These pages are not for casual reading; they are for serious research. We add banks, lenders, auction companies and more just to get you thinking. You may be able to go through these pages and find sources of new business. You will also find additional information on the HUD regulations. We take the most asked questions from our Q&A and try to offer additional information about the topic. Also, look for important information such as bidding opportunities, best practices in performing jobs, technical data, safety information, building codes and job opportunities. If you would like information on a subject we do not include just e-mail your request and we will see if we can include it for you.
July 21, 2009 – The Cubic Yard Forum is new.
Have you ever been on a preservation job and had an experience, either good or bad, that you would like to share with other contractors? Found a new source for equipment that you feel you’d like to let other contractors know about? Got an issue with your software that you would like some feedback on from other contractors who may have had the same experience? Been “bilked” or had a run-in with someone and would like to warn others about it? Want to place a free ad? Or do you simply have something you’d love to get off your chest with some like-minded people, even if its not property preservation? Well, the forum is the place for you to do it.
These are the forum rules. Read them thoroughly.
Visit a little before you dive in. Read a number of posts, or check out the group’s archives. Get a feel for the tone of the forum so you can participate accordingly.
Remember your face doesn’t show. Words alone can convey sentiment, but without benefit of inflection or facial expression, they can be misconstrued. Use descriptive wording, emoticons or .gifs to ensure your meaning is clear. By the same token, don’t jump to conclusions about another person’s intent in posting an unclear comment. When in doubt, ask for clarification.
Type in lowercase or standard case, not in all caps. By the rules of netiquette, all caps equates to shouting. If you type with all caps, you will annoy and possibly offend other forum members.
Say online exactly what you would say in person. In other words, if you wouldn’t say it to the person’s face in front of your Grandmother, you shouldn’t type it into a forum.
Be respectful. Internet etiquette is similar to standard etiquette in this area. Appreciate that your opinion is one of many. You can disagree with another person without being disrespectful or rude online.
Don’t feed the Trolls. In internet terminology, a troll is someone who posts controversial, inflammatory, irrelevant or off-topic messages in an online community, with the primary intent of provoking other users into an emotional or disciplinary response or to generally disrupt normal on-topic discussion. Netiquette guidelines are very specific where Trolls are concerned. If you engage in conversation, you’ll raise your blood pressure and feed the Troll. You can’t win a flame war, and you can’t sway a Troll’s opinion. Often, they don’t even care about the subject; they live for the conflict and nothing more. Trolls are common and not worthy of your time. Ignore their posts—no matter how inflammatory—and eventually they’ll get bored and move on.
July 21, 2009 – The HUD Regulations menu item are exactly that – the HUD regulations. We have taken the regulations and put them into web page format. Try our search function to search the regulations – it’s much faster than thumbing through the paper copy or trying to read a plain text online version.
July 21, 2009 – Our Sponsors pay the bills. Although most of the work on Cubic Yard is done by our small family staff or volunteers, there are still some pretty serious expenses involved with a site as active as this. Hopefully that is all we need to say: “They pay the bills”. Let them know you appreciate their sponsorship by patronizing their businesses. Show your appreciation when you can.
July 31, 2009 – To make the Company Snoopers category work for you, we use a variety of methods to gather information on the companies. We use RSS feeds, pipes, spiders, Snoopers, alerts and other internet tools. There is no telling what you will find here but the information gathered is highly focused on the company. Like the Snoopers, this is information that is constantly changing; you will want to browse it often. If you would like information on a subject we do not include just e-mail your request and we will see if we can include it for you.
July 21, 2009 – Without a doubt, the Questions and Answers category is neck-and-neck tied with Snoopers as the most active part of Cubic Yard. We try to answer as many questions as we can every day but we constantly stay way, way behind. We often get 100 or more questions a week and we have started passing over questions that have been previously answered. Before you ask a question, use the site’s search function to see if your question has already been answered.
July 21, 2009 – Our Snoopers practically guarantee that Cubic Yard will always have lots of good solid information for you. If it’s out on the internet we will eventually find it and post it for you. CubicYard Snoopers are automated routines that work 24 hours a day, 7 days a week gathering information about the property preservation business. They work tirelessly and are waiting patiently to report what they have found.
July 21, 2009 – Careers and Education is where we put information about property preservation jobs we find on the internet, educational opportunites and training information. Check Careers and Education often to see what new jobs are classes have become available.
July 31, 2009 – The Cubic Yard Search Engine is the most powerful tool we give you. Any searches you initiate will look into every post and every page with the exception of the Snoopers. The search engine indexes everything on CubicYard (except Snoopers) several times a day. Try as you may, due to CubicYard’s unique and dynamic content you could never see all of the information available if you just browse the pages manually; but the Search Engine can quickly find it with ease. If you are searching for a phrase, put your search in quotes. The search engine can be accessed by filling in the search bar and clicking on “Go”.
July 31, 2009 – One of the nicest features of the CubicYard Search Engine is that if you do a search and nothing is found, the Search Engine notifies us that the site did not have what you are looking for. We see this as a serious problem and review these notices every day and make decisions for new content. You might want to try your search again in a couple of days.
July 21, 2009 – Information Management: Cubic Yard was designed to be an information management tool for property preservation professionals. If you like, instead of trying to keep straight dozens of bookmarked sites, property preservation professionals can let this site be their bookmark library. We have tried to directly link to useful sites or to link to other sites that provide good links to useful sites. If there are sites you think we should link to, please let us know by clicking here and sending us a note describing the site we should add.
If you have time, we would appreciate receiving an e-mail from you giving your thoughts and suggestions. Click here for the e-mail form.
July 21, 2009 – Bad Information, Offensive Information: By using trained, experienced researchers, we have attempted to provide only information that is pertinent to property preservation professionals. If you find information that is not useful or, worse, to be offensive, please let us know. If you click here you can send us an e-mail describing the problem.
July 21, 2009 – Marking This Site: If you like this Web site or part of it, you can easily return to it by bookmarking it. Your browser should have a bookmark or Favorites button on or just below the top tool bar. Just go to the page on this site that you like and run the bookmark function. You also can easily make any page on this site your personal home page on your browser.
In Internet Explorer, just:
1. Go to the page on this site that you like.
2. Select TOOLS on the browser toolbar.
3. Select INTERNET OPTIONS on the pulldown menu.
4. On the GENERAL menu tab, in the HOME PAGE subcategory, select USE CURRENT and hit OK.
5. When you next re-boot your browser, it should open to the page you selected.
In Firefox, just:
1. Go to the page on this site that you like.
2. Click TOOLS on the browser toolbar.
3. Click OPTIONS.
4. Under STARTUP, click on USE CURRENT PAGE.
5. When you next re-boot your browser, it should open to the page you selected.
July 21, 2009 – Comments? We welcome them. If you have suggestions, praise or criticisms, please let us know. Just click here for an e-mail comment form
July 21, 2009 – Why Did We Go to All of This Trouble? This site is provided as a service to the property preservation industry which has been very good to us for many years. Cubic Yard is our attempt to combat the very few bad apples in the industry. We believe that “knowledge is power”.
July 21, 2009 – Linking to This Site: We welcome links to this Web site. You may link to our home page without contacting us. If you would like to deep-link to another, particular page on our site, please contact us and tell us to what page you would like to link and from what Web site you would be linking. We are happy to consider such requests.
July 21, 2009 – Links from This Site: If you would like a link from our site please contact us.
July 21, 2009 – Posting To This Site: If you would like to post an article or comment , please do. You are always welcome to post news about your company, its people and its products and services. You also are welcome to post news about your events, conventions and meetings. Submissions are promptly reviewed, often overnight.