Q. What is a 'Cam Portal'?
A. It's a page where there is many different pictures of people's webcams at once. I am currently in different portals who are linked on my main website links page. It also helps attract a lot of links to your website, cos someone sees your image and thinks "that must be a cool site" and goes to look.

Q. What is your 'Urban Distinctive Cam Portal'?
A. Finally I made my own portal a few years ago now. It started off tiny and empty, and now is up to 8 pages of different working cam pictures. The question of 'what is a portal?' is answered above. My portal is part of my website. You're really welcome to join it, by clicking the "join" on the pages, and meeting the requirements on the form. Or just peak though it! I really made it to view all my friends current pics at once hehe, but you are welcome to join! I have met loads of cool new people and friends though it.

Q. Why the rules?
A. Without rules the entire world would self-destruct! It would be mayhem and anarchy, I tell you, mayhem and anarchy!
The rules (pretty standard for most portals) are there just so that it keeps a standard format for each person and keeps the portal running smoothly!

Q. What are the rules?
A. The rules and explanations of them are below....

o You need to have a webcam or digital camera or any form of camera, which is set up to take still live pictures and upload them via ftp to a web address.

This is a pretty obvious rule. The idea of a portal is that it has fairly regular updated images. It's not a place for banners to advertise your site, that never update! Some people use their digital camera as their webcam and others take a picture and edit it, but have a regular "still image" on their website. See my webcam faq about how to set up your own webcam online

o The picture has got to be .jpeg or .gif format, and 320 pixels width with 240 pixels height in size (standard format).

This is the standard webcam size format! Nearly all portals have the same sizes. Each box on my portal is spaced for 320 x 240 and if your picture is a lot smaller or larger than this, then it will stretch or shrink and you will look awful :( .jpg is a standard format on portals as well, as well as .gif. The only problem with allowing .gif files on your portal is that its possibly to make and use animated .gif files. They look really pretty and move, but can take AGES to load up.

Apart from the size and format rule, the actual size of the picture in kb does not matter. However you cannot make that huge file sizes with the standard format width and height sizes. Remember the larger the picture, the longer it takes to download more / bigger chance of it breaking and showing a red x or using up all the bandwidth of your server space!

My portal is quite popular and does get quite a lot of visitors. Some people find there is a load on their cam pic, and increased bandwidth. Remember you are welcome to join or ask to be removed at any time!

o You've got to update sometimes, and not just leave the same piccie for 6 months argh , at least every week-ish if you can!

Seeing the same picture after months gets boring! Sometimes I take ages to update but I always update at least once every 7 days! You need to keep it fresh baby, I like to get fresh ;)

o you can have whatever you want on your webcam, nudity or anything within reason EXCEPT anything that promotes hatred. Racism, Homophobia and any Bigoted text or imagery is not allowed. I am all about love baby

You can say whatever you want on the internet and the internet gives great opportunities for freedom of speech! But you know what, I don't want to associate or have people on my personal area of the net who breed hatred towards anyone. Write whatever you want on your personal homepage/website but I don't want my site linking with anyone who has a problem with other people. It's your problem, not mine baybee
Nudity is different. My web hoster allows nudity and porn now, but not illegal stuff, like nakked animals, children, dead naked bodies etc ;)

People pretty much put everything and anything on their webcam! I don't mind and this is not a young children's site, but constant nudity can get boring after a while.

o Please link to my homepage or portal, there is link buttons on the button page right here. (Please download them to your own server, cheers!) or just use a text link to me.

I have added you to my portal and people get quite a lot of hits from people surfing though! All I ask in return is that you have some sort of link to my portal, somewhere on your pages. Someone might find my portal from your pages and enjoy it /bookmark it / join it!

o you must host your picture in a place that allows remote linking. Must free servers do not allow this and will now show on my portal at all!

This was not on my original rules list, but have added it recently! Quite a few people have tried to join my portal with their picture hosted at angelfire and other free hosting! I am sorry it won't work :( The problem is that nearly all the free server companies don't allow remote linking, so if you have a picture from your free area, it just looks broken to everyone else (or angelfire has a message saying "we do not allow remote linking"). This completely messes up my portal. What's the point in joining with no working image?

o Some hosts do not allow people from different countries to load or view html and images, outside of their own country. Particularly the Brazilian host "kit.net". Only Brazilian people inside the country can see images and pages hosted on that free domain.

I get a lot of people joining from around the world. I love it! I would love to have every single country represented :) I used to get a whole influx of people joining from Brazil. In Brazil there is a national free hosting provider called kit.net - this lead to a whole saga for me. People kept joining with their websites and cameras hosted there, and I couldn't see anything, it just looked broken. Then oneday I looked into it, and only people from Brazil can actually see kit.net. If you don't believe me, click on that link above. You can only see their pages, if you are in Brazil, and connected on a Brazilian internet provider. I think its to reduce load on their servers and bandwidth. Please make sure that your cam is visible to the world if you join. If you join and your cam and homepage are broken already, I won't add you.

Everyone should be able to see your camera pictures and homepage, or what's the point of the portal?

That is all the rules explained. I own and make all the coding for my own portal. Its my decision in the end, to remove or add you. I have never refused anyone to join yet. My decisions are final (ooh I saw that on someone's portal "terms and conditions" and it sound sooo good! lol)

Q. you removed me from your portal, you #&%^%$^$!!

A. Every few months I get bored and go though and clear out people's images that have been dead for ages! People seem to let their website/ domain hosting die and then I just have a broken image/site link on my portal! If you have not contacted me and said what's going on, then I will clean you up in the tidy ups!

I don't remove broken images, which look like a "broken red x" that often, but after a while they become boring!
I have not removed anyone for any personal reasons, its usually either you broke the rules or your image is now broken! If you want, you are totally welcome to re-join! Just please make sure you now have a working image and site!

Q. I want to edit/ change my cam picture url or homepage or other details...

A. You're welcome to change anything at any time! Just either use the join form from the portal or email me directly at the bottom of this faq page. I much prefer for you to say that your cam is broken at the moment or your site is down, but will be back in a few weeks than just a broken image permanently!

Q. I have more than one camera, that I wish to add...

A. sure just sign them up! As long as they abide by the rules and are updated.

If you can think of anything else for here, please write to me! Do you have any questions? If you want to rejoin or change anything, use the join form on the main portal pages or email me below!

Also if you cannot get your details to send and the form seems to be broken, or have any errors on the portal, just email or contact me...