First, log into your account.

Then, on the Control Panel, click on "My Photos." Since this is your first time uploading a photo, you'll need to create an album for it, so click on "add one", located just below "Photo Albums.

Name your album, and post some information about it, then click "Create."

You'll go back to the My Photos" area, although now your album is listed, and there's a slot on the left that says "No Picture." Click on "No Picture" to come to a new screen

At the top of that screen you'll find a tab labelled "Add Photos." Agree to the condition, then find whatever photo it is you wish to upload from your computer, click "Upload", and you're done. Note that only jpegs, gifs, and png images are allowed. Also note that users with Internet Explorer can not upload pictures for some reason (but they should be using firefox anyways). Furthermore, even if you post in one of those formats the site will occasionally say it failed to upload. Don't believe it: your picture likely uploaded just fine if you followed all of these steps.

First, find whichever post it is that you wish to quote.

On the lower right hand side of that post, you'll notice a button marked "View Post." Click on it, and the post will appear on its own separate page

Now just copy the url, paste it into whichever thread you wish to post it in, and you'll have a link directly to that post. You may also choose to copy and paste the relevant sections of the quoted post into your own, as a courtesy to other users, although that is up to you.

There are several ways to do this. The way I favor takes a bit of getting used to, but is fairly quick after that.

First, find whichever one of the posts you want to quote first, and press "Quote." Add whatever comments underneath that you want to, like you normally do. Do not press "Post" yet.

Next, find the next post you wish to quote, and copy whatever contents from that post you wish to quote.

Go back to your post, then type in "[quoteREMOVE] paste the post you wish to quote [/quoteREMOVE]", only without the "REMOVE"s I added.

If you want it to have the "X said:" that other posts do, type the user's name in bold followed by a semi-colon, then hit space.

Once you're done quoting all the people you want to, just hit "Post" and you're done.

The easiest way I know of involves having access to the toolbar, so again you'll have to be quoting, editing, or starting a thread.

Once you do so, type your comment in full, including whatever it is you want to spoilertag.

Highlight whatever word(s) you want to spoilertag. Now click on the button marked "Select Background Color", which is represented by a small pencil with the letters "ab" next to it.

A pallete of colors pops up. Select the black one: the others will not do as thorough a job.

The words you highlighted now appear to be black. To read them, simply highlight them. Be warned that smileys are not spoilertagged properly, for what it's worth.

There are two ways to do this: I'll cover the easier one. First, you must have access to the toolbar, so you'll have to be quoting, editing, or starting a thread.

That done, highlight whatever text whose color you wish to change. On the Toolbar, you'll find a button marked "Select text color", represented by a capital A.

Click on that button to bring up the color pallete. Select whichever color you wish to make your text, and the change will be complete.

The process is straightforward. First of all, you must be logged into your account.

On your Control Panel there is a tab lebelled "Predictions League." You can either click on that, or click on the Prediction Leagues table on the main page (pictured).

Once you've done so, you'll arrive at the Predictions League. There are two categories: the Archived Rounds, which you can browse through to see how betting members did in any given week, and the round(s) for this week, located under "Choose a Round to Enter." Click under the latter, and you'll come to a new screen.

. Here, you're invited to place bets on whichever ten games the moderators have chosen as likely top sellers for the week, as well as for all five hardware platforms. Place the number of units you believe will be sold for whatever region is listed (some games are Japan-only, for instance, or just the Americas, etc.) for that week. Next to your bet is the place where you place how much VG$ you want to bet on that number. For example, I could be quite confident that Game X will sell Y amount, so I bet VG$1000 that it will do so. In contrast, I'm less certain about all the other slots, so I only bet the minimum on all of those (VG$5). This is permitted. Once you're done placing your bets, click on "Submit Your Bets", located at the bottom of the page. You've now entered, and will learn the results in two or three weeks, which is when your payment will arrive. Nordlead suggests keeping this in mind when placing your bets: bet too much on one week and you'll be unable to participate in the next round. New rounds are usually hosted every week, and an overall leader board can be found at http://vgchartz.com/forum/thread.php?id=26498&start=0.

"sticky" please

This is one of the few things that you do not have to be logged on for.

First, click on the "Games" tab, located at the top of the site. This will take you to a new screen.

From here, you can either type in the name of the game you want to see (make sure you spell everything correctly: if you're unsure of the complete title, just put in whatever fragment you know for certain) and then hit "Search."

To narrow the results, you can limit the number of games that share that name to just those on a certain system, made by a certain developer, published by a certain publisher, etc. You can also order the results by the number of sales, the number of hits they have on this site, or the order in which they were last updated.

Alternatively, you can see all of one system's sales numbers by just clicking on the "Console" button and selecting whichever console you're interested in, then hitting "Search." You can also arrange these results by sales, hits, or the order they last updated.

Once you've found and selected the game you want to see, you'll find the total worldwide sales right under the game's boxart. You'll also see a small box just below the boxart which breaks down the game's sales by region for the first ten weeks. If you wnat to see even more details, or if you want the site to put all of this on a chart for you, click on "Sales History."

This will bring you to a new screen, which automatically charts the worldwide total sales for that game on that platform by week.

From here, you can compare up to three different games/regions at once. Say, for instance, that I want to see how the same game has done in the three different regions (The Americas, Japan, and Others). Simply enter the game's name on the blank lines located above the game, Click on the box marked "Region", and select whichever region(s) you wish to compare, then click on "Compare Games."

Alternatively, you can compare this game's performance (by region or in total) against that of another game (by region or in total).

This part can get a bit annoying, however, as you'll have to also know the full title of the second (and/or third) game you wish to compare, along with the site's abbreviation for the game's system. This is a bit confusing to explain in type, so please see the illustration for details.

The easiest way to do this is to also find whatever other game you wish to compare, and copy+paste its information in one of the blank boxes. Once you have that information for all the games you wish to compare, simply click on "Compare Games" again, and you're done.

If at any time you already know the game's full title, the system, and the site's code for the system, as well as the proper format, you can skip straight towards the charts by going to the "Chartz" button at the top of the site, and then clicking on "Compare Games."

Hardware numbers are even easier to check than those of individual games. For the most part, you need not log onto your account.

On the main page you'll find a table that contains all the up-to-date information on the Wii, X-Box360, PS3, DS, and PSP, each containing the total sales, a breakdown of sales by region, and their total marketshare in their area (console or handheld). On the right hand side of the main page, you'll find a small table called "Hardware Sales." This contains the sales for those five systems over the past week, in total and by region.

If you want to see data going further than the past week, simply click on the "Chartz" button at the top of the page. From here, you have several ways of seeing the data. We'll begin by clicking on "Hardware Table."

From here, you can select which ever console(s) you wish to see the sales for. This includes older consoles, such as the NES and MasterSystem. Just remember to hold on the "Control" button on your keyboard to select/deselect consoles. You can then break down the sales by specific regions. The latter can be quiote specific: if you want to compare the sales of the three consoles in Spain alone, you can. Then select the time period you wish to see the data of. The site's data goes as far back as 1989.

Click "Get Results" and a table with your data pops up, allowing you to easily compare hardware sales in that region during that timeframe.

If you want to get this same data in a chart, just go to the "Chartz" button again, but this time select "Hardware by Date" from the subtable.

Adjust whichever variables you need to, press "Compare Consoles", and you'll get a table with the results for the week(s) you seleceted. Notice, however, that you can only select three systems at a time this way. Furthermore, there is a small button labelled "Cumulative Sales" immediately above "Compare Consoles." If you click this button and then hit "Compare Consoles", the chart will include the lifetime sales of the systems, ending at whichever date you selected.

If you want to see how systems compared based on how they performed at the same time after their launches, go back to the "Chartz" button, then select "Hardware from Launch" from the subtable.

From here, just select whichever systems you wish to compare, whichever regions you wish to compare, and click "Compare Consoles" to get your chart. Note that the site will insist on having three systems present: if you only want to have two, then select "--" for the third console's region. That way, only the two systems you selected will show up. Also, please note that as of right now, data for the Americas and Others regions only goes as far back as the PlayStation2. You can still select other, earlier systems, but the data will only include Japan for now

Your "rank" on the site is determined almost exclusively by the number of posts you've made in the forums. Comments you've made under news articles/editorials/game+members' walls do not count towards this total.

You can see how many posts you've made under your avatar in the forums, or right besides your avatar in your profile. You'll achive a new rank as follows:

0-500 posts: Newbie

501-1000 posts: Regular

1001-2000 posts: Member

2001-5000 posts: Pro

5001-10,000 posts: Obsessive

10,001+ posts: God

Note also that if you become a mod, you're automatically upgraded to "God" status, regardless of the number of posts you've made.