Click here to put a free Groupboard on your own web page.
Netscape, Internet Explorer, Mozilla, Firefox, Chrome and Opera on Windows and Linux, Safari and Firefox on Mac and any other browser which supports Java JDK 1.0+ or ajax. Groupboard now works on mobile devices such as iPod/iPhone, iPad and Android. There is also a Groupboard iPhone App for a richer experience when using an iPhone, iPad or iPod touch device.
Currently we have English, French, Spanish, Danish, Portuguese, Norwegian, German, Japanese, Chinese, Arabic and Hebrew translations of Groupboard. Unicode characters are fully supported in the chat and the whiteboard.
If you don't see the whiteboard and chat window when you connect, it means either that you do not have Java installed and enabled, or your browser has not been able to connect to the Groupboard server (possibly because of a restrictive firewall). The first time you connect (and after any updates we make to the software), it will take a while for your browser to download the Java classes, so leave it at least 5 minutes if you have a dial-up connection. The messages in the status window at the bottom of your browser will tell you if it is still downloading. If it still doesn't work, check to make sure your browser has Java installed and enabled. You can download the java virtual machine from: http://java.sun.com/getjava. Sometimes the java installation on your computer can get corrupted (e.g. if you interrupt java while it is updating) - if this happens, simply uninstall all versions of java and then reinstall the latest version.
Alternatively you can use the non-java ajax version of Groupboard. If you are using an Android, iPhone, iPod or iPad you should get directly to the ajax version automatically. If you are using any other browser, there should be a link to the ajax version if your browser does not have java support.
If you are going through a firewall which blocks outgoing ports, you can also try the firewall tunnelling version of the Groupboard. Most home firewalls (including the ones built into Windows) will NOT block Groupboard.
Unless we are doing maintenance on our site (which is very rare), Groupboard should go reasonably fast. Our server generally only uses a maximum of 10% of its bandwidth and 10% of its cpu time. The free boards have a bandwidth limit imposed on them, although this should usually not cause any noticeable problems. If you are experiencing significant delays when using Groupboard, the most likely causes are:
No. The demo boards are just that - demos - so if you want a moderated board you will need to set up your own board. Having said that, the demo boards are periodically monitored and anyone overly offensive is kicked off.
There are currently no known bugs in Groupboard, and even if there were any bugs they could not crash your computer (or even your browser), because java is an interpreted language. If you are encountering crashes using Groupboard, it means there is a problem with your system. Try the following:
This means that the user has admin privileges and can ban people from the board.
In most browsers, the easiest way of printing is to simply press the browser's PRINT button. If you are using the JavaScript GUI, there should also be a print button on the user interface. If you are using the standard (non JavaScript GUI), you will need to press the FLOAT button, and then choose "Print" from the Applet pull-down menu.
Note that there is a bug in Java which causes the printout to appear blank if you have certain Adobe software installed. If this happens, try changing the colour depth to either 256 colours or 24bit (right click on the Windows desktop, choose Properties, then click on the Settings tab).
Press the FLOAT button to float the applet in a separate window, then choose the "Allow flood fills" from the Whiteboard menu so that it is unticked.
Yes, you can use any graphics tablet with Groupboard if it works as a pointer device. We recommend the Wacom Bamboo tablet.
This probably means you have copied the HTML code incorrectly and you're missing the board_id tag. Some web editors (such as the one at freewebs.com) have a habit of doing this. Try editing the web page locally (on your computer) and then upload the entire html page. This works with freewebs.
There is a bug in the Mac OSX 10.4 version of java which causes drawing
operations to off-screen buffers to be 200 times slower than drawing to the
screen. To fix the problem, just add this to your java runtime parameters (in Utilities->Java->J2SE 5.0->Java Preferences.app):
-Dapple.awt.graphics.UseQuartz=false
This bug does not occur on OSX 10.6.
Safari has a bug/feature which prevents javascript-to-java calls across domains. This means that if you have copied the html code for your Groupboard onto your own website but you are using the hosted version of Groupboard with the java code hosted on www.groupboard.com, then it will not work on Safari. You will need to either use the non-javascript version of Groupboard, use Firefox instead of Safari, or host everything on your own server by purchasing the enterprise version of Groupboard.
There was a bug in Safari 4 that meant you sometimes couldn't type into any java text field after clicking on it. This bug has been fixed in a recent Apple software update.
We now have a "super admin password" feature, which allows you to set up a second admin password for your board. Only users logging in with this password can change the board info, and normal admins can only ban users and delete pictures/messages. If you have a paid-for board, contact us to set this up.
Just click the "upload background" (or alternatively, click "set background" then click the Upload button). By default all users can upload background images, but your board can be configured to allow only admin users to upload (contact us to set this up). After uploading the image, it should automatically appear on the whiteboard. To load a previously uploaded image, simply click Set Background. The image will remain on the whiteboard until you set the BLANK background. Groupboard allows you to upload png, gif and jpeg images, while Groupboard Designer additionally allows you to upload pdf, tiff, doc, ppt and xls.
There are 3 reasons why you may be banned from the Main Groupboard demo:
When you are banned, your IP address will remain on the ban list until it moves off the end of the list, which usually takes a few months on the main board.
Please do not email us to ask for your IP address to be removed (unless you have been banned by mistake, or you are unsure why you are banned). You have only been banned from one board, so you can still use the other boards.
There are no rules about what you will be banned for. It is up to the admins who are logged on at the time to decide if someone should be banned. We simply try to make the demo board a place where anyone can log on and draw or chat without being intimidated. Things which are likely to get you banned include:
You may get a warning instead of being banned, but this is at the discretion of the admin concerned.
