Comping Guide - Getting Started & Other FAQs

Unfortunately I don't have much time now to do many comps and so I have changed the way that I enter

I now enter comps which are closing the following day and so use search by date ending see:
http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/...11&postcount=3

when I have found all of the comps which are closing the following day I make a note of the page numbers then using the Firefox Multi Links add on I then right click and select the small page numbers so that all of the the pages open in new tabs

now for the clever part I click on the first tab and by using control + - (minus) I shrink the competition page so that all of the comps are visible without the need to scroll I then go into Firefox's Tools,Add-ons, Multi Links options,actions and select save to bookmarks

now when I right click and select all of the comps instead of opening new tabs the comps are saved as bookmarks and put into a folder for later use I do this for each tabbed page

when all of the bookmarks have been saved you may find that you end up with multiple folders what I do is use Firefox's "Organize Bookmarks" found on the top menu bar Bookmarks, select each folder and click on a link and use control+A to select all of the links then drag and drop them into the first folder do this for each multiple folder so that all of the bookmarks are in one place

now if you select a link and use control+A at the bottom it will tell you how many bookmarks/comps that you have to enter

when the bookmarks are all together I select a link and by using a the combination of the Shift key and the downward arrow I highlight and select 40 bookmarks (don't try more than this as Firefox may become unstable and crash) and then right click and select "open all in tabs"

after you have finished doing the above go back into "organize bookmarks" and you will find that the bookmarks will be still highlighted now press delete and the selected bookmarks will be deleted ready for your next batch

I find that this is also a great method for doing the "month ending" comps as you can save them on a daily basis to a folder named "Month Ending" and them do them at your own leisure without any of the problems caused by the page numbers constantly changing (on the display options select sorted by "Thread Title" from the "Last Day" sort order "Descending"

one other tip if you decide to do the above install the Firefox add on "Bookmarks Duplicate Detector" and in the add on's options select "add confirmation before to add duplicate bookmark" now when you right click to add bookmarks with Multi Links you will get a pop up warning box when you try to a add a duplicated bookmark

I hope that this makes sense and is of use to someone

Best of Luck

claner wrote: »

Of course the big danger with entering competitions the day before they close is that you are going to miss out on all those that close earlier than the official closing date.

Personally I don't use the closing date search facility so I don't care what format is used.

I must admit that this is a problem

so today I have bookmarked all 285 pages of comps - 5,000 plus competitions using the method in #208

now they are all bookmarked I can add to them on a daily basis and catch up with the other comps at leisure (earliest dates first) without the problem of the page numbers constantly changing

it took ages to do and I nearly gave up on the endeavor a few times but I managed to complete the huge task eventually

I am now able to date sort the bookmarks and correct any date errors, sort the dates "ascending" or "descending" or search for any date in the future

I am also able to search out individual prizes for instance I can key in "ipod" and it will return all of the bookmarks with this prize

Best of Luck