Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ’s)

Pages are the individual sections of news that make up your newspaper. They incorporate the main areas of news, for example Current Affairs, Showbiz, Sport etc. A Page is effectively a top-level Category.

Pages can be selected and deselected by going to the Edit Settings area, where you can select up to 16 Pages for your newspaper.

Categories are the individual boxes of news that appear on each separate page, each related to its overall page. For example, you will find Football, Rugby, Cricket etc as options for Categories on your Sports page; Theatre, TV, Music etc as options on your Culture page.

Categories can be selected and deselected by going to the Edit Settings area. There is no limit on the number of Categories you can select.

Each Category that has two chevrons (>>) beside it, in addition to the standard tick box, also has its own Sub-Categories; for example click the chevrons beside "TV" to reveal "TV Soaps", "TV Features" etc as optional Categories. Be sure to click these chevrons to be presented with the full choice of Categories offered by Fingertips.

Publishers are the various sources from where you can select the news that is supplied to each individual category. Fingertips has tried to provide as much choice as possible so that each Category you choose to have in your newspaper has as many options of Publishers providing the news as possible.

Each category can have a maximum of 5 selected Publishers providing the news for that particular topic.

Publishers can be selected and deselected by going to the Edit Settings area, going to the Publishers section and navigating to the Category of your choice. From there you just drag the Publishers of your choice in to the Top 5 selected options. When you save your changes, these Publishers will then be the sources of news for that Category in your newspaper.

If you click the "Edit Settings" button in the top right of your Newspaper, you will be taken to your Edit Settings. From here, you will see a series of tabs – click Pages, Categories and Publishers to personalise and change whichever aspects of your paper you wish. Changes can be made both as a 3-step process or independently in the Pages, Categories or Publishers sections as you choose.

You will need to save your changes by clicking the "Save Changes" button in the top right before customising a new section or returning to your paper.

You can also makes changes to the paper by clicking the "Edit" button beside the name of the Category in the newspaper. This is a link directly to the Publishers section of your Edit Settings, where you will be able to change the Publishers for that specific Category. So if you are reading your paper and want to make changes to the Publishers providing the news for your Politics Category in the quickest and easiest way, just click the edit button and you’ll be right there!

Publishers provide RSS feeds - each of which represent pages of news directly from the Publisher’s website - and Fingertips is made up of thousands of these feeds. Fingertips has allocated these feeds to the most appropriate category on the site. However, there are instances where Publishers provide more than one feed appropriate to that category. For example, the USA category in Current Affairs will have both "USA News" and "Barack Obama News" allocated to it from Yahoo News. Similarly, there are usually many options from the same Publisher in the Columnists category for every Page, since any one Publisher may have more than one Football Columnist, for example. It is up to you whether you choose to have more than one feed from same Publisher in any one category, but you will always be able to tell which precise news feed you are choosing to read in the newspaper by rolling over the Publisher’s favicon.

Favicons are the small logos / icons that represent each Publisher on the site. These are the logos that appear beside the URL of that Publisher were you to enter it in your browser’s address box. Every Publisher that has its own favicon has this replicated on Fingertips; for those that do not have a favicon, Fingertips has designed a logo representative of that Publisher.

By rolling over any favicon in the Categories in your newspaper, the name of the Publisher and that specific news feed will appear, so you will know exactly what news and information you are refreshing your category with.

We are aware that there is a lot of news and information on Fingertips. To make things a little easier, we have given you the option of having separate Pages for some of the most popular Categories on the site. This means, for example, that you do not have to have all of your favourite football Categories on your Sport Page along with Categories for Golf, Horse Racing, Swimming etc - you can select to have a separate Page for Football, therefore reducing the need to have too many Categories on your Sport Page. Other Pages where there are many Category options, such as Business or Culture, also have their most popular Categories as option as separate Pages too, such as World Business or Film, respectively.

If you have, for instance, Film Reviews selected on both your Film Page and Culture Page, you are then able to have different Publishers for each Category on the different Pages. The options will be the same, the choices you make are up to you.

If you have not activated News Buddies in your account or have not received any invitations, just click on the banner that runs down the left-hand News Buddies column of the newspaper. Either this, or the ‘edit’ button at the top of that column, will take you directly to the News Buddies section of your Edit Settings area.

From there, you can search for people already on Fingertips, invite people individually via email or invite the contacts in your email network (Hotmail, AOL, Yahoo etc). When you have found the friends you wish to invite, just select their name (if they are on Fingertips already) or email address (if they aren’t yet set up with an account) and the site will send them an invite. For those already registered to Fingertips, an invite will appear in their News Buddies column in the newspaper and, provided they accept, you will then be set up as Buddies.

If anyone invites you to be their Buddy, a Request will appear, highlighted in blue until you accept or decline, in the left-hand column of your Newspaper.

Beside every article on Fingertips is the News Buddy symbol (a "B" within two people). You will see this on rollover. By clicking this button, a small window will launch, enabling you to select individual and/or a group of Buddies to whom you can send the article, with a message of your choice.

These arrive in both the News Buddies column in the newspaper and the Stories section in Edit Settings on a chronological basis; the most recent at the top working downwards.

When you want to delete that story or conversation, just click the ‘x’ button and it will be removed.

If a Buddy sends you a story, this will appear in the left-hand column of your Newspaper, highlighted in blue until you open the message by clicking anywhere in that box.

Fingertips' systems gather thousands of RSS feeds from hundreds of Publishers across the Internet.

RSS stand for Really Simple Syndication and are, most succinctly, a simple way for a site to send out its news and content. The RSS feed provides an abbreviated form of the Publisher’s articles and these also work as links to the full information for each article. Some Publishers provide feeds for each individual topic of news on their site, others more generic feeds to cover several topics. This is reflected in terms of how many feeds a Publisher has on Fingertips.

These feeds are then allocated to the most appropriate Category on Fingertips. The system checks each feed for new stories and information – and then accordingly updates live on our site - every minute to ensure that you are seeing the latest news and information that the Publisher is providing.

This news gathering and updating is fully automated, ensuring Fingertips delivers up to the minute news and information at your demand.

Possibly, yes. Fingertips prides itself on being comprised of quality and credible Publishers and so any new Publishers need to be approved by our editorial team. However, we are committed to providing our users with the most popular Publishers and streamlining the Internet to reflect the choices of our users, so happily accept suggestions as to new and in-demand sources.

When you are in the Publishers section of the Edit Settings area, you will see there is a "Suggest a Publisher / RSS feed" box, specific to that Category, underneath the list of optional Publishers. If you do not see the Publisher you wish to have as an option for that Category, just enter the URL/website address of the site in question. We will check it out and, if it passes our editorial criteria and there is sufficient demand for this, the Publisher will be added to Fingertips.

Absolutely, though as with any new Publisher, it will need to meet our criteria. See our Publisher section for more details.

At any one time, Fingertips has around 100,000 articles being delivered to the site. This is very hard to keep control of! Fingertips has tried to create one newspaper out of hundreds of Publishers’ sites, therefore some Categories will have the odd story appear that might seem as if it should appear elsewhere. If you notice something out of place, please let us know at editorial@fingertips.net

The top two positions are reserved for the most popular stories related to that Category over the last few hours. The following are based purely on recency. If you wish to see more stories appear in your Category, just click the + sign in the bottom left corner of the Category. You can have a maximum of 8 stories per Category.

If you do not agree with the content, politics or other information provided by a Publisher, you do not have to choose it as an option in your Newspaper. Fingertips comes with a pre-determined selection of Pages, Categories and Publishers so that you are not presented with a blank newspaper when you first visit. From there though, the site is fully customisable to your choice.

Fingertips does not compose any of the content that appears on the Site. We select Publishers based on their credibility as a supplier of news and information. However, if you in any way disagree with our choice of Publisher, you are free not to read their content and to deselect them as options as sources for your news.

When you select a new Page in your Edit Settings area, this will appear in a pre-determined order within the Page tabs underneath the masterhead.

When you select a new Category in your Edit Settings area, this will appear in the top right of the relevant Page. You can then drag and drop the Category to a position of your choice on the Page.

All Categories in the newspaper, including the "News in Pics" Category, can be moved around the newspaper until you are happy with their position. Sometimes though, it can be tricky moving Categories within the grey box. You might find it easier to drag the Category out of the box and then back in to the selected position. The selected Category of the 3 Categories in the grey box is the one replaced when a new Category is dragged in. The only Category you cannot move in to the grey box is the "News in Pics" Category.

Sometimes it can be tricky for a newly selected Publisher to "catch" in the top 5 list of choices, in the Edit Settings area. This is often true when trying to drag a Publisher from the bottom of where a long list of options is presented. Try dragging it first to the top of the optional choices and then again in to the Top 5 selections and it will usually work.

If this is the case, first try signing out of Fingertips, waiting a few minutes and then signing back in a few minutes later.

If this does not solve the problem, please contact Fingertips at admin@fingertips.net