Orientation
Welcome to wedin.org! This page is just a little orientation to get you started using the site. If you have questions that I don’t manage to answer here, don’t hesitate to email isaac@wedin.org or post a comment below.
Reading
Get informed! The main page shows the most recent posts that members have made to the site. Long posts are shortened to an excerpt, so you may need to click to get the whole story. To browse older posts, visit the archives, where you’ll find posts categorized in various ways. There’s also a search form you can use to find posts which contain some word, such as birthday or Penelope. If you’re dropping in for the first time in a while this is a good way to find out if folks have been talking about you!
Commenting
Share your opinion! After reading a post you may want to make a comment. If you’re viewing the post by itself there’ll be a form right there at the bottom. If you’re viewing the post at the main page, just click the comments link below the post and the commenting form will appear. Enter your name and email address, type in your comment, and click the submit button. Note that if you’re logged in you won’t need to enter any information - the site already “knows” who you are. If you haven’t made a comment before and aren’t logged in, your comment will have to be approved by a registered user before it’ll appear on the site. This is to prevent unknown users from posting advertisements (”spam”) to the site.
You may notice a funny icon next to your comment. If you don’t like the icon, head over to gravatar.com and set up an icon linked to the email address you use at wedin.org. Most people seem to use a photo of their face, but it’s up to you. Note that we only show G-rated avatars at wedin.org.
Registering
Join the party! Once you’ve commented on a few posts, you’ll probably want to share some news of your own. To get signed up, email isaac@wedin.org or post a comment below.
Posting
Share something! You should receive a welcome email to let you know you’re able to post. You may want to change your password since the ones the site chooses are pretty cryptic. You can do that on the Profile page - just enter your new password twice at the bottom and click the update button.
You can write a new post on the Write page. It looks a little complicated but you only need to do three things:
- Type in a title. This appears as a heading above your post.
- Type in your message, using the buttons to format. Upload photos if you’d like (more on this below).
- Click Publish and visit the site to see how it turned out.
Editing
If you’re not satisfied with how your post turned out, don’t worry! Go to the Manage page, where you’ll find a list of recent posts. Your post was probably pretty recent, so you should see it near the top. Click your post’s title and it will appear back in the familiar Write page. Save when you’re done and check the site again to see if you like it this time. You can also Delete your posts at the Manage page.
If you’re an old hand at posting, you should have permission to edit other peoples’ posts. Be careful when doing this - there’s a fine line between helping and meddling. Posting a comment to the post first to ask permission to edit is a good idea.
Photos
I blithely mentioned uploading photos in a previous section, but you may find it’s more difficult than I’ve implied. The main (only?) problem that people encounter with the photo uploader is that it can only handle photos that are relatively small, both in kilobytes and dimensions. If you have an older digital camera or a camera phone you might be able to upload the photos just the way they come out of the camera. Otherwise, you’ll need to resize them, just like you would if you were emailing them to someone, to around a maximum width or height of 800 pixels and less than about a megabyte. Using a program like iPhoto or Picasa this can be done easily with their export functions. If you’ve had success using a particular program or process, please tell us all about it in the comments below. I suggest trying one photo first - export it to a folder on your desktop so you can find it when you want to upload it. Here’s what to do once you have a photo ready:
You’ll find the uploader by logging in and going to the Write tab. Clicking the Photos button on the toolbar should make the popup uploader appear. Check your popup-blocking settings if it does not appear. Select your photo by clicking the Browse button, then click Upload button. Wait patiently. If nothing happens, or if you get an error, re-check the size of your photo. If you get an error about the size of your photo, you’ll need to resize it to less than a megabyte. If nothing appears to happen, your photo is probably small enough to upload, but the dimensions are too large. Resize it so the dimensions are around 800 pixels. If you’re successful, you’ll get a screen where you can type in some information about your photo. This is optional but nice because it appears in the photo album. The next screen lets you select how you’d like the photo to appear in your post, small or large, and insert the photo into your post. That’s it! You’re welcome to do a post just to find out whether your photo works with the uploader or not - self portraits are great for this!
Video
Want to share some moving pictures? There isn’t a good way to store video here at wedin.org right now, BUT you can post your video somewhere else and then embed it in a post here. I’ll run through how to do it using YouTube, but it should work about the same for any similar site. First, film yourself or a loved one doing something funny. A real camcorder will produce the best quality, but your digital camera or even cell phone will work too. Next, upload your video to YouTube and make sure it looks good and works. Next, find the embed stuff to the right of your video and copy it. Finally, paste that code (starts with “object” or somesuch) into your post, hopefully with some commentary or an explanation. Note that if you’re using the visual editor you’ll need to hop over to the Code tab to paste or the visual editor will chew up your video code and spit out garbage.
If this sounds very very complicated, or if you can’t figure out how to embed a clip from some site other than YouTube, you can also just put a link to the video in your post. Once you’ve copied the link to the clipboard, just use the link button (the chain thingy in the visual editor). You can also just paste the link straight into your post and hope the auto-linkifier will make the link for you.
Audio
We’re now testing out a tool like the photo uploader that handles audio, video, and large image files. Use the new Files button on the toolbar just like you use the Photos button. It accepts MP3 audio files, MPG and MOV video files, and JPG image files. They can be up to around 7 megabytes. So, a couple of minutes of audio or video, not a half hour. If your upload works, you’ll be able to insert a link to it in your post. If you forget to do this, or just want to link to something already uploaded, open the Files tool and choose Browse.
Serious Warning
Don’t post copyright infringing materials - I’ll just have to remove them and that’s no fun. If you’re not sure if the thing you want to post is infringing or not, email isaac@wedin.org. I probably don’t need to mention it, but I will also remove anything I don’t like, such as abusive stuff or spam. Note that I’m sorta omnipotent but not omniscient - let me know if you see something you think should be razed with the giant space laser.
Privacy
You should know that things you post on the site, including photos, are visible to the public. If you’re concerned about this, there are a couple of things you can do. First, don’t post photos - there’s no easy way to keep those private, although naming them cryptically and not categorizing them could help (hey, some of you are already doing this!). You can also use a service such as Flickr, Picasa, or Shutterfly to share photos with just a select group. For the text of your post, there are two options, private posts and password-protected posts.
Private posts: To the right of the posting area there’s a thing called Publish Status. Toggle the Keep this page rivate radio button and save your post. It’ll only be visible to logged-in users - others won’t see it at all. To see if it worked, log out and check out the site - your post shouldn’t be there. It should only appear if you’re logged in.
Password-protected posts: Also beneath the posting area, there’s a thing called Post Password. Enter a password and hit Publish. Your post’s title will appear, but your audience will need to type in the password to view the contents. I suggest letting people know the password via email or phone.
Donations
While the site costs very little to operate, I’ve received a request or two to provide some way to make monetary contributions. So, there’s now a donation button in the menu. As you’ll see if you click on the button, contributions go directly to the site’s next hosting bill, rather than towards the purchase of fine products from Dogfish Head Brewery. If the button is missing, it’s because there have been enough contributions to pay for the next year’s hosting - in that case I may replace it with a link to a charity or something. Donation benefits: Donations are donations, BUT if someone who’s donated makes a request of some sort I MAY be more inclined to take action. No, I won’t overlook that bootleg Care Bears video you posted in exchange for a donation!
Subscribing
There are several ways to keep abreast of the latest posts and comments. The subscribe page should be your first stop. That’ll send you an email every time there’s a post, with an excerpt and a link to the post. For your own posts, you’ll be emailed each time there’s a comment, but what about other folks’ posts? Look just below the comment entry area for a convenient check-box to subscribe to that post’s comments.
If you prefer RSS feeds to email updates, there are plenty of options too. First, there’s a posts feed that’s updated every time someone posts something. The comments feed will show you all the latest comments. Finally, it’s even possible to subscribe to a feed for a keyword search, such as posts containing the word danny or comments containing debra. These could be helpful if you don’t browse the site often but want to know if people are talking about you. If you’re new to RSS, you may want to try an online reader, such as Google Reader or My Yahoo.
If you’re unwilling to use an RSS reader, but jealous of some of the awesome features, you need an RSS-to-email gateway. I’ve had good luck so far with SendMeRSS. Drop in an RSS feed URL and your email address and you’re all set. Set up several to get exactly the pattern of awareness you desire.
Further Reading
Clearly I haven’t covered everything, so I’ll collect a few links to further reading material for the curious down here. You can also just post a comments below with questions and suggestions.
