Diaspora/Website

Using the interface

You’re now looking at an interface that might be unfamiliar to you. (If you’re still on the edit profile page, click the pod name or <span class="click">Stream</span> at the left-hand end of the black header bar.) Let’s have a quick look at the layout and start to get familiar with it.

Because of the decentralized and open-source nature of diaspora*, it is possible for pod administrators to customize their pods. Therefore, depending on which pod you’re on, the interface might look very slightly different to how it’s described here. However, the essential elements should all be present, even if they are arranged slightly differently.

The main interface can be divided into four parts.

At the top of the screen is the header bar, which always remains in place, even when you scroll down the page. This header bar contains:

Beneath the header there are two columns:

In the sidebar you’ll see links to the different content views available in diaspora*: <span class="click">Stream</span>, <span class="click">My activity</span>, <span class="click">@Mentions</span>, <span class="click">My aspects</span>, <span class="click">#Followed tags</span> and <span class="click">Public activity</span>. We’ll explain these next. There are also some links to help you invite your friends, welcome new users, find help, connect to external services such as Twitter, Tumblr, and Wordpress (if available on your pod), post to diaspora* from the rest of the web (the diaspora* “bookmarklet”) and on some pods, contact information for the pod’s administrator and a button to donate to the costs of keeping your pod running.

The main column contains the content stream with a “publisher” box at the top. This is where the magic happens! We’ll cover using the publisher in %{part_link}.

The different views available in diaspora* are:

The stream

Posts in the stream are ordered according to the time of the original post.

My activity

Your “My activity” stream shows any posts which you have either liked or commented on. This is a useful way of catching up on any interactions you’ve been having in diaspora*. Posts in this stream are ordered according to the latest activity (comment or like) on each post.

@Mentions

This displays any posts made by other people @mentioning you. We’ll discuss @mentions in %{part_link}.

My aspects

“My aspects” displays all posts made by all the people with whom you are sharing – that is, the people you have placed into your aspects. Don’t worry if you don’t know what an aspect is – we’re going to cover this in detail in the next part.

Click on <span class="click">My aspects</span> in the menu to see the list of your aspects. You can view posts made to all aspects, or just to one or more individual aspects, by selecting and deselecting them from the aspect list in the menu.

#Followed tags

This view displays all available posts (public posts and limited posts made to aspects you have been placed in) containing tags you follow. We’ll look at tags in more detail in %{part_link}.