Diaspora/Website

Next to the “compose” button at the top left is the last button, with a magnifying glass icon – and it’s a really useful one! This allows you to see exactly what your post will look like, so you can be sure you’re happy with it before you actually post it. This can really help with correcting errors, and especially with text formatting. More on this below.

If your post might potentially cause offence or get someone into trouble for viewing it at work, please add the <span class="click">#nsfw</span> (“not safe for work”) tag so that it will be hidden on people’s screens unless they choose to view it. We’ll cover this in %{part_link}.

You can @mention people in both posts and comments. Likewise other people can @mention you, and you’ll receive a notification in the header bar (and by email if you have set that option).

Note that you can only @mention people you are sharing with.

When you start writing a message with one of more of these icons highlighted, a character counter will show how many more characters are available to you: 280 for Twitter, 1000 for Tumblr. In diaspora*, you can post a whopping 65,535 characters! The counter will always display the number of characters remaining for the service selected which allows the fewest characters; so, if you highlight both the Twitter and Tumblr logos, it will count down from 280 characters.

Don’t forget that there are different content streams depending on which of the “views” you are using: <span class="click">Stream</span>, <span class="click">My activity</span>, <span class="click">@Mentions</span>, <span class="click">My aspects</span> or <span class="click">#Followed tags</span>. While this alters which posts appear in your stream, you can interact with those posts in the same way in any of these views.

If there are no comments on a post yet, click <span class="click">Comment</span> to open a comment field. When there are already comments below the post, the comment field will automatically be there. If more than three comments have been added, the last three comments will be shown. You can expand the full thread by clicking the <span class="click">Show n more comments</span> link above them.

If you are currently sharing with that person, removing them from your aspects will stop many of their posts from appearing in your stream. A more complete method is to “ignore” that account. This will prevent any of their posts from appearing in your stream, and they will no longer be able to like or comment on your posts. They will, however, still be able to reshare your posts, comment on reshares of your posts, and their comments on posts by other people which appear in your stream will still be visible to you.

A list of people you are ignoring can be found in your account settings under <span class="click">Privacy</span>. To stop ignoring someone, you can remove them from the list on that page. We cover how to change your account settings page in %{part_link}.

You’ve now learned about the activity you’ll be spending most of your time in diaspora* doing: sharing your own content, and commenting on and resharing content shared by others. In the next part of this tutorial we will take a look at “conversations:” private messages shared with one or more contacts.

The last big feature you should definitely know about is “conversations.” Before we do that, however, let’s look at notifications.

Clicking the notifications icon (which looks like a bell) in the header bar brings down a scrollable list showing the most recent notifications. If you have unread notifications, this will appear as a number in red over the icon.

Notifications tend to take the form “Person A commented on Person B’s post,” “Person A started sharing with you,” or “Person A has mentioned you in a post.” From this list, you can:

The conversations page in the desktop interface consists of two columns: on the left, a list of conversations you have been involved in; on the right, a view of the currently selected conversation (if any).

Use the <span class="click">New conversation</span> button at the top of the left-hand column to start a new conversation. The button will open a pop-up window in which you can write a message and add people to include in the conversation.

When typing a name into the “to” line, the name will be auto-completed, just like when you @mention someone in a post or comment. Click the name of the person you want to contact, add a subject in the subject line, type your message and off you go! It is that simple. You can also use text formatting here, so feel free to add bold titles and big headers in your message.

Part 7 – Finishing up

Finishing up

You can connect your diaspora* seed to several other services: Twitter, Tumblr, and WordPress. Of course, to do this, you’ll have to have an account on that service!

Before starting this, make sure you have your account information for that service to hand, because you might need it to authorise your connection with that other service in order for it to work.