Diaspora/Website

A drop-down menu will then appear under the button in which you can select which aspect(s) to add the person to. You can also create a new aspect and add them to that aspect by clicking <span class="click"><em>+ Add an aspect</em></span>.

Once you select one or more aspects, the aspect button will turn green and you will instantly start sharing posts to those aspects with the person while at the same time you will start following their public posts.

Another way to follow a friend is by sending them an invitation mail. This can be done through the <span class="click">by mail </span> link in the menu on the right of the search results page or from the <span class="click">Invite your friends</span> link in the sidebar of the stream page. As soon as your friend accepts the invite, they will be taken through the same registration process you have just been through.

From their profile

Another way to add a person to one of your aspects is by clicking their name wherever you see it in diaspora*. This will take you to their profile page, from where you will be able to add them to aspects using the button in the top right corner of the page.

Alternatively, just hover over their name or profile photo in the stream, and a small “hover-card” will appear. You can add them to an aspect directly from this hover-card.

Following #tags

The above three options focus on connecting to people you already know. But sometimes strangers can be just as interesting, if not more interesting, than people you already know. A great way to start connecting with people is to start following some #tags of subjects that interest you. Posts containing those tags will then appear in your stream, and you can follow people who post things which you find interesting, by placing them into one of your aspects.

Removing someone from your contacts

To remove someone from your contacts completely and thereby stop sharing with them, all you need to do is to remove them from all aspects you have placed them in. You can do this by:

either going to their profile page or hovering your cursor over their name in the stream and waiting for a hovercard to appear;

clicking the arrow on the green aspect selector button and deselect all the aspects ticked.

That’s it! Once they are no longer in any of your aspects, you are no longer sharing with that person.

You can also remove a person from your aspects via your contacts page, which we covered at the end of %{part_link}.

You now know how to start sharing with people, and hopefully you’ve been able to add some contacts. You’ll now start seeing content from them in your stream; and once people have started sharing with you, you’ll have an audience for your posts. <strong>It’s time to start publishing some content.</strong>

Now that you have some contacts, it’s time to start sharing content with them.

You can communicate via diaspora* either by sharing a status message with a group of followers, or even to the whole of diaspora*; or by sending a private message to one or more mutual contacts. In this part we will focus on using the publisher and content stream to post and comment on status messages. We’ll look at sending a private message (which we call a “conversation”) in %{part_link}.