Diaspora/Diaspora

What is a pod?

A pod is a server running the diaspora* software and connected to the diaspora* network. “Pod” is a metaphor referring to pods on plants which contain seeds, in the way that a server contains a number of user accounts. There are many different pods. You can add friends from other pods and communicate with them. There’s no need to open an account on different pods! One is enough – in this way, you can think of a diaspora* pod as similar to an email provider. There are public pods, private pods, and with some effort you can even run your own.

I just joined a pod, how can I find people to share with?

If you want to invite your friends to join diaspora*, use the invitation link or the email link in the side-bar. Follow #tags to discover others who share your interests, and add those who post things that interest you to an aspect. Shout out that you’re #newhere in a public post.

You can search for people by entering their username or their diaspora* name (the name that is shown on their profile). If neither of these methods work, enter their full diaspora* ID (username@podname.org). If your search doesn’t work the first time, it could be due to network latency. Try it again.

Posts and posting

If you point your mouse at the top of a post, an X appears on the right. Click it to hide the post and mute notifications about it. You can still see the post if you visit the profile page of the person who posted it.

diaspora* uses a simplified system called %{markdown}. The publisher has buttons to make it easy to format your text. If you want to format your post manually, you can find the full Markdown syntax %{here}. The preview tab means you can see how your message will look before you share it. Remember that you can’t edit it once posted, so use the preview to make sure it’s perfect before pressing Share!

If you want to include an image stored on your computer in your post, click the little camera icon at the bottom of the publisher. You can also drag and drop an image, or multiple images, from your computer onto that icon. If you want to insert an image from the web into your post, click the image button on the top of the publisher, which will create the Markdown code for you.

No. Images are resized automatically to fit the stream or single-post view. Markdown does not have a code for specifying the size of an image.

How do I embed a video, audio, or other multimedia content into a post?

You can usually just paste the URL (e.g. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnnnnnnnnnn ) into your post and the video or audio will be embedded automatically. The sites supported include: YouTube, Vimeo, SoundCloud, Flickr and a few more. diaspora* uses oEmbed for this feature. If you post a direct link to an audio or video file, diaspora* will embed it using standard HTML5 player. We’re supporting more media sources all the time. Remember to always post simple, full links – no shortened links; no operators after the base URL – and give it a little time before you refresh the page after posting for seeing the preview.

What is the character limit for posts?

65,535 characters. That’s 65,395 more characters than you get on Twitter! ;)