Diaspora/Website

“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

In this view you will see a list of your tags. Clicking on a tag in the sidebar will take you to the stream for that tag. You can stop following a tag by clicking the cross by its name in the sidebar.

Profile view

Clicking your name or profile image (your “avatar”) anywhere you see it takes you to your profile page. This shows you all the posts you have made in diaspora*. It also displays your profile photo, screen name, “about me” tags and your “<strong>diaspora* ID</strong> (which looks like an email address, starting with the user name you chose followed by the name of your pod).

Under your avatar you’ll see any extra profile information you have added, such as birthday, location, gender, biography and so on.

You can also view someone else’s profile page by clicking their name or avatar. How much of a person’s profile information and posts are made available to you depends on the type of sharing relationship they have with you.

If they are sharing with you, there will be a green tick next to their diaspora* ID. If not, there will be a gray circle.

At the top right you’ll find an aspects button. If the person is not in one of your aspects, it will read “Add contact;” if they are, it will be green and show the name of the aspect you’ve placed them in. Click it to add them to an aspect. If you are ignoring that person, the button will be red and will read “Stop ignoring.”

That’s all you need to know about the interface for now. The first thing you will want to do is finding some people to start sharing with. However, before we get to that, let’s focus on something that features prominently throughout diaspora*: <strong>aspects</strong>.

All about aspects

Think of your life and the people you know. Each person is a part of one or more aspects of your life. They might be a member of your family, a close friend, a work colleague or someone you play sport or music with or with whom you share a particular interest. They might be someone you just like sharing jokes with online. Or they might be part of more than one of these aspects of your life.

diaspora* works in exactly the same way. You place contacts into one or more “aspects” of your life on diaspora* based on which aspect(s) of your life they are part of. In this way, you control which of your contacts sees each post you make to diaspora*, by posting to a particular aspect or aspects. This means that you can easily share the right things with the right people. We’ll explain more about what posting to aspects means over the next three parts of this series.

When you sign up you are given four aspects: Family, Work, Friends and Acquaintances. Of course you won’t be able to sort all of your life into just four standard aspects, so the next thing we’re going to do is to add some aspects. You can also delete the default aspects if you want to.

Click <span class="click">My aspects</span> in the sidebar and a list of your aspects will appear. To add an aspect, click <span class="click">+ Add an aspect</span> under the list of aspects in the menu. You will be presented with a pop-up window.

This guide uses an aspect called “Diaspora” as an example, but give your aspect whatever name you want.