Diaspora/Website
-
Once the publisher box has “come alive,” you’ll see a range of buttons and icons. This publisher interface is the same whether you are writing a new post, a comment on a post or a private conversation. Before we look at the publisher interface in detail, let’s ignore all those buttons and post a simple status message available only to your followers and mutual contacts.
-
To do this, all you need to do is to type your message – whatever you want to say to them, perhaps “This is my first post in Diaspora!” – and press the
<span class="click">Share</span>button. And you’ve shared a message with your contacts! -
This button is how you select who will be able to read your post. It is set to “All aspects” by default: that is, everyone you have added to one of your aspects will be able to read the message, but no one else will be. In the simple message you just sent, because you wanted it visible just to your followers and the default is “All aspects,” there was no need to change any settings before sharing your message.
-
With this button you can select any individual aspect to share with, or any combination of your aspects, by clicking on aspects in the list to select or unselect them. In this way you have complete control over who gets to read your messages, as we discussed in %{part_link}. If, on the other hand, you want to announce something to the whole world, select “Public,” and there will be no restrictions on who can read your message.
-
Next to the camera is a “pin” icon which activates the locator feature. This enables you to add your location to posts. Click it and it will ask you whether you’re happy for it to determine your location using OpenStreetMap, and if you allow this it will add your location to your post as a footnote.
-
Based on the connections you have made with your accounts on other social networks (Twitter, Tumblr, and WordPress), there may be icons for these services under the publisher. Highlighting these posts your message to those services. We’ll cover this in the next section, below.
-
We’ll look at how to connect to other services in %{part_link}.
-
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:
No more segments to load.
Loading more segments…
© 2009-2024 WebTranslateIt Software S.L. All rights reserved.
Terms of Service
·
Privacy Policy
·
Security Policy