Site help and frequently asked questions

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When I go to the My Account link, I can see all the private information I submitted in your registration form. Can everyone see that?
No, only you can see everything in your profile. Others can only see the fields that were designated as public in the registration form.

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Why do you need all my personal information when I register?
We don't. You're only required to enter some particulars--name, address, phone and a couple others--and the rest is up to you. We encourage you, though, to fill in the fields that tell the community more about your interests.

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I can see the screen names of members in the Who's New and Who's Online box, but I can't click them. Why?
In order to be able to click them, you need to register as a member of the community.

How can I see profiles of other users?
Log in, click the User Profiles link in the navigation menu under the top photo, and scroll through. Click on a user name to learn more about the user and contact them through their contact page. As the site grows, more users will be listed and more information will be displayed on this first screen.

How can I delete my account and all my posts?
Users cannot delete their posts or their accounts. Please use care and prudence when posting. When you put it on the web, it's out there forever.

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The My Account screen is confusing. What's all this about?
It's everything attached to you that's on this site--it's your personal site management tool.
Click the My Account link and you'll see five tabs:

--View Tab. The details about you. How long you've been a member, your recent blog entries if you have one, your personal information and any other things you filled out in the registration form.

--Edit Tab. This contains your basic account information and several different subsections that you can edit at any time. The Account Settings link contains items like user name, password, subscriptions, contact settings and other items. The Contact Information link contains the private information that we share with no one: your name, address and phone. The Demographic Information link contains those details. The My Details link contains all the optional, extra, community-oriented information about you like your neighborhood name, your personal favorites, hobbies and the like. The Newspaper Questions link is self explanatory, and finally, the My Newsletters link displays all the newsletters that you have signed up for--you can sign up and cancel at any time from here.

--My Subscriptions Tab. The terms are the same, but this is different from the previous tab. This tab lists all the posts under which you have clicked the 'subscribe post" option to have any replies to various posts emerald to you. The subscriptions are divided out by content type, and you can subscribe or unsubscribe to any these subscriptions at any time from this page.

--Track Tab. Here you can see all the posts that you've written, and also if people have responded to those posts.

--Contact Tab. This tab is for sending e-mail to you. You will not use this tab on your account page, but you'll use it on that of other people. You can send e-mail to them through this tab, but since the tab has a form on it, neither of you need to exchange your e-mail addresses--they're kept confidential.

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People say they try to send me e-mail from my account/profile page, but my contact tab says, "YOUR NAME is not accepting e-mails." Why?
You need to log in, click My Account, go to the Edit Tab, scroll down to Contact Settings and click the Personal Contact Form check box.

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What about my profile?
After you fill out the initial form, you can add information to your account by clicking the "My Account" link at page top, then clicking the edit tab, and then opening the "my details" section.

It also in this profile window that you can choose settings for your account: upload a picture for your profile, and turn on your contact settings.

This is important: if you want people to be able to e-mail you through a contact form on the site--so that they can e-mail you but not have access to your e-mail address--you should click the check box under "Contact Settings".

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Why does the track tab say that "is not accepting e-mails."
If you want people to be able to e-mail you through a contact form on the site--so that they can e-mail you but not have access to your e-mail address--you should click the check box under "Contact Settings".

Navigation

--Use the pull down navigation bar.

--When you're in the News section, there's a News Navigator box on the right hand side that lists all the categories with the number of stories in them. Click a category to see all its stories.

--Click on the search box in the navigation bar. Type in your search word, or use the Advanced options for a more detailed search.

--Click on the Catch Up link in the navigation bar. Catch Up section to read all the news, reader submissions and recently posted events that happened while you were gone. All content is sorted from the top of the page from newest to oldest. Just read until you're caught up.

--Use the Map/RSS link in the navigation bar. Here you can get a bird's eye view of all the content in the site--forums, blogs, news categories, news stories--and you can pick from there.

--Click on the "Filed Under:" link at the bottom of every story. Each story is filed under at least one heading. If you want to see more stories under that heading, click on the link and the page will show you all those stories in reverse chronological order.

Groups

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What’s all this about groups?
The groups section enables users to create and manage their own groups. Community members often want to self organize or spontaneously organize around a topic of interest. Allowing communities to organize naturally is important part of a healthy community.

A group is created by a single group owner, who has special permissions including the ability to delete the group the owner created. Group administrators also have special permissions but can not delete the group unless they are assigned to be the group owner.

Once you choose to administer a group, your events and blog posts can be scheduled either to be viewed by the entire site, or just by your group members. Group subscribers communicate amongst themselves using the group home page as a focal point.

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How do I sign up to be a member of a group?
Go the groups page by following the Groups link at the top of the page. Look through the list of groups and choose the one that you want to join, and click its name.
When the page loads, you'll see a block on the right hand side that says the group's name, with a link below it that says, "request subscription". Click it.

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How do I start a group?
Log in (Remember: when you’re finished, don’t forget to log out)
Enter your name and password to access your account.

Click Add Content

Next, you’ll choose from this list what kind of content you want to enter.
Choose group. A message will appear informing you of the status of your application. You'll get an e-mail when the group moderator approves, telling you of your status.

Enter a name of the group.

Enter a welcome message. Include here who you are, what the group is about, and what people can expect from the group.

Under the description heading, describe the group briefly. This copy appears in a small block under the Groups tab.

Under the web site heading, enter an address if your group has some kind of web site already.

Subscription requests: Since it's your group, you're the group moderator. You decide whether a request to join is automatically accepted, if a request to join must be your decision, if request to join is by invite only, or if it's all closed and you enter member data manually when you moderate the group.

Finally, choose whether you want your group listed in the directory or not. This is influenced by whether or not your group is invite-only or not.

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I'm a group moderator. How do I know when people want to join my group?
Two ways: first, you'll get an e-mail that says someone wants to join. Just click the link in your e-mail to approve or disapprove.
Second, you can check your group page, find the box with your group's name on it in the right hand side, and click the subscriptions link.

If someone new has applied, you'll see their name next to an "awaiting approval" link.

remember, when you allow someone to join your group, they have rights to post to your group calendar and in your group blog.

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How will people know I'm the group moderator?
In your contact page, a list of the groups that you belong to will be listed under your View tab.

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How can I send a blog post to a group?
Write a blog entry. If you're registered with a group, the bottom of the form will have a section named "groups." This section will have two check boxes with your choices. Either check the box to make the post public, and it will go in your blog, or check the box and choose the audience you want the post to go to in which case it will post under that group's section. Also, you can choose both if you want.

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How can I send a calendar entry to a group?
Write an event entry. If you're registered with a group, the bottom of the form will have a section named "groups." This section will have two check boxes with your choices. Either check the box to make the post public, and it will go in your blog, or check the box and choose the audience you want the post to go to in which case it will post under that group's section. Also, you can choose both if you want.

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I'm the group moderator. How do I send a broadcast e-mail to my group?
Go to the front page, click on the groups tab, select your group under the "my groups" heading, and click its name.
When the page appears, you'll see an account screen similar to your personal account screen. Click on the e-mail tab. Enter a subject and body copy. Click send e-mail.

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I'm the group moderator. How do I add e-mails and subscribers to my group?
Go to the front page, click on the groups tab, select your group under the "my groups" heading, and click its name.

When the page appears, you'll see an account screen similar to your personal account screen. Click on the e-mail tab.

You'll see a notice that says something like, "Your e-mail will be sent to 1 subscriber in this group. Please use this feature sparingly." Click on the word subscriber.

A screen will come up that says, subscribers: and your group name. Click on the add subscribers tab. You need to add the SCREEN NAME of the user you wish to add, which means that the new group member must be registered on the Jordan Indpendent webs site.

You cannot add raw e-mail addresses.

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The group is getting to be too much for me. Can I add a group moderator to help me?
Yes.
Go to the front page, click on the groups tab, select your group under the "my groups" heading, and click its name.

When the page appears, you'll see an account screen similar to your personal account screen. Click on the e-mail tab.

You'll see a notice that says something like, "Your e-mail will be sent to 1 subscriber in this group. Please use this feature sparingly." Click on the word subscriber.

When you see the list of your users, you'll see that new users have a link to the far right of their name in the Operations column. The link "admin:create" gives you the option to make that user a group moderator of your group.

When you click that link, the message "User was promoted to group administrator" should appear, and the link should change to admin:remove.

Content

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What's the difference between the "News Stories from ... Minnesota" box and the "Reader Contributions" box?
Our new web site is based on input from the people that live here. The News stories are written by our staff, but the Reader Contributions are calendar items, comments and blog posts written by people who live in our city.

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What's the difference between the News link and the Catch Up link in the main navigation bar?
While both links like site content from newest to oldest, the News link lists only tories written by our staff while the Catch Up link lists all stories by both our staff and by local bloggers, as well as events that have been recently posted to the calendar.

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What does the icon that looks like a little calendar at the bottom of your calendar pages do?
That icon allows users of Apple's iCal calendar application to download our community calendar to their computer.

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What are all those little icons at the upper right side of every story?
Those icons allow you to alert other web sites about the content in that story. By clicking those icons you can post a reference or personal bookmark to that story on del.icio.us, digg.com, ma.gnolia.com, newsvine.com, google.com or yahoo.com.

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What's with the submission text box with all the buttons on top?
Called TinyMCE, that interface gives the user some Microsoft Word-like control over the text in their posts. Users can turn the interface on or off by clicking the enable/disable rich text button below the text field, or by setting a default in their user account page.

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I have a photo for the top of your front page. How do I get it to you?
Send your photo to snapshots@jordannews.com. The final crop size of the photo will be 750 pixels wide by 150 pixels high. It's a bit of an odd size, so try to pick a photo that works well in that space. Make sure it's less than four megabytes, and we'll do the rest.

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Do you still put all the stories from the paper online?
Yes and no. The entire edition of the newspaper is online under the "Print Edition" link at page top. You can download each page individually, or you can download the entire paper in PDF format. You can preview a reduced version of the page in JPG format first. All the stories you read on the pages of the web site itself are written specifically for the site, but may be printed in the paper at a later date.

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How do I get RSS feeds?
A full RSS feed for the site is available under the E-Edition tab on the front page, and there's even more inside the site. Each blogger, each forum topic and each news category can be used as a feed. Just go to the Maps/RSS page, find a topic (remember: a category, a blogger or a forum topic--individual stories don't have feeds), click you choice, copy the address out of your address bar and paste it into your RSS reader.

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What is an RSS Reader?
RSS (see the wikipedia entry at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSS) readers like NetNewswire, RSS Owl, Vienna and others are available for free or at low cost at various sites.

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Where can I subscribe to the print edition?
On the front page of the site, scroll down the second column to the second box of tabs and click on the Forms tab. In this tab you'll see the options to start, pause and cancel a print subscription. Or just go to the Site Map page, scroll down to the forms section and click the Forms link.

Other users

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Who should I tell about bad behavior on this site?
Use the "Report Abuse" link at the top of the page (it only appears there once you have logged in). Copy the address of the page on which it happened, and the screen name of the user that you're reporting. Be as detailed as you can about the offense, and try to cut and paste it into your report if you can.

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What's the Who's New and Who's Online box about?
These two boxes display the screen names of members who are currently reading or writing in the site, and of the members who have most recently joined.

Submitting stories, announcements and press releases

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Where can I submit a birth announcement?
Pull down on the Contact Us link in the top menu bar on every page.

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Where can I submit a engagement announcement?
Pull down on the Contact Us link in the top menu bar on the front page.

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Where can I submit a wedding announcement?
Pull down on the Contact Us link in the top menu bar on the front page.

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Where can I buy photo reprints?
Pull down on the Archives menu bar item in the top menu bar on every page.

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Where can I buy copies of old stories?
Pull down on the Archives menu bar item in the top menu bar on every page. Also, keep in mind that this web site has only been in operation since August 2000. For articles published prior to that you'll have to consult bound volumes of the newspaper, found at our newspaper office.

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What's the difference between your "Browse archives" box on the front page, and your print archives where I have to pay to buy a story?
The "Browse Archives" box on the home page is a calendar-based tool to find all the articles that have been published on the web site--no content from the newspaper is posted in this archive. To Archives from the print edition, use the Print Archives link in the Archives box.

Adding Your Own Content

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How do I post a blog entry?
Log in (Remember: when you’re finished, don’t forget to log out)
Enter your name and password to access your account.

Click on the "Add a Blog Post" link Control Panel in the upper left hand column of the page.

Enter a title

Choose which categories you want the story to appear. Exactly like posting a story, but Blogs use “free tagging” instead of hard and fast categories just like you use in Flickr or del.icio.us. (More on <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tags">free tagging</a> at wikipeida) You may use multiple tags. Use nouns, verbs or adjectives to tag your post.

Decide if you want emailed feedback and click subscriptions, or not.

Enter the body copy. If you don’t want to use the Word-like interface, click on “disable rich text” below the body box.

When you submit the blog post, it's live on the site. If you want to edit it, do so under your "My recent Posts" link at the top of the page.

If you want to attach a file, click the browse button under the attachments heading, and upload the file.

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How do I post an event?
Log in (Remember: when you’re finished, don’t forget to log out)
Enter your name and password to access your account.

Click on the "Add an event" link Control Panel in the upper left hand column of the page.

Enter start and end dates with the pull down menus. Look carefully because this date layout can be confusing.

Enter a title for the event

Click the subscriptions box if you want feedback on your event.

Enter the body of the event.

Do not change any authoring, publishing, scheduling information.

Do not put an attachment on the poll.

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How do I post a question to the forum?
Log in (Remember: when you’re finished, don’t forget to log out)
Enter your name and password to access your account.

Click on the "Add a Forum Post" link Control Panel in the upper left hand column of the page.

Enter a subject line

Choose a category from the list. Note that names preceded by a dash are the forums themselves, the names not preceded by dashes are containers for those forums and cannot directly accept posts.

Click the subscriptions box if you want feedback on your post.

Enter the body of the forum topic.
Do not change any authoring, publishing, scheduling information.

You may not attach files to forum topics.

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How do I post an event?
Log in (Remember: when you’re finished, don’t forget to log out)
Enter your name and password to access your account.

Click on the "Add an event" link Control Panel in the upper left hand column of the page.

Enter start and end dates with the pull down menus. Look carefully because this date layout can be confusing.

Enter a title for the event

Click the subscriptions box if you want feedback on your event.

Enter the body of the event.

Do not change any authoring, publishing, scheduling information.

Do not put an attachment on the poll.

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How do I post a recipe?
Log in (Remember: when you’re finished, don’t forget to log out)
Enter your name and password to access your account.

Click on the "Add a recipe" link Control Panel in the upper left hand column of the page.

Enter a subject line.

Choose a category from the list.

Enter the body of the recipe.

Do not change any authoring, publishing, scheduling information.

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