How Do I ...

I noticed a few people were having problems using the site and it is a bit different to the old site so I hope to answer your questions here.

Computer or Phone

First off the site will look slightly different depending upon if you are viewing from a phone or tablet or a laptop/desktop computer. Basically because of size constraints a phone often shows you a cut down version of websites so it's easier to view on a small screen. If you are having problems and need to contact me or a moderator about it please let us know what you are viewing the site on.

On a computer you will see along the top of each page a blue menu bar, in the centre it says Home, Forum, Members, Groups and Blog and to the right a bell icon, which is for notifications and an icon that looks like a blue circle with a 'person' inside (this changes if you set a profile picture), this is for your account, clicking on them gives you options. If you are using a phone these are all hidden inside a menu on the right side it looks like three black lines, just click on it to see the options.

Sign in

Signing into the site for the first time should be as easy as putting in your email address and a password. You should be accepted automatically now. Once you have signed in you can go to your account and edit your profile and give yourself the username of your choice, set a profile picture etc.

Forum or Group

The forum is for anyone to read, even if they haven't signed up for the site they can still 'read' messages on the forum although they will need to sign in to post messages. I encourage you to use the forum to share your crafts as this could potentially reach a wider audience but don't post any personal info there as you don't know who's reading it. Groups are a little more private. Only the members of groups can enter that group and read and post there. You can view the members of the group and you can view the privacy settings of the group. There are three privacy settings, first is public and any site member can enter that group, you can not view it if you are not logged in. The second is private, to join that group you need to ask to join or be invited and the third is invisible, this is really like private except when you look in the groups section you will not be able to see this group if you are not a member so wouldn't know to ask to join so will need to be invited. Having said that we do have an invisible group for daily chat. It is only for members who wish to join in the chat and be active. This allows the members to feel free to share more personal information, use family names and information about their city etc. If you have not been invited to this chat and would like to be an active member please let me know.

Posting a New Post

In the forums, go to the topic that most suits what you want to post about. I have purposefully made the topics quite wide to avoid a very long list of topics that may not get posted in very often and so people forget to check. Inside each topic near the top should be a create post button. Again there is a slight variation between phones and computers. In groups you can post a new messages by typing in the 'share something' box once you have opened the relevant group

Editing Your Post

You can edit your post at any time, simply go to the post you made and click the three dots ... to the right of the post this will give you a menu and amongst other options you can choose to edit or delete your post. Clicking the dots by anyone else's post will still give you options, though unless you are a moderator you will not be able to delete or edit their post.

Follow

You can choose to follow posts or people, or topics by using the menu next to that topic or post or in the case of people go to the members area and check the follow box on the person you want to follow. This will allow you to be notified of posts. For instance if you mostly like paper crafting you can follow the topic of paper crafting you would be notified of any posts in that section, if you are particularly interested in a post in that area about card making you can choose to follow that post instead of the whole topic or you can choose to follow the member who posted it since that member is likely to be into similar crafts as yourself. You could also follow myself to be sure you were notified of all admin posts. Or you could choose to follow all the members with An Original badge as all founder members.

If you find anything else confusing please let me know and I'll add it to this list.