Network User Guide and General Info to Improve Member Interactions

[George Lewter]

Welcome!

New members are joining and others are contributing. With this level of activity there is pronounced tendency for the network becoming progressively more disorganized. By providing the members with some basic guidelines we may be able to keep the content on this network more coherent. The content that you add will determine the level of success or failure of this network. Should you have any trouble using the features of this network, just send me a message by going to my member profile page (George Lewter) and clicking the "send a message" link in the left column.

 

Your Member Page ( Tabbed "My Page")

• This is your personal space on our network and you can do with it what you like. On your page you can change the appearance and theme of the page, bring in applications, and really make it your own.
• You can have a blog on your page and post your current thinking on just about anything. A blog is a place where you think out loud. People can comment, but it's more about you.
• You can start a discussion and your page will maintain a list of all your discussions. They will also be accessible on the "Forum" tab at the top of all the network pages. This is where you
  go when you really want to know what others are thinking about an issue that is of common interest. Note on 5/10/2010. There is a new WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) text editor for creating discussions. It has more capabilities for formatting your text than was previously possible. There is an in-depth HELP topic on the editor if you want to learn more about how to use it.
• You can post up to 100 pictures of yourself, your work, and other work you're interested in, or that inspires you. Be aware that posting copyrighted images could get you into legal
  difficulties. Your images can be high resolution with file sizes up to 10 MB. For the benefit of your viewers, please add some text explanation to your pictures, so they have context, and can spur a lively conversation among other ceramicists. Your pictures will form a slideshow on your page, and they will rotate in with all of the rest of the members' pictures on the group slideshow on our main page. Clicking on a slideshow image should call up a larger higher resolution image with the creator's notes, a place to rate the photo and to comment about it as well as seeing others' comments. Clicking on the "View Full Size" link at the bottom right of the image should bring up the photo at its highest resolution, enabling you to zoom in on its fine detail. Please keep comments about a picture with the picture, rather than commenting to the previous commenter's profile page, or the connection to the picture will be lost. 

 

Pictures

1. Picture Gallery  You can add pictures (usually of your work) to your own personal gallery quite easily from the photos tab at the top of all our pages, or from the "My Photos" section of your profile page. Just click on the "Add Photos" link and a box will open, giving you options for adding photos.  Generally you will browse to where the pictures are stored on your computer, and then upload them to our network. All the pictures you add in this way will end up in your "My Photos" collection.
2. You can also post pictures within your comments and other postings either uploading them, or if they are already online someplace, by embedding a link that will bring them into your written piece. Just click the picture icon at the top of the box where you are typing in your posting.  A dialog box will open and give you choices of where you are getting the image and how it is to be dropped into your posting.  It will be relative to the position of your insertion point (cursor) in the article.  If there is demand for it I can post a more detailed procedure on how to embed pictures, but you should try it on your own first. 

 

Links in Your Comments, Discussions and Other Postings

Most of the features on the network are followed by areas where members can comment on what they've just experienced. Whenever possible respond in these areas, so the conversation stays together. If you respond to a discussion I've started in the forums, and you put your comment on your or my profile page, then the context and continuity of the discussion will be lost. The Text editors have been upgraded so you can work in "Visual Mode" so as you type and format, your article looks like it will on the Web page, or if you know some html you can use the HTML editor and have more extensive control over the appearance of your posting. You can also switch back and forth between the two modes.  The text boxes where you can type in text usually have a tool bar at the top. You can select some text and click one of the formatting buttons to format the selected text in Bold, Italic, Underlined, or struck-through styles. Other buttons start and end bulleted and numbered lists.

If you want a hyperlink, also called just a "link" in your text:

• Open a new browser window and navigate to the page where you want to direct your reader.
• Select the Web address (URL) of that page and copy it to your clipboard.
• Back in the text box you are working on, type in and select the text that you want the reader to click on (the text that will become the hyperlink).
• On the tool bar at the top of the text box click on the "LINK" button or little chain icon. It will pop up a dialog box that will prompt you for the URL of your destination Web page. Highlight the "http://" that is already there, and paste-in the URL that you copied earlier.
• You can continue typing normally after the hyperlink appears in your posting. If you know
  HTML you can enhance your writing by adding in the appropriate
  tags.
• All of the "Comments" text boxes on the network will accept html tags that you can use to format your text in more complex ways than the few buttons at the top of the comment box will allow. Basic HTML is quite easy to learn and put into practice. There are many free tutorials online that can get you putting together web pages quite quickly.
  target="_blank">http://www.w3schools.com is one source with many html tutorials

 

Avoid Comments for Detailed Information

Comments are hard to find and conversations of comments don't thread together. Example: I comment on your picture, and then you comment back on my profile (by clicking my name), and then I comment back on your profile. There is no way for a third member to know that a conversation is taking place, or for you and I to keep track of it. PLEASE put all substantive writings in the forums under the closest appropriate category or "uncategorized", and I will create a new category, and move the discussion to it, or you can post them in a blog. PLEASE HELP ORGANIZE OUR NETWORK

Zoom IN, Zoom OUT

Text too small? Use the Ctrl Key and your mouse wheel (or the plus and minus keys) to zoom in and out, like using a magnifying glass. This works on PC's - not sure about Macs.

Search For It

As this site gets larger and specific information is buried more deeply, be aware that you can search the entire site and locate all pages containing the search term you type into the search box in the upper right corner of our pages.

[George Lewter]

ADDING IMAGES TO YOUR POSTINGS AND COMMENTS

To place a picture in a comment or other posting you need to upload it from your machine or link to it if it is already online somewhere.  Say I want to insert a picture below this line that is on my PC. Set the cursor on the next line.

 

Then click the "Image" icon, and a dialog box will open.

 

Click the "From my computer" tab, and then click the choose file button. A new dialog box will open that will allow you to navigate to where the picture is stored on your computer.

 

Select your picture file and then click the "Open" button

 

The Add Image dialog box will reappear with a link to where the file is now stored on the network server. You choose how you want it to align with the text and how much clear space to have between the image and text. You can also scale the picture by setting the width. The picture to the left, for instance is 556 pixels wide.  

When you are satisfied, click the OK button, and the picture will appear in your posting.  You can continue typing text, or add more pictures.  Keeping the pictures fairly small prevents the posting from being massively tall with a whole lot of vertical scrolling.

 

If the picture is already online somewhere you embed it a little differently by finding its URL.

In a different Browser tab or window and navigate to the picture you want to embed and right click on the image. A shortcut menu will open. Click "Copy image URL". This copies the location to your clipboard.

Back in your text box where you are creating your posting, click on the "Image" icon. This time go to the "From a URL" 

tab of the dialog box.  Place your cursor in the "URL" text box and paste the URL into it by using the "CTRL" plus "V" keyboard combination on a PC or "CMD" plus"V" on a Mac. When you hit the OK button the image will be added to your posting.

 

That pretty much covers basic image insertion into your cone6pots postings.  Happy Posting!

[George Lewter]

The Two Window Technique for Creating a Posting with References to Other Resources

Sometimes you are creating a posting and want to include some text from or a link to another page.  The easiest way to do this is to open two browser windows or tabs, one for editing your posting, and the other from which to copy the target information whether it be text or the URL of a page or picture.

[George Lewter]

Why You Might Want to Use the "Like" Buttons.

The "Like" buttons are seriously under-utilized on our network. Members who have "liked" content will have access to a personalized My Likes page. To access this archive of liked content, head to your or another member’s My Page and click “My Likes” in the left column under the profile photo.

With some 2000 pages of content on the network, you may have difficulty finding something you have seen and wanted to keep track of from a previous visit.

 

 

Your My Likes page will display thumbnails of all of the content and members you’ve liked in chronological order . You can click on any of the items on that page to be taken to the piece of liked content or member’s page.

A second reason for using the "Like" buttons is that "Featured" content can be displayed by popularity, and is easily accessible by all members, right from our main page. So far very few people have "Liked" much of anything, so setting up the "Featured" content by popularity doesn't generate meaningful lists of discussions, members, blogs, or videos. I have been forced to display the featured lists by other filters.

[George Lewter]

Need to downsize or crop an image to include in a discussion, posting, or to add your profile picture? Pixlr.com is a free online photo editor. Thanks, Tony Hansen 9/28/13

[George Lewter]

FRANKWABENA was suspended from the network for spam/scam. That's why he is no longer listed.

Merry Arttoones, M.F.A> said:

I received an e-mail from Electric Cone 6 from a "FRANKKWABENA" in broken English asking me to contact him by e-mail...I was suspicious ...I came here and found no such member listed...has anybody else received such an e-mail...?

 

[Merry Arttoones, M.F.A>]

thanks...alas I opened his e-mail...I hope my computer is fine maybe in future you could e-mail us to let us know cause it sure looked like it came from you guys...

[George Lewter]

A message you receive on the cone6pots network is server based, and resides on the server, not on your personal computer. It would be extremely difficult to infect your computer with such a message, especially if you have any up to date antivirus software. The message you received relies on you contacting the sender by your own email, and allowing him to convince you to send him money for something. It is a widely used old fashioned con game, not a computer attack.

Members cannot mass mail the entire membership, only the group of people that they are friends with. So the sender has to leave the scam messages individually, manually, eating up a lot of time. I don't think any scammers have ever managed to contact more than a dozen of our members, before we were able to suspend them. For this reason, I prefer not to mass mail the entire 2000 membership to notify them of a small breach, and thus replace the scam with spam. Instead, I post a status message that you will see in the Latest Activity column.

If you receive any suspicious message through the cone6pots network, Do NOT respond to the sender. Report it as a status item for all who visit the network, or in a message to me. 

George

Merry Arttoones, M.F.A> said:

thanks...alas I opened his e-mail...I hope my computer is fine maybe in future you could e-mail us to let us know cause it sure looked like it came from you guys...

[Corina]

i guess i will need to learn all these functions  i am trying and at times confused ,  thanks for the forum  and letting slowbees join