Using This Website: Computer Tips & Tricks & Your Questions

[Heather K]

Post your computer ning-site based questions here.

Anyone with experience on the TW ning.com site can answer the questions posted, so we can take turns answering questions.

Remember to click "Follow:" on this discussion to receive emails on the questions & answers that come in.

Using this discussion format can reduce the emails being sent to everyone in our growing work-group.

When David gets back online & active again he may post a featured discussion on this topic.

For now, you can either ask your questions on this work-group discussion, or go to David's older post, located at:

 http://transitionwhatcom.ning.com/forum/topics/using-this-website-t...

 

[Heather K]

Quote from David M- "Hi TW members, Wow, our membership here is growing fast, and there's lots of activity!

I'm having trouble keeping up with all the new membership approvals, welcome letters, and answering questions here on the site (what a great problem to have!). I also have many responsibilities in life outside of managing this website on a volunteer basis (yes, I do actually have a 40 hour week job on top of all my volunteer work). I'm going to have to cut a bit on my time spent here for at least a little while, so I can complete my mom's taxes, and prepare for a big move to the Transition Birchwood neighborhood at the end of this month. I'll still be here, just a little bit less for a while.

If you have questions about how to use this site, ask the questions here, and hopefully other more experienced users can chime in with help.

Many blessings to you all as we transition from fossil fuel dependence to local and resilient living!" (David)

Copy posted above from David M on 4/13/10 at
http://transitionwhatcom.ning.com/forum/topics/using-this-website-tips-and?xg_source=activity

[Rev. Meredith Ann Murray]

How can I invite my TW friends to a group? All I can find our ways to invite people through e-mail or Facebook, etc. There must be a way to invite folks who are already my TW friends here to a group?? Thanks!

[Heather K]

How To Invite More TW Friends To a TW Group- Try this:

*Sign on to TW, click on the group, scroll down to just below the members pictures.
*Click on the "Invite More" spot
* Then click on the "Invite Friends" spot
* Next click on the "None" spot to unclick the boxes from having everyone selected.
* Now go back and individually click the specific TW Friends you think would be interested in the group
* Next, leave them a brief message
* Finally, be sure to click the "Send Invitation" spot

* Later, If You Have Specific Emails to Send Invitations To, you can go redo the above instructions and look for the " Enter Emails Manually" spot...
* Again remember to do the final clicking of "Send Invitations"

Extra Tip- Sometimes folks new to the ning site need to be reminded to Sign On to the site, and then to also click the "Join" button...Sometime folks need to be reminded they can temporary stop the email flow from their groups by clicking the "Stop Follow" spot...
.Later then can restart the emails by clicking "Follow"

To follow these instructions while doing the invites, you can pull up two TW screens and read the instructions from this screen, while doing the instructions on the other screen.

I hope this helps, let me know if I need to re-edit any errors or change for clarity.


Rev. Meredith Ann Murray said:

How can I invite my TW friends to a group? All I can find our ways to invite people through e-mail or Facebook, etc. There must be a way to invite folks who are already my TW friends here to a group?? Thanks!

[Rev. Meredith Ann Murray]

Thanks so much Heather! I hope I can make it work. I am pretty computer savvy but hadn't found a way to do it.

Heather K said:

How To Invite More TW Friends To a TW Group- Try this:

*Sign on to TW, click on the group, scroll down to just below the members pictures.
*Click on the "Invite More" spot
* Then click on the "Invite Friends" spot
* Text click on the "None" spot to unclick the boxes from having everyone clicked.
* Now go back and individually click the specific TW Friends you think would be interested in the group
* Next, leave them a brief message
* Finally, be sure to click the "Send Invitation" spot

* Later, if you have specific emails to send invitations to, you can go redo the above instructions and look for the "Enter Emails Manually</</b>u>" spot...
* Again remember to do the final clicking of "Send Invitations"

Extra Tip- Sometimes folks new to the ning site need to be reminded to Sign On to the site, and then to also click the "Join" button...Sometime folks need to be reminded they can temporary stop the email flow from their groups by clicking the "Stop Follow" spot....Later then can restart the emails by clicking "Follow"

To follow these instructions while doing the invites, you can pull up two TW screens and read the instructions from this screen, while doing the instructions on the other screen.

I hope this helps, let me know if I need to re-edit any errors or change for clarity.


Rev. Meredith Ann Murray said:

How can I invite my TW friends to a group? All I can find our ways to invite people through e-mail or Facebook, etc. There must be a way to invite folks who are already my TW friends here to a group?? Thanks!

[Heather K]

Webteam Question: How can members review the older archives from the Current Activity section that shows on the main page. It would be able great to be able to review back a few days or a week.

[Rob Olason]

I have been baffled by this issue as well. The site doesn't seem to offer an easy way to wander chronologically through postings. Videos, Blogs, Forums and Discussions all seem to have a "View All" option, but not so for chronological entries. I spent some time bumping around in the site tonight to see if such a way to filter entries was possible, and the only way I came up with was looking through specific groups which are chronological listings, or going to a member's "my page" if you recall they were a part of a conversation thread. But unless you are constantly monitoring the site, you miss a lot of the conversation.

In fact, I had to do some sleuthing to re-find your entry on this topic in order to respond! To bad there isn't an option to view chronologically, or a search box if you wanted to find discussions on certain topics. Maybe that will be something made available in a later version of the program.

[Heather K]

To be notified if a specific person writes a new blog, let me know if anyone wants instructions...

Thanks Rob for the sleuthing! A couple nights ago I reached my email tolerance on too many TW emails, and I selected the "Stop all emails from TW" under the personal page selection.
Unfortunately, that did Not just put my account on a pause/hold, but it must have deleted Every "Follow" I had for all of my past discussions that I was following over the past year, and some of them were very classic dialogues, that I had wanted to be part of as new folks on the TW discovered them!
I'm considering creating a new email address, just for TW so I can keep my reg email box more manageable...but then I would never check the new emails... I wonder if there are any open-source style 'social networking' sites that may be a better choice in the future than ning.com... I understand that many folks have challenges understanding or trusting.

Also, I often X out items on my personal page 'Latest Activity' to keep it currant for what I need to remember to follow up on...Unfortunately, I've learned that if I do that for any of the 4 groups I've created, it will also X the comment out of the responding member's Latest Activity, although it keeps the post in the actual group. Thus, I often don't X things out until after a few days.

One trick for refinding something, is to type in a key word under the Member Search feature, then press return button, sometimes that brings up the key word in a members Recent Activity discussion section.

Rob Olason said:

I have been baffled by this issue as well. The site doesn't seem to offer an easy way to wander chronologically through postings. .... the only way I came up with was looking through specific groups which are chronological listings, or going to a member's "my page" if you recall they were a part of a conversation thread. But unless you are constantly monitoring the site, you miss a lot of the conversation.....To bad there isn't an option to view chronologically, or a search box if you wanted to find discussions on certain topics. Maybe that will be something made available in a later version of the program.

[Rob Olason]

Heather, I discovered something that might help (a little). If you click on the little "RSS" icon at the bottom of the chronological feed of comments (TW mainpage), you can post a subscription link to your browser tool bar. It is called "Latest Activity on Transition Whatcom." Once it is installed on the browser, if you click it, you now get at least twice as many of the most recent postings than are displayed on the main page. It's not exactly what you are searching for, but it is a little bit better than the main page's display!

I sent an email to David McLeod to see if he has any ideas on how to access chronological postings. There may be something he could "tweek" that would make this possible.

[David MacLeod]

Rob,
Interesting discovery on how to use RSS to help navigate posts on this site.

I think I've figured out a solution to your request, by copying what Les Squires has done on TransitionUS.ning.com.
Check it out, a new Table of Contents page for the "Discussions" category that includes various sorting options. You'll now see Forums, Blogs, and Chat under the Discussions tab.
http://transitionwhatcom.ning.com/page/discussions-1

The other suggestion I have at this time is to develop a consistent use of a certain set of Tag descriptors and figure out a way to effectively use them as menu and search options. Notice the tags Heather used on the top post. If you click on any of those words, you get a list of all other posts that have used those words as tags.

[Judith Culver]

Heather, it looks like you have to be a friend before you can invite a Transition Whatcom member to join your group. Do you think this is right?

Heather K said:

How To Invite More TW Friends To a TW Group- Try this:

*Sign on to TW, click on the group, scroll down to just below the members pictures.
*Click on the "Invite More" spot
* Then click on the "Invite Friends" spot
* Next click on the "None" spot to unclick the boxes from having everyone selected.
* Now go back and individually click the specific TW Friends you think would be interested in the group
* Next, leave them a brief message
* Finally, be sure to click the "Send Invitation" spot

* Later, If You Have Specific Emails to Send Invitations To, you can go redo the above instructions and look for the " Enter Emails Manually" spot...
* Again remember to do the final clicking of "Send Invitations"

Extra Tip- Sometimes folks new to the ning site need to be reminded to Sign On to the site, and then to also click the "Join" button...Sometime folks need to be reminded they can temporary stop the email flow from their groups by clicking the "Stop Follow" spot...
.Later then can restart the emails by clicking "Follow"

To follow these instructions while doing the invites, you can pull up two TW screens and read the instructions from this screen, while doing the instructions on the other screen.

I hope this helps, let me know if I need to re-edit any errors or change for clarity.


Rev. Meredith Ann Murray said:

How can I invite my TW friends to a group? All I can find our ways to invite people through e-mail or Facebook, etc. There must be a way to invite folks who are already my TW friends here to a group?? Thanks!

[Heather K]

Question from member: How Can TW Members Invite new folks to join their TW online group when they want to invite people who are not on their friend list?

The way the ning.com site is currently set up, it seems to be easiest to invite your TW friend folks to a new group (as described in an earlier reply).
It's just the way its currently set up, and I don't think David M or webhelpers can change that.

More detailed long response in regards to Judith C question below:

Here's some of my thinking, which only represents myself, not TW.
If you've developed a new TW Group, and its organized with a small core to add support with online admin/facilatation,
and you've posted a well worded vision statement
,and you feel ready to launch it to a wider audience, who respect the core mission/focus of TW, then here are some other ideas:

1) Post a comment on a specific members page, inviting them to join your group. This makes it more personal. To find new folks with simliar interests to what your TW group focus is, try this:
* Click on Members tab at top of main tw site
* Type in a word that describes what you want to search, ie finance or skagit, or ham radio, etc
* Press the return button on your keyboard, (not the advanced search icon)
* The ning site will then bring up TW members with that word in their personal page.
* Click on their page. Post a comment. And if you'd like to, send them a friend request.
Remember to post a cut & paste link to your group on the comment, to make it easier to find


2) We all should be learning who-the-audience-is when we post something on the very transparent TW site. (I think the broad TW audience is over 500 now)
I like how the TW groups let us communicate within a smaller network, without the chatter & discussions going out to over 500 folks email boxes.
You could post a personal blog on the TW site, announcing your, new group, and that blog would then show up on the side of the TW screen so all would see when they came to the site...(until the next new blogs pushed it down & off the page).
There are other ways too, but I'm cautious about flooding over 500 people on the TW site with group invites all at once.

3) You can also post a Discussion in the "Transition Work-Group" group in regards to your group. Then when folks want to join in the discussions & get to work they can go to that central group. Add a cut & paste address to your post to make finding the group easier.
http://transitionwhatcom.ning.com/group/workgroup

4) Try sending invites out to your emails of interested friends. (many of my friends are not -yet- on TW).

In response to Judiths question below, I think eventually as volunteer time allows for David M & webfolks, some of the TW groups will be Featured and the TW vision core might send out a broad announcement....and the groups will be organized in catagories under the top Groups tab.

It makes sense for folks to explore the TW ning site at their own pace, and slowly get involved at the level they are comfortable at.
It makes sense not to overwhelm everyone with multiple invites to groups & events...slow & steady...allowing for space to give the floor to someone else.

This email response, will only be sent to those folks who specifically have chosen to follow this discussion (Hi there rob, rebecca, meredith, and someday David m again!)..
Remember you can stop flow of emails from this Discussion, by just clicking the "stop follow" button after signing on to TW....or stick around and help out with the next posted quesiton!

Judith Culver said:

Heather, it looks like you have to be a friend before you can invite a Transition Whatcom member to join your group. Do you think this is right?

Heather K said:

How To Invite More TW Friends To a TW Group- Try this:

*Sign on to TW, click on the group, scroll down to just below the members pictures.
*Click on the "Invite More" spot
* Then click on the "Invite Friends" spot
* Next click on the "None" spot to unclick the boxes from having everyone selected.
* Now go back and individually click the specific TW Friends you think would be interested in the group
* Next, leave them a brief message
* Finally, be sure to click the "Send Invitation" spot

* Later, If You Have Specific Emails to Send Invitations To, you can go redo the above instructions and look for the " Enter Emails Manually" spot...
* Again remember to do the final clicking of "Send Invitations"

Extra Tip- Sometimes folks new to the ning site need to be reminded to Sign On to the site, and then to also click the "Join" button...Sometime folks need to be reminded they can temporary stop the email flow from their groups by clicking the "Stop Follow" spot...
.Later then can restart the emails by clicking "Follow"

To follow these instructions while doing the invites, you can pull up two TW screens and read the instructions from this screen, while doing the instructions on the other screen.

I hope this helps, let me know if I need to re-edit any errors or change for clarity.


Rev. Meredith Ann Murray said:

How can I invite my TW friends to a group? All I can find our ways to invite people through e-mail or Facebook, etc. There must be a way to invite folks who are already my TW friends here to a group?? Thanks!

[Heather K]

Ning Useage Question: anyone else having this problem?

the system over the last week has not allowed me to send out invites to an event or a group multiple times.

It seems like it must be a glitch in the ning program, possibly from having a new level of membership.

David, can you let us know when you learn anything also?