The Friend Ship

What a sweet forum you have here!

Just so you know, when people post in their notebook, it goes to the newsfeed. But when people click Newsfeed to look at the newfeed, it defaults to showing them their Personal Newsfeed. Their Personal Newsfeed only shows things posted by people they have fanned or favorited. (This is referring to clicking the Plus button by their name. Schnujo's Doing NaNoWriMo?   No pressure to click mine. I'm just showing you what I'm talking about. ) In order to see what EVERYONE posts, you have to click the Community Newsfeed button at the top of your Personal Newsfeed. I didn't know this for a couple of years. I recently posted that information and several people posted that either they didn't know or they'd forgotten. I don't think people are purposely ignoring each other. I think they just don't see what other people are posting because they are in their own little part of WdC.

This brings up ideas for what you can do. Right now, since you are new, not many people will see what you wrote on the newsfeed, which is why it's so great that Cinn posted that ad for you. She's great! She has lots of fans so lots of people will see her post and go to your page. Without her help, you would have gotten very little notice because you don't have a lot of fans...I'm assuming, since you're new and all. Anyway, to help encourage others, be sure to click the "View the Community Newsfeed" button at the top of your personal newsfeed. Scroll through. Like/Love/etc. people's posts. Comment on things. As you do this, you'll be making other people happier as well as starting to make friends, yourself. This is a win-win because the more friends you have, the more people who will see your forum. Of course, lonely people who haven't fanned or favorited you, as well as newbies (because they typically haven't fanned or favorited anyone) won't see you. But it's okay, because you are on the Community Newsfeed making friends.

Also, I sometimes see people who don't know how to post a link. I show them how and use my own challenge as an example. You can do this with your forum page. Yep, I'm sneaky like that. Here's an example of what I might post...

Hi! Welcome to WdC, (insert name so they get tagged in case they don't check their e-mail notifications)! I'm so excited to see you've already written something! Thanks for sharing it!

Just so you know, people are lazy and if you don't post an actual link, people aren't as likely to click through to find your item. There are 2 main ways people post links on WdC. I'll show you using my challenge. No pressure to join it...but of course, you are welcome to if you'd like. The two main ways are using {item: and {bitem: (stands for big item) but notice those are braces, not parentheses. You will need the item number, but the last 8 or so items you've written or edited pop up automatically after the colon. (If you have a slow connection, it might take a few seconds.) Anyway, here is how they look when you write them and when the show up on the newsfeed.

{item:2109126} "The Contest Challenge" 

{bitem:2109126}

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The Contest Challenge  (13+) Join by entering a contest a month for 12 months--Win Badges! Catching up is allowed! #2109126 by Schnujo's Doing NaNoWriMo?

Again, great job on getting to writing! Let me know if you have any questions. And welcome to WdC!

That's basically what I do. I realize this is probably a lot for you, but you don't seem that shy about jumping in and learning all the code and such. Very impressive, BTW. So, given that, I'll show you how I did the part where I showed the code to them. We use double braces to show code. There are two ways to do double braces. The first way is the way you use most when showing code for instructional purposes like above. You literally just do 2 braces { at the beginning and at the end of the code. The outermost set causes the innermost set to disappear, so to show code, you make 2 braces, leaving only 1 brace set showing. But if I want to show you what I'm doing to show them, I can add 3 sets, making the innermost set disappear, but still leaving 2 sets, which is what I type to show them code. {{{item:2109126}} Make sense? You (hopefully) see 2 sets of braces, but I actually typed 3 sets. Wait...when I did the Preview Post thing, it showed 3 sets of opening braces--probably because of all the extra opening braces I have earlier in the paragraph. But trust me, it normally works. lol

The other way to do it is typically used when giving a long list of things like when you buy raffle tickets and you want to help the raffle owner not have to type every name themselves. You do {db} at the beginning of the list and {/db} at the end of the list. The people are still tagged that they were mentioned in the post, but the raffle owner can then just copy and paste the user names straight into their raffle. (Alternately, if this isn't done and they are smart, they can click Edit on the post since it's their forum and they can copy the code directly from there. But it's nicer if the ticket buyer helps them out. )

Here's an example of what I might post if I bought raffle tickets for you, me, and Cinn.

Howdy! I'd like 5 tickets each for

{huser:lilliyloidd}
{huser:schnujo}
{huser:cinnamonfringe}

That's what they would see. Here's what I typed.

Howdy! I'd like 5 tickets each for

{db}{huser:lilliyloidd}
{huser:schnujo}
{huser:cinnamonfringe} {/db}

And in order for you to see that, I actually typed 2 braces everywhere you see one.

So, now that I've overloaded you, I shall leave you with that look of shock on your face.



Seriously, though, it's great to see you reaching out! I just want to ensure you can do it the most effective way possible. Great work! It looks like you'll go far here!

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The Contest Challenge  (13+) Join by entering a contest a month for 12 months--Win Badges! Catching up is allowed! #2109126 by Schnujo's Doing NaNoWriMo?