Hail and well met, fellow Kossacks.
So, you've decided to come back (or just drop in for the first time) for another round of the Visual Guide to DK4?
Good on ya!
You can read PART I here
You can read PART II here
Lessons learned from PARTs I & II: more pictures, less yapping.
Onward, Kossacks, into your future...
Before I begin, I must refer you to this great Overview of DK4 (in pictures) posted yesterday, by Dom9000 as In defense of DK4 (Warning: Photo heavy)
While he doesn't go into great detail, it is a good overview of all aspects of the new format. Go, check it out. Give Dom some mojo for all that hard work!
NOW - for today's edition we will be covering GROUPS and Diaries published under GROUPS.
I intended to also cover dKos Messaging, but it turns out, GROUPS was pretty image intensive, so Messaging will have to wait for tomorrow.
Let us begin.
You have decided that you want to create a new GROUP.
Q: Are there any restrictions?
A: Yes, you must be a TU (Trusted User) to Create a GROUP.
Q: How do you know if you are a TU?
A: On DK4 it's EASY - look at your Profile Page, right here on the left side. See the nice blue TU icon? If you DO NOT see this icon here, you DO NOT have TU Status:
Don't have TU Status and want to create a GROUP? Participate, and it will come. Read diaries and comments and REC/Rate them. Write comments. Write diaries. You can read more on what it takes to achieve TU Status in Markos' guide to TU Status here.
Ok, so you are ready to create a new GROUP.
Go to the DK4 DailyKos homepage. Look for the big GROUPS link at the top, click it.
Now you're on the GROUP Homepage. Look for this link. Click it:
Et voilá, you will see THIS:
Now you enter the Name of your new GROUP and then click the orange "Save New Group" button at the bottom:
Which brings you to the first look at your shiny, new GROUP! You can see the Name of the GROUP up top and the right side has the GROUP Admin box. Please look at the page Menu. See the highlighted "Blog View"? This is the default view. You can also view it in List view:
Alrighty, now you are ready to Post a Diary to this New GROUP (or an old GROUP). We'll be viewing a new diary posted to my DK4 GROUP "Citizen Lobbyist-USA".
Ok, so first, let's look at the Citizen Lobbyist-USA GROUP in List format, by looking at the menu in zoom mode. You can see the link for "List View" right next to "Blog View". Click "List View":
... and you'll see this:
Now, to create a new diary, look at that Menu again, and click "Create new diary" link:
Which brings you to the New Diary page. Next steps, enter new diary information:
Here you will give the Diary a title, and enter the diary header information into the "Intro" box:
... and the balance of the diary goes into the "Extended" box and the "TAGS" section is on the bottom. You MUST use at least ONE tag.
PLEASE peruse the TAGs section BEFORE writing any diaries. Use the available TAGs when possible. New TAGs will be added as users create and use new tags :
Now that you've written the diary, it's time for Preview. Look back up, to the image above the last image. See the orange Preview Diary button? Click it:
So, you make some edits, you fix some html errors, you do a final Preview check and you are ready to PUBLISH! Note the option checked here is for GROUP publishing. If this were a diary not associated with a GROUP, just use the top option, Publish Now
Notice the top line: Your Diary has been Queued. This is a new feature. You can schedule diaries to post at a particular time, on a particular date! Cool, huh?
We'll be posting the diary now, and because I am a member of more than one GROUP, I must tell the system which GROUP to associate this diary with. There is a drop-down menu to choose the correct GROUP from, and then you Click the orange PUBLISH DIARY button.
The Diary has Published to the GROUP "Citizen Lobbyist-USA"... but it is still queued there... let's go tell it to "go live". First, you have to go to that GROUP and look at it in "List View".
See the new diary we just wrote is the only one in the list. If the GROUP is active, there will be many. Find the title of the diary you want to publish, move over to the column labeled "PUBLISH", and click the link "PUBLISH NOW":
You'll get a confirmation window, if you are sure, choose "Publish Now", then, when the page reloads, click the Title of the Diary in the list:
... and see:
See the information just above the title? I only published the diary to the GROUP. I did NOT publish it to my own ID. I can if I want. I don't believe it is necessary. Perhaps a Beta Tester can comment on this, I'm still not a well-experienced user in GROUPs on DK4 to know for sure.
As usual. I hope that this visual guide makes the process easier for those with issues or concerns.
I did NOT cover all of what GROUPs are capable of, but tomorrow, on PART IV, I'll see what I can do... see you all tomorrow!
UPDATE I
From the comments...
Here........
is a great place to go on beta to make mistakes in the company of other Cranky Users..
And here is an example of learning by trial and error with the help of other cranky users.
Trouble posting images in a diary
If cats could blog, they wouldn't.
by crystal eyes on Mon Feb 07, 2011 at 01:44:01 PM PST
[ Reply to This | RecommendHide ]
and right now NurseKelleyRN2 has a conversation of Cranky Users going on here on DK3... go throw your .02 in the pot and stir it up a bit, eh?
UPDATE II
Elfling has a nice companion diary to this one over on DK4Beta right now... you can visit it here: Using Groups in DK4
UPDATE II
It helps if you look at dates. The Elfling diary is from Nov 2010, so some of the info is outdated now... but much of the diary is still good information, so I'm leaving the link in.