Ok, so you've seen the introduction to Daily Kos 4.0, and read about its new and improved features. It's time to learn how to do some of the basic things you want to do to participate in the community.
You'll have access to more content more quickly at Daily Kos 4.0, so let's start with that--reading, recommending, and commenting in diaries.
Make the jump.
Reading Diaries
You'll find great content at the very top of the page in the "Community Spotlight," featuring the diaries the Rescue Rangers find. But there's also the Diaries, linked right from the main navigation menu, the Recommend Diaries, where they always are on the right side of the page, immediately followed by the Recently Recommended diaries below. For now, though, let's focus on the Community Spotlight as a demonstration of diary actions.
Let's use the first diary on that list, "The 10 Step: Choreography of the Housing Crisis, Collusion by All" as an example. (There's a cool feature that I can't get a screen shot of for you, but when you hover the cursor over a diary title either here in the Community Spotlight, or on the Diary page, a preview of the first paragraph displays, and then goes away when you move your cursor off the title. Play with it when you get there, it's very cool.)
As in DK3, you can add a diary to your hotlist from the top of the diary, and follow (subscribe in DK3) the diary writer from right here at the headline, as shown above. Just click on the symbols to complete the action. But what's new and improved here is that you can recommend the diary right here, at the title (but you might want to read it first). Click on the star, and the recommendation is done. You can also recommend and hotlist diaries from a menu that appears at the bottom of every diary.
Commenting
This will look very familiar to you. There are a few changes in how you can set up your comments. You won't have the option of "flat" comment threads, but threads will only be displayed as indented--replies indented from the parent comment, with each reply being in an indent.
Additionally, you can choose to Expand (show whole comments), Shrink (show just comment subject lines), or Hide (don't show any comments) as in DK3. You can set your default view for comments in your profile.
And here a note on the comment ratings display, the (2+/0-); it opens and closes when you click anywhere on the link--you don't have that little red "x" to look for and click to close the recommenders display anymore.
Rating comments hasn't changed. Same buttons, same process, same rules. If you had trusted user status in DK3, you'll have it in DK4. The number of hide ratings Trusted Users have is still limited to five per day.
To see replies to your comments, go to your Comments page, either from the main navigation "My Page" to "comments"
or from your handy profile box on the front page:
You can see your list of comments (clickable) when you posted them, how many recommends, hide ratings, or replies you've received, and when the most recent reply was posted.
In order to see the replies, you need to open your comment by clicking on the subject line for it in this list.
Writing Diaries
You can get to the diary writing page from a number of angles. First, from the front page and your Profile box:
Clicking "New" will take you to the page to write a new diary, "Drafts" to your unpublished diaries.
From your "My Page," you can select "My Diaries" and click on the "Create New Diary" link.
The diary drafting page will look very familiar to diarists:
There's a little more assistance in choosing tags, but the functionality is exactly the same as in DK3. Posting the diary, however, is a little bit different. Once you've entered your diary title, text, and tags and hit preview, you'll see your diary in preview with a new menu:
To publish your diary, click on "Publication Manager," which brings you to a new set of options.
The first radio button, "Publish Now," posts your diary to your page and to the diary list. Click that button, hit "Publish," and you're off to the races.
The second, "Publish Later," allows you to choose a time for your diary to appear. Say you want to write it before going to work in the morning, but won't be available to comment in it until lunchtime. You can write your diary at 7:00 a.m, and schedule it to post at 12:30 p.m., or whenever it's convenient for you to be around to comment in it. Just fill in the date (a convenient calendar pops up) and time you want it to appear. And make sure you click the radio button on. Hit publish, and the system will hold your diary in drafts and automatically push it out at the designated time.
The third, "Queue to a Group Blog" lets you put your diary into a queue for any group you belong to. The pull down menu will list the groups you're an administrator or editor in. When you hit the "Publish" button, your diary will be added to the list of drafts waiting to be posted in your group. But don't forget to click on the radio button for this option. Making a selection in the pull down menu won't automatically select this option.
If you are a group BlogAdmin or BlogEditor, when you've added your post to the queue for your Group, you can go the queue for it, and add a note about it--when you would like it to be published, or anything else that's important to know about it. Members of groups (as opposed to administrators or editors) will eventually be able to see their own diaries in the queue for their group, and add notes.
To get to the queue, go to your groups page, click on the appropriate group, and then "Queue" in the menu. The link to add a note is at the bottom right of the diary list, and the notes appear below the diary information.
That about wraps up the basics of reading and writing at Daily Kos 4.0. You have a few more hours in which to play over at the beta site (http://www.dailykosbeta.com) before it shuts down for the transition.
Don't forget that both sites will be off-line starting tomorrow (Saturday) at 9:00 a.m. Pacific, and Daily Kos 4.0 will be up sometime after about 5:00 p.m. Pacific on the same day.
Bid your fond farewells to Daily Kos 3.0 tonight, and get ready for a kick-ass new community experience.