Getting started in diaspora*

We have now covered most of the main features on diaspora*. The last part of this tutorial series deals with the last few bits and pieces you’ll need to know about.

Connecting your diaspora* seed to other services

You can connect your diaspora* seed to several other services: Twitter, Tumblr, and WordPress. Of course, to do this, you’ll have to have an account on that service!

Before starting this, make sure you have your account information for that service to hand, because you might need it to authorise your connection with that other service in order for it to work.

To connect to another service, click Connect services in the sidebar of the stream, and then click the relevant icon. If you’re already logged in to your account on that service in the same browser, it should recognise you automatically. If you’re not currently logged in to that service, it’ll ask you to log in now. Once you’re logged in, it will ask for authorisation to publish to your account in that service. Accept this, and you’re ready to post directly from your diaspora* seed to that service!

When you next click in the publisher, you’ll see the icon for that service under the publisher. Click this icon to activate it, and your post will also appear in your stream on that service. Pretty nifty, eh? See Part 5 for more information on posting to connected services.

Account management

The final thing we need to look at to get you started is the user settings page. To reach it, get to you user menu and, from the drop-down menu, choose Settings. Here you will find an overview of account options.

There are five tabs on the account settings page: Profile, Account, Privacy, Services and Applications.

Profile

On this page you can change, add to or delete any of your profile information. Go back to the end of Part 1 if you want a reminder of how to edit it. Don’t forget to press the Update button at the bottom once you’re finished!

“NSFW”

diaspora* has a self-governing community standard called NSFW (not safe for work). If you’re likely to post much material which may not be suitable for everyone to view at their office desk (perhaps with their boss standing behind them), please consider checking the NSFW box. This will hide your posts from people’s streams behind a notice that the post is marked as NSFW. They can then click this notice to view your post if they wish.

By leaving this box unchecked, you are committing yourself not to post any material which could potentially cause offence or get someone into trouble for viewing it at work. If, on the other hand, you might want to post such material only occasionally, you could leave this box unchecked and add the #nsfw tag to those individual posts, which will hide them from other people’s streams.

Account

Here you can: change your email address and password, set your language, choose from one of our color themes, set the default visibility of your posts, pick your email notification preferences and download your data or close your seed.

Our aim is that you’ll be able to use the downloaded data to migrate your seed to another pod, although this is not yet possible. You might wish to download your data periodically as a back-up, however.

If you want, you can set your seed to automatically start sharing with anyone who starts sharing with you. You can also re-enable the “getting started” hints that appeared when you first opened your account.

Community spotlight

On the settings page you can also enable the “community spotlight,” if this feature is available on your pod. The “community spotlight” adds posts to your stream from community members who your pod’s admin has selected as being people worth reading. It can be a good way to find people to connect with when you first join diaspora*.

Privacy

This is a list of users you are ignoring. You can remove them from this list if you want to start seeing posts from them again. See Part 5 for more on ignoring people.

Services

The Services page shows your connected services (e.g. Twitter, Tumblr, WordPress) and allows you to connect new services to your diaspora* seed. See Part 6 for more on connected services.

Applications

This tab displays a list of any applications you have authorised in your diaspora* seed.

 

That’s all, folks! Thanks a lot for reading this getting started guide. We hope it has been useful to you and that you now feel comfortable using diaspora* as your new online home. If there’s anything else you want to know about any aspect of using diaspora*, try our in-app help section – go to your user menu in the header bar and select Help from the drop-down menu.

If you have any questions that haven’t been answered, feel free to make a public post on diaspora* including the #help and #question tags so that other community members can try to help you. There’s a wonderful, generous community out there!

Part 6 – Notifications and conversations | diaspora* tutorials