Welcome to the New America The Right Way!!!
Yes, it’s the same old Hang-Out, but moved down the street to a new home!
Keep on reading for a little background as to the Why’s and Wherefore’s. But suffice it to say, this is the beginning of something great, and it is OUR home to set a spell and take a load off.
All the regular features are here: General Politics, Gardening, Recipes, and much more, and we’ve got things organized into their own pages (see the top menu of the web page) to keep things straight. And, we’ve got a lot of cool techie features, too, like: RSS feeds; interfaces to FaceBook, Twitter, Digg and more; e-mail subscription to Posts and Comments; a mobile format for cell phone users; AND, you can even comment via e-mail! What more could you possibly want? (OK, we have polls and a whole bunch of other stuff, too — but first we have to figure out how to work them. ;-))
So stop by regularly and give it a test drive. You may like what you see.
Welcome to to the new blog!!! You must have a million questions so let’s get at it.
Why another blog? And why now?
Well, it’s been a hard decision, but a considered and measured one. We believe the move to our new digs will insure long term security for our group, with no interruptions in access. We’ve been together an amazingly long time, and at this juncture it’s a good idea and bet to seize on the opportunity to stay that way and continue. We’ve grown up!
From time to time in our old home we’ve had to get used to new features, title changes, frequency of new threads posted At the same time, other things have remained the same: long-time posters and opinions and personalities and features we’ve grown used to. We’ve all improved greatly in our use of the internet…some using so many other sites besides our old place & even posting on other sites.
So those are some important points to remember as we make this move. We can do it!
Just a few more thought and details
lysie and I will act as moderators, continuing, too, in our familiar thread-posting roles.
There IS a transition plan, and there WILL be a transition phase. We’ll do our best to make it all happen in an efficient and clear way, And questions will be answered as best as we can.
We’re indebted to Bitwhacker for setting us up so nicely and patiently. At various times in the process, I’ve thought of him as the parent running beside us on our training bicycles, and as a fitness coach urging us on…keeping us on track! It’s been challenging, but in a fun way, and for me a relief to be fully committed to our future together.
I’m pretty sure most of us will continue to use our old site. I know I will enjoy visiting our previous site for news and views! But in a short while this will be ATRW’s sole home on the web.
So….staying positive & forward-looking,
Yours in freedom,
lysie, Molly, & Bitwhacker
P.S. Below, in the Comments sections, you’ll find some of our early comments and questions as we began to work things out. They may be helpful to you, too 🙂
America The Right Way!!! 
There you are…we’re on this week’s thread…upper right of this screen, you should find it
Jan. 17-24…
Oy. It’s going to be difficult to walk folks through getting to the right spot here. We’ll need some detail instructions./johnny
Again, from Bit…
Well, in re the FaceBook thing: This is why the registered user/must-have-an-approved-post is important. You’ll have to see what kind of policy you want to apply to newbies who are unknown, but I think the general rule is that anyone NOT known be given special scrutiny. I think we already have the potential of picking up trolls, even from FR, so only known/trusted people should be Contributors.
This is really from Bit, as is the above…
Well, here is what I think: Everyone who is invited should be added as a Contributor (there is even a check-box in the invite form to make them a Contributor after they register). That way, everybody who registers and has one comment approved shows up in the Users list (and they get the ability to use pics and links, etc). As a Contributor they can try to post a thread, but an Admin still has to publish it for them. You can delete these as you see fit (e.g. an attempted non-ATRW thread start).
Then, you can ‘promote’ users to Authors later on so they can start the thread without intervention being required, and even to Admin as you realize you won’t be around 24-7-365 to run things 😉
You don’t need to add anyone as a Contributor unless you want them to create posts (daily/weekend threads). They already are allowed to comment by registering and having their first comment moderated. A Contributor can create posts but needs an Editor or Administrator to publish them.
I guess we can talk about whether we want to allow people to post; we could truly be an FR-alike in that respect (and ATRW would float around amongst them, like it does on FR now). Also, adding people as Contributors (as least capability) also allows us to see at a glance who we’ve invited and signed up already (If they don’t have a role, they don’t show up in the User list, don’t think).
The options are:
Admin — basically G-d of the blog. 😉
Editor — Can create, edit, delete and publish any post.
Author — can create, edit, delete and publish only their own posts.
Contributor — can create, edit, and delete their own posts, but needs an Editor or Admin to publish it.
Here is the link to the User help area: Users Help
Moving this over from the Weekend thread….
Answers! No, there is no equivalent to FReepMail, so we;ll have to use regular e-mail, but there is an on-line chat function. And, you can have activity sent to you via e-mail, AND you can even send in a comment via e-mail AND via a text from your phone (when we figure out how to turn it on). NOW how much would you pay?
But wait, there’s more!…Just kidding; there is more but we need to introduce a little at a time, I think.
Admins can edit comments, but I think once you post as a regular contributor, that’s it. The system does on-the-fly spell checking, but I didn’t see a preview feature (unless you count saving as draft and previewing that way).
Very simple, and very good! Thanks, Bit. You are patience personified.
Here is what it takes to run the thread:
1. Send invites, using e-mail addresses of the people you want to invite. You need to specify that they can comment, but not post a thread (unless you want them to).
2. They register, and confirm who they are
3. Then the new users post comments. Because this is the first time, all new comments will show up in the unapproved comments category (in the comments section of the Dashboard, there will be a count of the comments that need to be approved).
4. You go and approve these comments, and then they are in. Or, you delete the comment (like Mr. Troll) and they stay out.
5. And then, on a regular basis, check to see if there are any comments showing up that need to be approved.
Very simple! 😉
Oh, OK. What I meant to say then was, once you two get used to using the Blog Dashboard (able to see if comments need moderation, able to send invites to new users, etc.), then we should be ok to continue for real. 😉
Thanks for the links above. All those tutorials!
Sorry, Bit…This is what I didn’t understand:
5. After you two get used to using the blog Settings screen (e.g. seeing if comments need approval, people need to be approved on their first post, etc.) you can start inviting everyone in.
In re #6: Well, the first thing to remember is that Google is already caching these pages — if you do a search on ‘America The Right Way WordPress’ you will eventually see it in the list of results. The Blog Settings let you tell Google, Bing and others what to store and how to regard our blog — is is Political? Is it Media? You can tell the search engines how to classify you…;-)
The “blog settings” screen, in #6 above…not sure what that is!
Some useful links:
Support on, changing profile, general user: Support
Change your Display Name: Changing Your User Name
Two video How-To’s for Gravatars:
Gravatars — What they are and why you should use one
Gravatars 2-Getting a gravatar working
Tutorials and video How-To’s
Ack! I’m a little LESS confused. I need to go over this again and again.
This is mostly Bit, except where noted.
OK, here is what I think we should do moving forward (if it’s OK with you):
1. Set the comment level to be single-level only to start out, so that new comments all appear at the bottom. I know how this thing works and I still have trouble seeing where the new posts are going (and I hate having to scroll through the whole thing to find out that 2 new comments were added 3 levels deep). We can then a) poll to find out what people want and then b) do a shakedown cruise using the new levels and see if people still like it (we can always change it back).
2. I think we should run a ‘parallel’ tomorrow morning: Either Kit or Cher start a new post on the front page with the exact same heading as the ‘thread’. I will then simulate comments from nasty people (and you can see how to delete comments, either from the moderated area and the comments area). You can also try out the ‘more’ tag in the post to put stuff above and below the fold.
3. Then tomorrow, at your discretion, you can start inviting some people over to see what they think. That will get you up to speed on how to add/invite people using their e-mail IDs.
4. I think you should turn ON the receive e-mail notification for when posts and comments are changed, just so you can get a feel for when people are responding to invites. You can turn it off after a week or so, because it gets tedious seeing the e-mails roll in. Also, both of you can add your e-mails to the notification list so you both can see what’s going on.
5. After you two get used to using the blog Settings screen (e.g. seeing if comments need approval, people need to be approved on their first post, etc.) you can start inviting everyone in.
6. One last thing to consider: the New ATRW is visible to the world right now, but only registered users who have at least one comment approved can comment. I also have the Visible to Search Engine option turned OFF. If you want the new thread to show up in Google searches, we have to turn this option on. I don’t think you want that. ;-)) Also, we can restrict visibility to only registered users. Think about what level of privacy you want and we can adjust it; right now the world can read it.
~~~
Molly:#6….yes privacy is important. I like the OFF mode definitely for now for searches. But….how is it that “right now the world can read it” but it’s not available via Search engines….how can someone find us at present to read WITHOUT a search engine? #3 lysie, is there someone you’d like to invite over to […]
Bit: There is a way to make websites ‘attractive’ to search engines — this site is not generating that kind of stuff today. The generated stuff causes all kinds of things (keywords, categories especially) to be used by the search engines.
If they go to WordPress and look at the available blogs, ATRW is there in the list. Otherwise, they would have to scroll through a lot og Google pages to get to this blog (unless the search engine goodies option is turned on).
One other thing: You can (and all users can) change your Profile. Within the Profile area, you can also change the ‘display name’ for yourself, so even if your actual sign-up user name is lysie2 or mpitcher, you can change it to display Lysie or Molly Pitcher on the thread. It’s cosmetic but might help with familiarity for other people. You can also upload a thumbnail and/or change your avatar…
Oops, forgot to answer one of your questions: No, the e-mail notification is not the same as ping — it’s for admins to monitor activity, especially useful when starting a new blog because everybody needs to have their first comment approved out of moderation. I think you can have only 10 recipients of e-mail notification.
ps. I think I can stand ONE sub-level of comments, but I still think we should stay with one-level to start — looks more like the old thread, won’t confuse people…-))
Very good! I see…and this is the “intro” which we can edit a little…..