Once registered, it would be desirable for you to visit the following pages to setup your account in order to fully take advantage of everything this website has to offer.

• Edit your profile - this sets your basic preferences, global profile, and more.
• Choose a theme - change the look/colors of the site to suit your tastes.
• Choose site features - this selects the menu items and activities you wish to participate in.
• Make some friends - view profiles of other members and perhaps interact.

There are many other things you can do. See below.

Subscriptions are the most powerful organizing feature available to you. They allow you to manage what information sources you wish to view when you visit this site. This determines not only what you see on the front page, but what you see - period. Every source of information on this website can be turned off or on. This includes personal weblogs, forums, and external news feeds. One person might see this site as a place devoted to auto racing, and another might view it as a site for musicians to congregate and interact. What kind of website you see here is entirely up to you.

By default, what you see on this site is a subscription list which the site manager has deemed interesting. But what is interesting to him/her may not be interesting to you. Perhaps you are only interested in a couple of weblogs, one or two forums, and you also want to view one of your best friends' weblogs from another site. First, login (or register and login). That way you can save your preferences. Now look at the side column marked 'Content'. Select 'Forums'. Beside each forum is a checkbox. Check the ones you wish to subscribe to, and then click the 'Subscribe' button. You can do the same for 'Weblogs' and 'News'.

Now look at the 'Website' menu (click on 'Website' if the contents aren't showing). One of the selections will be 'Use My Subscriptions'. If you are already using your subscriptions (or haven't yet subscribed to anything), this will instead say 'Use Site Subscriptions' - which will take you back to the default subscription list. Note: Neither of these settings will be showing if you are currently connected to a 'shared view' area (see below for more info on sharing and views). If neither menu item is showing, select 'Default View' from the menu to take you back to the basic website.

Once you click 'Use My Subscriptions', the whole website will change. The front page will only show you things from your list. The 'Search' function will only search your subscribed items. The 'Top Articles', 'Recent Articles', 'Recent Comments', 'Categories' - basically the entire site will now be limited to the things you've chosen to see. Click 'Use Site Subscriptions' from the 'Website' menu if you ever need to change it back.

A couple of other settings which might interest you are available from the 'Edit My Profile' page ('Community' menu). There is a checkbox there which also says 'Use my subscriptions instead of site default'. If you check this and save the page, your subscription list will be the default whenever you login.

There is another checkbox there which may interest you. It allows you to automatically subscribe to any recently created forums and weblogs. This is useful because otherwise you might have to go and look for new stuff to subscribe to every so often. We recommend leaving this checked (the default). If you find that you don't like something to which you were automatically subscribed, you can always unsubscribe to it. But otherwise you might miss seeing interesting new weblogs or forums.

In addition to content subscriptions, you can change the menu and display only those site features or functions which you desire. To do this, select Change Features from the Tools menu. You will be presented with a list of all the things that can be done on this website - with a checkbox next to each one. If you don't wish to do any of these things, uncheck them and click 'Submit'. They won't be shown on the menu. You also won't be able to select them or perform the tasks by going directly to the URL. For instance, to turn off the photo rating feature, uncheck the box 'Can rate photos'. If you don't want to chat with anybody, uncheck 'Can chat'. If you don't want to ever look at our ultimate guitar chord dictionary, turn it off. Poof. It's gone.

Once you have used Subscriptions and Features to tailor your view of the website, you can then share this view with others. To do this, edit your profile and click the checkbox that allows shared views (near the bottom). Save your updated profile. Now anybody can go the Views page, select your name, and view the website as you see it. They will see only your subscriptions. They will see only your features, and if you have changed your theme, they will see that also. You can send the link to your personal website to your friends. It's at 'http://macgirvin.com/view/yourname'. Then when your friends visit, they'll see the website whatever way you want them to see it. Select Default View from the menu at any time to return to your normal settings.

The point of shared views is to see the website through another member's subscriptions and feature settings. Therefore the normal subscription toggles aren't available in shared view mode. Select Default View from the menu to return the subscription settings to normal.

This website is a democracy in action. If there's something you like, and you think other people might like it, vote for it. Things with more votes tend to rise to the top of the list and become easier to find. You can vote for forums and weblogs. You can also vote for individual articles. You can vote for people. You can vote for photo albums.

To vote for an article, open the 'Actions' menu at the bottom of the article by clicking on it. The Actions menu is available for every article, but the choices may vary depending on what type of article it is. But the first choice is 'Vote for this article'. Click it. You have just made it easier to find. You might see it on the 'Top Articles' menu; which is sorted by total number of votes and then date. Click 'All by rank' from within the 'Top Articles' menu and you'll probably find the item you voted on within the first page or two (since at the present time, not many articles have been voted on).

To vote for a person, go to the 'Members' page (from the 'Community' menu) and click on the picture of the member you wish to vote for. This takes you to their individualprofile page. Now open the 'Actions' menu at the bottom of the profile entry and select 'Vote for [name]'.

To vote for forums, news, weblogs, and photo albums - just select them from the Menu and visit them. Usually at the top of the page you will see 'Vote for this ...' item. Click it and the associated item will move up in the list where you found it.

The other side of voting is censorship. Most any item which can be voted on may also be censored. Standards of decency vary across cultures and locations. You are cautioned to use this feature only on content which violates site content policy or federal law of the country where the site originates. The content policy is set by the site owner and might for instance allow mild adult innuendo, but not graphic pornography. We may terminate your membership if you censor an item without adequate grounds. The specific policy for this site will be displayed if you attempt to censor an item - and will allow you a chance to continue or change your mind.

These and other safeguards are in place to prevent pranksters or people from closed societies from censoring the entire website. Generally you must censor an item within a week or two of its initial publish date or it will be exempt. We urge you to use this facility only if the need arises - primarily to tag blatantly pornographic or illegal material.

On the 'Edit My Profile' page ('Community' menu), there is a setting to control your tolerance or adversity to censorship. By default this is 0, or 'zero tolerance'. With this setting, any items which have been censored even once will not be visible to you. You may change this setting if you are tolerant of material which others might find objectionable. We recommend a setting of no more than five, because of a compounding effect. Once an item has been censored, only tolerant people will see it. If four or more tolerant people find it objectionable and censor it further, you probably wouldn't want to see it.

A special case of censorship is blocking a rude or offensive member from bothering you. See the section on Access Lists further down this page, but in a nutshell, go to the Lists page and create a list called 'blocked'. Then add the abusive member's name to that list. Anybody whose name is in your 'blocked' access list will be prevented from sending you mail or adding comments on any item owned by you.

You earn points by contributing to the website. Whereas voting requires somebody else to take notice of you, you can earn points completely on your own intiative. Points give you additional status and privilege - and there may also be occasional physical rewards. You will earn points for submitting articles, comments, votes, adding friends, and many other activities.

Points are also used to determine how much disk space you will be allowed to store photos, and how many news sources you will be allowed to create. These items take up significant system resources. If you wish to use these facilities heavily, we require that you contribute to the community in other ways.

Forums are discussions or collections of related articles. Generally speaking, unless otherwise restricted, anybody may post articles to a forum. The list of available forums is located under the 'Forums' link of the side menu. This is also where you subscribe to and create forums.

You may create a forum from the forums menu. Just type in a name and click 'Add'. Every forum has an owner who can also restrict who may visit the forum. By default forums are created with open access to any website member. You may also restrict it so that it may only be seen by certain people, or only posted to by certain people. After you have created a forum, go back to the 'Forums' page. It should list the new forum with you as owner. Next to your name will be an 'edit' link. Click it. Now you can set some other forum properties. You may supply a description, and create access lists if desired. If you restrict membership, the forum name, description (and any articles in that forum) will only be shown to members.

Membership is controlled by Access Lists. Your access list may be left blank, which will create the forum with the site default permissions. Generally this is open access for reading, and members only for writing. You may also supply one of the 'pseudo-lists' which are the words 'all' and 'members'. The word 'all' matches any visitor, even those who are not registered. The word 'members' means to restrict access to registered members only. The website will never allow more access than the site default. You can only restrict access further. If you want to restrict access to those you have added as 'My Friends', type 'myfriends' into the box. Let's say you want to restrict a forum to just your family. Type 'family' into the access control field and save it.

Now your forum is only visible to people in the 'family' access list. But who is that? You need to create a 'list'. Next to the access control fields is a link to the Access Lists page. Go there. Let's create a list called 'family'. Type the word 'family' into the box and click 'Add'. Your list should be created and you will see it listed. Now click 'family' (the list you just created). This takes you to a 'list members' page. There probably aren't any members. But there's a text box. Type in the name of a member and click 'Add'. That person is now in your access list. If they login, they will be able to visit your private forum. To remove a list member, type in their name as it is listed and click 'Remove' and they will be removed from the list.

Only list names are used in access control fields, not member names. If you wish to restrict an item to one member, create an access list containing one name.

Weblogs are more restricted than forums. On this site, each weblog has only one author; who creates all of the articles. A weblog will be created for you if you wish to have one. This choice is made on the Edit My Profile page. Other settings in your profile allow you to change the title and the way it looks. To post new entries, visit the link called 'Post to Weblog' which will be found under the 'Tools' menu once your weblog has been created. You will also find an item entitled 'My Weblog' under the Tools menu which will take you to your weblog page. Another useful link in the Tools menu will then allow you to send a link to that page to your friends.

Many websites on the internet publish their articles for other sites to use. This is called 'News' here although it usually contains weblogs and forum updates from other sites and doesn't necessarily consist of news items. It is based on syndication formats such as RSS and Atom. This site will read many of those formats and make the articles available here. To create a news source, you will need to know the URL which belongs to the feed of that site. If you are unable to figure out the feed URL, you may simply type the original site URL into the URL field and we will attempt to find it for you - however this doesn't always work, and it will run more slowly than if you do know the URL of the feed.

There are two ways to view a news source. Select 'News' from the side menu and click on a channel. This displays the raw feed of articles as it exists from the remote site. You may also import articles from the remote website into this system. When you import news articles, you can subscribe to them, and merge them with any other content to which you have subscribed. Please ensure that you have permission to republish articles from the original website before importing them, as doing so may make you liable for copyright violation.

Photo albums let you share your photos with the world, or perhaps only with select friends. Create photo albums by uploading from the 'Image Upload' page. Select an image or Zip archive to upload, and specify an album to store it in. You may also create a new album and store the images into the new album. By default every member gets an album named for the current year and which is private. You may post any pictures from this album in public areas, but nobody can view the album directly. This is the preferred place to store profile photos and images which you wish to attach to articles. If you specifically wish to create a photo collection for viewing, it is best if you use a different album for this purpose.

The Events pages allow you to create personal or public reminders of important dates and times. You are also able to create email reminders in advance of the event. For more information, visit the Events page and then select 'Help' from the main menu.

Chat rooms allow you to interact with other members and guests in real time. The default chat room is called 'home'. You may also create additional rooms. Just type in a room name - it doesn't have to exist already. This will take you there and also list it as an available room if it wasn't already.

Private chat rooms may also be created. A private chat room is any room name that begins with a period, such as '.private'. How chat participants learn of a particular private chat room location is up to them. You obviously don't want to announce this name in a normal chat room or other people will know about it and will also be able to join. Private mail or forums with restricted access are the most common methods of sharing this information.

Mail is a means of private communication between you and another member. To either read or send mail messages, select 'Mail' from the side menu. If you have mail waiting you will see it there. To send a message, fill in the name of the member you wish to send mail to and click 'Submit'. You will then go to a page where you may create the message. Type your message and 'Send' it. Usually a notice will also be sent to the person's internet email account to alert them to check their mailbox here. Note: Many members only accept mail from friends.

The Matchmaker page allows you to search member profiles by gender and age - and also is able to match against people who might be looking for you. The success of the searches is dependant on how many members (such as yourself) supply enough relevant information to search on. The important items in your member profile are:

• Your age
• Your gender
• The gender you wish to find
• The age range you are hoping to find

Note: If you search for somebody who is 'not looking' for anybody, it doesn't matter what you provide as the age they are searching for or for what purpose. Since they aren't looking for anybody, these fields are meaningless.

Articles may be published into respective categories. These are defined by the article author to make it easier to find related material without explicitly searching for it. On this website, the available categories for an article depends on the type of article. Every weblog owner has their own list of categories which they may create and add to or change at any time. An article published to that weblog may use any of their categories. Forums use a set of categories which are managed by the site administrator. This is a generic list of a hundred or so popular keywords. If you would like to suggest an addition to this list, please send an email to the site admin to request a new term. News sources use whatever categories the articles were given on their original website.

To comment on an article, click 'Actions' at the bottom of the article to open the Actions menu, then select 'Add Comment'. This action is only available for articles which originate on this site, such as forum articles and weblogs - and may also only be available for recent articles to prevent a class of activity known as 'comment spam'.

On this website, comments from non-registered visitors are not allowed, due to abuse of this feature by spammers. Please register to leave comments.

If you ever need to edit a comment after it is published, locate the article which the comment is attached to and select 'Edit this article' from the 'Actions' menu. This link will only be available if you are the owner of the article. If you are the owner of the comment but not the owner of the article, you may delete the comment; but will not be able to edit it further. Below the normal text editing screen is a preview window. Scroll down to the preview of the comment you wish to edit. The status will be displayed next to it (Published or Unpublished). If you click the word 'Published', it will take you to the comment moderation page with an opportunitiy to change the publish status or the text of the comment or delete it completely.

Comments are shown with a picture of the comment author. This is known as an 'avatar' or profile photo and is also the picture you will see for a member on the 'Members' page. If you have not selected an image to use for this purpose, a default image is shown. You may choose from an image in our stock image collection, which may be found at the 'avatar' page.

You may also upload your own profile avatar. Upload the image with the 'Image Uploader' and once it is uploaded, you should see a link to use the image as your profile photo. Select that link and follow the prompts.

A pre-defined access list exists for you called 'myfriends'. You can use this list as a permission control anywhere on the site where access list permission controls are used (photos, forums, etc.). To add somebody to your list of friends, click the 'Actions' menu on a user profile. 'Add to My Friends' will be shown as an option, assuming that the current feature profile has 'Can have friends' enabled. To see your list of friends go to the My Friends page. There are three sub-sections, divided into 'Mutual Friends' and 'Exclusive Friends'. An exclusive friend is one that has been added by one person, but hasn't been added to the other person's 'My Friends' list. When both have added each other they are called 'Mutual Friends'. You gain points for adding friends.