Universal Hub's software lets you do all sorts of interesting things. Here's a manual to help you get the most out of the site. Have a question not answered here? Drop us a line - or add a comment to the relevant manual page (since if you have a particular question, others might have it as well).
I've turned on some new software that will let users with Universal Hub accounts get e-mail notification when somebody posts a comment in specific discussions - hopefully without bombarding people who didn't sign up for them this time.
If you're logged in, you'll now notice a "Subscribe to: This post" link at the end of every post. To get notifications for that discussion, click the link and you'll be asked how often you want to get notices (immediately after somebody else replies, or bunched together every X hours).
If you post a lot yourself, you might get tired of clicking that link all the time. Instead, click on My Acct at the top of any page, then Edit. Scroll to the very bottom and check "Autosubscribe," which will sign you up for notification for any discussion you either start or participate in.
Go to the Custom Feeds page, where you'll find a listing of neighborhoods and topics for which we have feeds.
If you click on any of those feeds, you'll get a URL which you can then use in an RSS aggregator.
You can also combine individual feeds into one big custom feed (say you want to know what's going on in both Roslindale and Jamaica Plain).
Building that sort of feed is a bit hairier:
Scroll your mouse over a neighborhood or topic.
Write down the first number you see for its feed. For example, in
www.universalhub.com/taxonomy/term/37/9/feed
write down "37." Repeat the process for all the feeds you want to combine. When done, combine them into a single URL with plus signs, like this:
www.universalhub.com/taxonomy/term/25+26+37/0/feed
Note the /0/feed at the end! Now paste that URL into your RSS aggregator, and voila, a custom RSS feed (in that case, you would get the latest postings for Cambridge, Fenway and Watertown).
The first step is to register for an account or log in. Once you do that, you'll see a "Post!" link in the blue toolbar at the top of the page.
Select Article and type or paste in your news. Be sure to select or type in as many keywords as are relevant to the post (these will put a link to your article on relevant Universal Hub index pages and in RSS feeds). When done, hit Submit. Your post will go into a queue. An editor will take a look and, if it's of broad interest, will add it to the home page.
The whys and hows in handy FAQ format:
Why?
Three main reasons: In some discussions, there were too many people using the default "anon" as a "name," leading to confusion. As UH has gained more participants, we've picked up more nasty hit-and-run trolls. And we've picked up a new breed of spammers who took advantage of the anonymous posting ability to craft comments that manage to evade the site spam filters (mainly by limiting the number of links in their posts to one or two).
How do I register?
Go to the registration page and fill out the simple form (the toughest part is coming up with a Universal Hub user name). Hit Submit and look in your e-mail for a message from Universal Hub. Click on the link in the message, which will bring you to your new Universal Hub profile page, where you can set your own password. And that's it.
What do you do with my login information?
Your profile page will let you set a default so that you are automatically notified of any replies to your post. You can also "subscribe" to specific discussions (i.e., get e-mail notification when somebody posts there). You can decide, on your profile page, whether to let other users contact you (via a Universal Hub form; your actual e-mail address never appears, unless you type it into a post or comment yourself). Other than that, I don't rent or give out e-mail addresses. I do occasionally contact individual posters if I have a question about their posts.
Feh, I don't trust you to keep my info private.
That's your right. I've been doing online stuff in Boston for years and years, so I do have a reputation I'd like to protect, but if that isn't good enough, you can create an account at some Web e-mail host, use that to log in here, then delete that account (the danger there is that if you forget your password, there won't be any way to have a new one sent to you). I am working on enabling OpenID (I'll certainly post when that's available). If you happen to have a drupal.org account, you can use that here.
Won't this new policy inhibit some discussions?
Quite possibly, and it's one of the reasons I dragged my feet for so long on requiring registration to comment on posts (the other involved some technical issues). But I think we've gotten to the point where the problems related to a completely open system (see the first answer) are beginning to outweigh the benefits. I could be wrong; I'll certainly be watching to see what happens and could reconsider requiring registration.
Any questions I didn't answer? Reply here or e-mail me.
Hey, kids, let's build an online book about how to do community journalism!