How-to Manual Part 1: The answers (OBSOLETE)

Obsolete Information, prior forum software, thread closed.

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Part 1: The answers

 

Obviously, we all need a how-to manual for using the new site. Let’s make one. There have already been a lot of questions answered, but the answers have been buried in random threads and so are operationally useless. I suggest that we collect the answers and put them in one place: here.

 

So here’s my invitation to you: if you’ve found a way to do something on the site, describe it in this thread. But to make this work, the thread MUST stay on topic—go ahead and post solutions or refinements or corrections to solutions here, but please do not dilute the thread with other kinds of comments.

 

If you’re searching through the thread to find an answer and it’s not here, post your question in the thread paired with this one (Part 2: unanswered questions). If someone knows the answer to a question in the Part 2 thread, please post the answer in this thread (Part 1: the answers). This protocol is intended to keep this thread as user-friendly and searchable as possible.

 

If you have suggestions for how to make this work better or want to discuss the idea, I’ve started a third thread—How-to Manual Part 3: Suggestions for making the experiment work better.

 

If anyone finds a glitch with a solution, it would be great if you would post the message in Part 2 (Questions) rather than in this answers thread. A modified solution would then be posted back here.

 

 

Table of contents

(recent additions or updates are shown in magenta)

 

Overview

Reply #27: A brief guide to navigating the site

 

Personalizing the site

Reply #6: How to change the time to your own time zone

Reply #9: Where to find recent uploads from photographers you follow

Reply #16: Where to find a list of the photographers you follow

Reply #21: How to change your profile background image (= removing the bubbles)

Reply #25: How to upload an avatar photo

Reply #26: How to follow people in the forums to create your news feed

Reply #30: How to change your screen name

 

Forums

Reply #2: How to put a paragraph break into a forum post

Reply #4: How to deal with the overlying “Write your reply” text

Reply #5: Where to find a list of the forum posts you’ve made

Reply #11: How to upload an image to a forum comment

Reply #11: How to add a caption to an uploaded forum image

Reply #20: How to "watch a forum" (or thread)

Reply #22: Using Quick Navigation Button within the Forums

Reply #23: How to list recent forum posts, including your own posts and those you've read

Reply #26: How to follow people in the forums to create your news feed

Reply #29: How to copy an image from your portfolio into a forum thread

 

Communication

Reply #3: Where to find the member directory

Reply #15: How to send a message to another member

 

Portfolio and Galleries

Reply #7: How to change the order of your galleries

Reply #8: How to delete photos from your portfolio

Reply #10: How to create a new gallery

Reply #18: How to download your own photos from Photo.net

Reply #28: How to download your images in original posting size from your Library

 

Critique and comments on photos

Reply #14: Where to find a comment you made on someone else’s photo

Reply #17: How to add a picture to your comment under a photo

Reply #31: How to put a paragraph break into a comment under a photo

 

Where is...

Reply #3: Where to find the member directory

Reply #9: Where to find recent uploads from photographers you follow

Reply #13: Where to find the “Most discussed photos of the past week”

Reply #14: Where to find a comment you made on someone else’s photo

Reply #16: Where to find a list of the photographers you follow

Reply #19: Where to find the Photo of the Week (POTW)

Reply #22: Using Quick Navigation Button within the Forums

Reply #27: A brief guide to navigating the site

Reply #32: Where to find photos recently uploaded to the site

 

Troubleshooting

Reply #12: What to do if the photonet page goes into a flickering refresh cycle

Reply #24: How to deal with spam

How to put a paragraph break into a forum post:

 

Type in < br> < br> without the spaces between the < and the br, and you'll end up with a space between paragraphs (had to insert the extra spaces here so that the code would be visible as code instead of invisible as a paragraph break) (thanks to Supriyo for explaining this)

 

Note that this is different from the method for creating paragraph breaks in photo comments--for those, see Reply#31.

Edited March 10, 2017 by Leslie Reid

Where to find the member directory:

 

It's under the button "Members" (in line with "Home" and "Forums")--you can search by a member's name in the box on the right of that page

Edited March 10, 2017 by Leslie Reid

How to deal with the overlying "Write your reply..." when writing a forum post:

 

Put in a single carriage return at the beginning of your post. Because the editor doesn't recognize carriage returns, you'll space down one in the reply box but it won't show up in the posted reply

Edited March 10, 2017 by Leslie Reid

How to find a list of the forum posts you've made:

 

Method 1: click on your user name in the upper right corner of this screen, then click on "your content"

Method 2: enter your user name in the search box on the Forum page; with this method you can specify the time period for the search

Method 3: go to your profile page, click on "Information," and then on "Find all content"

Method 4: go to your profile page, click on "Postings," scroll to the bottom, and click on "Find all content"

• Note 1: The posts load 9 or 10 pages at a time. You can move back through earlier posts by clicking on the box for the last page shown, scrolling to the bottom, and clicking on "Show earlier posts." If you want to move forward through time after having done that, you need to use the back button on your browser.
  
• Note 2: The search box to use on the forum page is not the one at the very top of the screen, but the one that is located between the upper photo.net logo and the photo.net logo in the gray block--I suppose the appearance might vary between browsers. That search box is specific to forum content, and searches can be made specific to particular forums or threads.
  

Edited March 10, 2017 by Leslie Reid

How to change the time to your own time zone:

 

To change to local time, click on your name in the upper right hand corner of this screen, then on "preferences" in the pull-down menu, and there you can choose whatever time zone you want. (the default here was GMT)

Edited March 10, 2017 by Leslie Reid

How to change the order of your galleries:

1. Click on your icon/avatar up in the top right corner next to the red "Upload" button.
   
2. Choose "My Portfolio"
   
3. On the left hand side of your portfolio page, under your icon and the heading "Portfolio", you will see 4 menu items.
   > Galleries
   > Gallery photo sort
   > Gallery folder sort
   > Competition submissions
   
4. Choose "Gallery Folder Sort".
   
5. This will take you to a page where you can drag-and-drop your galleries to rearrange them.
   
6. When finished make sure you save it by clicking on the "Save" button just above the top gallery.
   

Edited May 1, 2017 by William Michael

How to delete photos from your portfolio:

1. Click on your icon/avatar up in the top right corner next to the red "Upload" button.
   
2. Choose "My Portfolio"
   
3. On the left hand side of your portfolio page, under your icon and the heading "Portfolio", you will see 5 menu items.
   > Photos
   > Galleries
   > Gallery photo sort
   > Gallery folder sort
   > Competition submissions
   
4. Click on "photos". This takes you to a page with all your photos.
    
   
5. Under each photo is a number of icons and a blue box. Hover your mouse over the blue box and a pop-up menu will appear with:
   > Submit to contest
   > Add to gallery
   > Set cover photo
   > Edit photo details
   > Delete photo
   
6. Choose "Delete" photo.
   
7. You will get another pop-up window asking you to confirm. Yes or No.
   

Edited May 1, 2017 by William Michael

How to find recent uploads from the photographers you follow:

 

Mouse over your avatar at the upper right corner of this screen, then click on "My portfolio" in the pull-down menu. At the left of your portfolio page, you'll see a subsection for favorites, and if you click on "photographers" in that section, it should bring up their recent uploads.

Edited March 10, 2017 by Leslie Reid

How to create a new gallery:

 

To create a new gallery...

1. Click on your icon/avatar up in the top right corner next to the red "Upload" button.
   
2. Choose "My Portfolio"
   
3. On the left hand side of your portfolio page, under your icon and the heading "Portfolio", you will see 4 menu items.
   > Photos
   > Galleries
   > Gallery photo sort
   > Gallery folder sort
   > Competition submissions
   
4. Click on "Galleries". This takes you to a page with all your galleries.
   
5. At the top, just above your first gallery you see a red button labelled "Create a New Gallery".
   
6. Clicking on this brings up a box where you can put the title of your gallery.
   
7. Press the "Next" button to add photos. This takes you to your photos page, and right at the top gives you the option to "Add photos to the gallery" or "Upload New Photos.
   
8. To add photos from your current ones, hover over the blue box under each photo and select "Add to Gallery" from the pop-up box.
   
9. Once you have finished adding photos don't forget to save by clicking the "Save button" just above your first photos.
   

Edited May 1, 2017 by William Michael

How to upload an image to a forum comment and add a caption to it:

 

The trick to understand here is that the old sequence of comment--confirm--upload file with caption is no longer operative. With this new version, you can attach the file anywhere within the comment, so the sequence I've found that works is this:

• write the text you want to show up as the comment in the "write your reply" box at the bottom of the forum thread
  
• put in the < br>< br> (again, with no spaces between the < and the b; see earlier post) to add a blank line above the image you'll upload
  
• hit the "upload a file" button
  
• navigate to and select the image you want to upload
  
• select whether you want a thumbnail or full size view, and the file should load into the reply space
  
• add another < br> to be sure the caption doesn't share part of a line with the photo
  
• type in the caption
  
• hit the "post reply" button
  
• hit the "refresh" icon (either on the photonet tab of your browser or next to the web address, depending on the browser; that's the arrow in the form of a circle) to see what the post looks like with the actual spacing
  
• if something went wrong with the way it looks, you've got 15 minutes to hit the edit button at the end of the post and make whatever changes you need.
  

Edited March 10, 2017 by Leslie Reid

What to do if the photonet page goes into a flickering refresh cycle every time you sign in:

• The short-term fix is to change browsers. That's a pain in the neck. Better:
  
• The elegant long-term fix is to go into your browser's settings or preferences and delete the cookies for photonet. In Safari, I went to preferences --> privacy --> manage website data, let the info load, then paged down to the photonet entry (which listed cookies and several other things) and clicked remove. The next time I logged into photonet via my desktop icon, it was again working beautifully. (thanks to Charles Monday for this solution)
  
• We're getting some reports that removing cookies doesn't work for everyone. In that case, try clicking on the button you'd normally use to refresh the page (either the arrow in the shape of a circle or the X that takes its place during a refresh)--you may need to try several times to get the timing right.
  
• New information from the development team: "it's not a cookie issue, it's a cached redirect. For anyone who has that problem, ask them to try incognito mode and see if the issue persists. If that is it, then they can clear the cached redirect." You'll need to google it to figure out how to do it on your device. So apparently with most browsers on most devices, clearing the cookies also clears the cached redirects, but on some it doesn't. Incidentally, the redirect issue appeared when the site address changed to the new one: entering the old address redirects you to the new one instead.
  

Edited March 10, 2017 by Leslie Reid

How to find the "Most discussed photos of the past week":

1. Mouse over "explore" in the top banner to access the pull-down menu
   
2. Click on "Seeking critique"
   
3. Click on "comments" in the line to the right of the search box half way down the screen
   
4. Click on the little triangle next to "This year" to access a pull-down menu to define the period you're interested in
   
5. The gallery is then populated with the photos ranked in descending order by number of comments
   

Note that this page allows you to carry out a number of other kinds of searches, too: by views, photo categories, and so on.

Edited March 10, 2017 by Leslie Reid

How to find a comment you made on someone else's photo (partial solution):

1. Click on your icon/avatar up in the top right corner next to the red "Upload" button.
   
2. Choose "My Profile"
   
3. This will take you to your profile "box" with your icon, name etc. Along the bottom of the box are three headings "PROFILE", "COMMUNITY", "FAVOURITES".
   
4. Under "COMMUNITY" click on "Comments" (Note: these refer to photo comments and not forum comments).
   
5. Scroll down and you will see thumbnails of al the photos you have made comments on, including your own. They are sorted newest first, but you can sort them by number of "Views", "Admires" and "Comments" using the sort bar just above the first row of photos.
   
6. Click on the thumbnail and scroll right to the bottom to see the comments.
   

NOTE: As far as I have been able to find, there is no way to get any sort of notification about follow-up comments on a photo you have made a comment on. If you have found a way post it here. Other wise hopefully something for the (not too distant) future.

 

Laurie

Edited March 10, 2017 by Leslie Reid

How to send a message to another member:

 

The trick to remember here is that "messages" are now "conversations."

There are two ways to do this that I've found, and one way NOT to do it.

 

First method: use your Inbox (works if you know the screen name of the person you're trying to message)

1. Click on "inbox" next to your name in the upper right corner of this screen
   
2. Click on the "start a new conversation" button about half way down the page that then opens
   
3. In the participants box that then appears, enter the name for the intended recipient (or more than one)--if you type the first few letters, you'll get a list of possibilities to chose from.
   
4. Add a title for the message in the next box
   
5. Add the text in the box below that
   
6. Hit the "start a conversation" button, and you're good to go
   
7. If the address does not work for some reason, try the second method:
   

Second method: send a message while viewing a thread

1. If you're reading a forum thread and want to send a message to one of the participants, click on their avatar.
   
2. Click on the "start a conversation" button in the box that then opens
   
3. Proceed from there as described for method 1
   

Method that does NOT work: going to their profile page and putting the comment where it says "Post"--that actually posts the message to their profile where everyone can read it.

Edited March 10, 2017 by Leslie Reid

How to find a list of the photographers that you follow:

 

This is going to be a bit convoluted because of a temporary bug, but please bear with me.

1. Mouse over your name at the upper right corner of this screen, and click on “My portfolio” in the drop-down menu
   
2. It’ll take a few seconds for the portfolio to open
   
3. Now mouse over your icon in the upper right corner of the portfolio screen, and click on “My profile” in the drop-down menu (I know. It’s looks the same as it does in the Forum screen, but if you were to try this there, clicking on “My profile” kicks you out to the Home page, or at least it does on my browser)
   
4. The page that comes up is the profile page that the rest of us see. There are three categories of buttons near the bottom of the page: Profile, Community, and Favorites
   
5. If you click on Users under the Favorites category, the photographers that you followed in Photonet v.1 or that you have favorited in v2.1 will show up. Currently they are in the form of large icons.
   

Edited March 10, 2017 by Leslie Reid

Adding a picture to your comment under someone's, or your, photo (very partial solution):

 

NOTE: At this stage it seems there is no possibility to add any sort of image directly to a comment on a photo.

1. However as a temporary (i hope) and not very satisfactory fix, you can copy and paste a link to your own photo.net gallery, Flickr, or some other online gallery.
   
2. Unfortunately the photo comment system doesn't see it as a link so if someone wants to view the image they will have to copy and paste the link into their browser address bar. As I said - not very satisfactory, but usable if you absolutely have to reference another image.
   

Edited March 10, 2017 by Leslie Reid

How to download your own photos from Photo.net:

 

This is a new feature Thanks Glenn and Team. Thanks to fotograaf1957 for this information.

1. Hover your mouse over your avatar/icon in the top right hand corner next to the red "upload button". Select "My Portfolio".
   
2. On the left hand side, under the heading "Portfolio" you will see 6 menu items. The first is "Photos" and the last is "My Library".
   
3. Choose "My Library".
   
4. You will now see large thumbnails of all your photos. By hovering your mouse over a picture you will see a box appear below the photo - in it there is a link to download. Click on "Download".
   
5. The link will now load a full res version of your photo and you can now use the regular "right click" and "Save Image as" functions (Windows PC).
   
6. In both the thumbnail gallery (in point 4) and the full res image you can drag and drop you photo to other applications. Note: dragging the thumbnail will give you low res file.
   

Additional note from Wayne Melia: This also provides (right-click) access to the url of the photo so it can be copied and used to post to threads (see Reply #29 for a description of how to do this).

Edited March 10, 2017 by Leslie Reid

Where to find the Photo of the Week (POTW)

• Mouse over "Explore" on the top banner, and click on "Photo of the Week" in the pull-down menu
  
• If that gives you a 404 error, click on the orange "return home" in the center of the screen. That will take you to the site's home page. Scroll down a few screens to "Community on Display," then click on the image for the current POTW
  

Edited March 10, 2017 by Leslie Reid

How to "watch a forum" (or thread)

1. Click on the forum that you want to receive alerts about
   
2. Click on "watch forum"
   
3. This brings up a box in which you can choose whether you want to be notified about new threads or new posts, and whether you want to receive on-site alerts or email messages or both
   
4. You can manage these settings by clicking on "Watched Forums" in the title bar above the forum list
   
5. This will open a page that gives you a list of your watched forums, with a check-box to the left of each; to the right is an indication of whether you are watching threads or posts, and what kinds of notifications you are receiving.
   
6. To change the settings for one of your watched forums, click on the check-box in front of that forum, then click on the pull-down arrow beside the "with selected" box below the list.
   
7. Choose the action you wish to take, then click "go"; the change will appear on the list above
   

Note 1: There is some indication that the notification selection may not stick for some users; I'm still trying to figure that one out, so please let me know if you have problems setting this up.

 

Note 2: The same procedure works to watch a thread

Edited March 10, 2017 by Leslie Reid

How to change your profile background image:

 

• Example see Jody Johnson's portfolio (with background image) here: https://www.photo.net/10319223
  

1. Go to My Portfolio
   
2. Find the photo in your portfolio you think might look good as a background image on your profile and click on the blue menu button.
   
3. Select "Set Cover Photo"
   
4. Go to "My Profile" to see what it looks like. If you don't like the way that photo looks, repeat the above steps to change the photo out.
   

Quick Navigation button within the forums:

 

• See attachments - you will see the key to quick navigation within the forums.
  
• 
  

How to list recent forum posts, including your own and those you've read

1. Click on the Forums button near the top of the screen
   
2. Click on "New posts" in the ribbon that then appears below the Forum button. This will bring up a list of all posts that are new to you since your last log-on, with older unread ones displayed below a marker. This list does not include your own posts (since they aren't new to you) or posts that you have already read (for the same reason). This means that if you click on one of the posts and read it, it will disappear from the list the next time you bring it up.
   
3. To get a list that includes all recent posts (including your own posts and posts that you have already read), click on "Recent posts" near the right side of the screen in the "New Post" view.
   

Edited March 10, 2017 by Leslie Reid

How to deal with spam

New spam control measures are being implemented on the site, so with any luck you won't need to worry about this. But if some should sneak through, simply click on the "Report" button at the bottom of the spam post and enter the reason for the report. If there are multiple messages from the same source, click on the sender's icon to get to their profile page. On the profile page you'll see another "Report" button--that works the same way, but reports all the spam messages at once.

Edited March 10, 2017 by Leslie Reid

How to upload an avatar photo:

 

Note: this might not be possible using the Safari browser; please let me know if you've gotten it to work with Safari

1. Mouse over your current avatar in the upper right corner of this screen
   
2. Click on My Account in the pull-down menu
   
3. On the Account page, click on "Upload a new avatar" (in Safari I see a "choose photo to upload" box--this does not appear to work and you may be out of luck)
   
4. In the window that opens, navigate to and select the photo you want to use.
   

Edited March 10, 2017 by Leslie Reid