Read This If You Are New to My.Steamboat

Welcome, and thank you for joining Steamboat's online community. If you are new to social networks then perhaps reading through this Welcome message can help you get around a little easier. As always, please don't hesitate to contact either Marlene or James if you have any questions.

Navigating the Community:

The best way to learn your way around the my.steamboat community is to explore! There’s nothing like good old trial and error. But there’s nothing wrong with a helping hand, so here’s a guide to terms and features.

The first thing you'll want to do is sign in (or join if you haven't already!)

Once you've signed in, you'll see a personalized greeting, and you'll be able to use the black bar at the very top to navigate the site. Please be sure to read and understand our Usage Agreement and our Posting Guide (in short, they basically say be nice, don't be a troll and no stinky linky's are allowed on the site - but read it anyway!)

Feel free to play around with the intro icons at the top of the page. Here you can add photos, blogs, videos, and fine-tune your settings, etc. If you are tired of looking at it, just simply close it by clicking the X in the upper right hand corner.

If you click on your name you will be able to edit your profile and personal settings. Click on the email icon that says Inbox to view messages you’ve sent and received. Click on the icon of a person to view your friends and friend requests you’ve sent and received.

Customizing Your Home Page:

Click on the "Edit Profile" tab at the top to go to your home page. This is your very own page to customize as you wish. You can even add your own blog! It’s simple to upload photos, videos and add your own captions!

Settings:

To update or change your settings go to the Settings link located in the upper right-hand corner box underneath your name. On your My Settings - Profile page you will be able to change your privacy settings, your profile, your page appearance and email information. You can also find an email address unique to your page that allows you to add photos and videos to Steamboat from your phone.

Message Boards:

There are two places you can post questions to the community (Please keep the content relevant to Steamboat).

- Main Forums Page: This page is for general discussions which are categorized by subject. Click the "Forums" tab to visit. A great place to go before you even post to our Forums is our FAQ section. We've compiled a bunch a questions that have already been addressed and chances are you'll find what you are looking for. If not, please be considerate when posting a new topic by putting it in the correct category.

- Groups: In Groups such as Straight Talk and Music on the Mountain, you can post discussions according to topic with other members that have an interest in that particular group, and even create new discussions within that group.

The Share button allows you to send an email to your friends and so they can respond to your post and join the discussion:

Friends:

To send a community member a friend request, click on the “add as a friend” link, located under their main profile picture on the upper left corner. Once that person accepts your request, you will be friends and you can track each other’s activity on the community!

Other Options:

Comment Wall: Comments are separate from message board responses. A comment is a one-on-one message from you to another person. You can comment on another member’s page, picture, blog entry or video. The comment will appear on that person’s page in the exact place you left it.

Photos & Videos: You can upload photos and videos either from your My Page, or by clicking the "Photos" or "Videos" tab. You can upload your own videos from computer, and you can also upload YouTube videos to the Videos section.

You can also insert YouTube videos into your forum posts: Go to the desired video on http://www.youtube.com/ and copy and paste the “embed” code, located on the upper right, directly into your comment box.

Invite: Allows you to send an invitation via email to a friend who is not yet a community member. Just add your friend’s name and email address and they’ll receive an email from us!

Tags: A tag is a key word. Adding tags to your comments, videos, photos, etc., allows you to search for other pages with similar tags. You can add tags to any discussion, even ones someone else started!

For Advanced Users: RSS

RSS feeds are provided for a variety of different sections of our community. You can subscribe to feeds for the Main Discussion area, the Latest Activity, or subscribe to a Group feed, for example. You can use these feeds with a variety of RSS reader software and web-based news readers or personalizable homepages (like iGoogle or My Yahoo!). Besides offering RSS feeds for our community content, you can add RSS feeds to your homepage. Your RSS box on the left vertical bar, under your photos, allows you to enter the URL of your blog or another blog that you like. Your friends can see the titles of the blog entries as well as small excerpts!

Thank You
Wow - if you made it this far, I am impressed. Thank you for reading it all. There will be a test at the end of the week.

Enjoy your time on my.steamboat. Hope this little bit of info helps!