So your old diary is migrated. Now what? Well, it supposed to work straight away, you should see it fitted nicely into default theme, whatever it is at this time. It will look different from the old DD, get used to it. Change is good. Change allows us to review what to keep and what to let go. You might not like what you’ve got in new place, but think of it like that: when you move home, you do take time and apply an effort to bring the new place to your liking. So this is no different. Label it as an inspiration, not relocation project and you’ll feel keener on a change.
Of course, you’ll want certain functions of what you use to have in the old diary to be readily available here too, wouldn’t it be swell if we could just go through the list of old features and tick the boxes against the ones you want to have in your new one and then just click “go” and all will be back where you want it...yeah, but. Where is all the fun in that? Where is that change that tickles your brain crazy aspires to move from and into the something different. This is your chance to become a New You. So, what are you waiting for?..
As I’ve been through the process myself and did struggle with some things that I feel I can’t be without, I thought, it cost me time and effort, sometimes nerves too to find where to click, what to choose and how to translate the options from the new site into the language of the old one. I think, it will be a good idea to share simple tips on New DD configuration. What I found is useful, what I think is essential, what made me like the look and feel of my new diary and what might help someone else out there who might just want to set it all up quickly and get on with blogging instead of spending hours to find something very simple, yet hidden in the least obvious places. I invite all of you to contribute to this post and make it one helpful place for newlymigrated. It doesn’t have to be a fancy enhancement, a simple trick to bring back your favourite option from the old site, a pointer to the right place where to find things you’ve lost. So, let’s get it started.
It is worth to notice: I use GENESIS Theme, as being suggested for all the features will be developed for this one. I cannot say if this will work in other themes, but you are free to try.
MissTick
Thingish Things
14 Comments
- From:Misstick (Legacy)On:Thu Jun 21 2012HOW TO GET YOUR MENUS TO SHOW ON THE TOP OF A PAGE, UNDER THE HEADER Dashboard–>Appearance–>Menu. Create Custom menu first – put all the links you want in it, give it a name. Then on the same Menu page – –> Theme Locations–> the top bar is Primary Navigation Menu. The secondary navigation would sit right under the Primary one Basically, the idea is to create few custom menus and play with placing them different places, You can also use Widget option for that as well as Theme locations.
- From:Misstick (Legacy)On:Thu Jun 21 2012STICKY POSTS VS RECENT POSTS (Genesis theme only!) If you mark any post as STICKY, the post will be placed at the top of the front page of posts, keeping it there until new posts are published. So really it is not as sticky as far as stickiness goes. You want to display few recent posts and also few posts from not so recent times that you want to have an instant access from any page of your blog. To always have a certain post handy for referral from any page of my blog, I put it as a Widget into Primary side bar: Dashboard-->Appearance-->Widgets-->Genesis Featured Posts You will have a choice of which posts to choose and how you want them to look. On my site I put them as a Sticky Posts sorted by the date.
- From:Steve (Legacy)On:Sun Jun 24 2012A sticky post should stay at the top always, even when you post newer content. This tends to suggest that the sticky option isn't working! But the Genesis Featured Posts is a nice way to go anyway :-)
- From:Misstick (Legacy)On:Sun Jun 24 2012the sticky post does stays, but the issue is if you have limited amount of Recent Posts listed in the side bar, then the more Sticky ones of them you'll have, less actually Recent ones you'll see there. eventually you'll end up with the list of Recent Sticky Posts instead of real recent posts. Hence I felt that a separate option to list only Sticky posts is needed in addition to the recent posts by date.
- From:Cornflakesnrice (Legacy)On:Sat Jun 23 2012***Like Lol. Well, I guess they have to add a like button here too. :)
- From:Steve (Legacy)On:Sun Jun 24 2012I love what you've done here! If we had a 'featured diary' (like we did in the very early days!) then yours would be it. And thanks for your positivity regarding the switchover. It's hard, progress can't be made on the old system but I do understand that people are used to it and don't want to move. I hope I've offered the best compromise I can by allowing existing people to stay on the old site and provide linksthrough. But the more people who move to the new system, the better it will become. Don't forget to go to http://www.qodo.org/bugs and file any bugs you find or enhancement requests. I receive them all, and I will review each and every one. And if you're not on the Future Of DearDiary group at Facebook I highly recommend that too - there's some good discussion that goes on occasionaly. Of course you may already be, and I don't know your real name :-) Thanks again!
- From:Misstick (Legacy)On:Mon Jun 25 2012DASHBOARD HELPFUL OPTION when you page through dashboard, playing with your settings, don't forget to click Screen Options - it will give you more configuration options to play with. For example, by default Appearance-->Menus doesn't show a choice of link target. that means that you cannot choose if your external links should be opened in new tab/window. But select Screen Options in the top right corner of the Menues dashboard page and tick the box Link Target in Show advanced menu properties. Almost every dashboard page will have a Screen Options - an additional menu that doesn't come by default. Make sure you checked them out - it worth it. One of the advantages of it I found particular useful - on Dashboard page (the top one) it gives you a choice of what to Show on screen - so when you log on into your diary, you can configure what you want to see there and what you don't want to see. Makes your own welcome page a bit less cluttered.
- From:Steve (Legacy)On:Wed Jul 04 2012I intend at some point to produce some video help for the new site - keep these tips coming because some of the things you've mentioned I didn't even know you could do :-)
- From:Misstick (Legacy)On:Mon Jun 25 2012FRIENDS NOTIFIES it's a bit confusing, methinks and not particular user-friendly. Here is my interpretation of how I think it works: on Deardiary–>Friends page: User Level Settings - here you will see those who have asked permission to see your friends only entries and to get notifies. You cannot add anyone in here, THEY have to ask you to appear in this list. Diary Level Settings - here you will see all diaries whom YOU have asked to see their friends only and to get notified. YOU have to ask them first. how to ask: type their diary name in Friends field on top of Deardiary/Friends page (in Dashboard) –>Search–>Select diarist (from dropdown list) you want to get notifies from–>Add. you will see their name in your Diary Level Setings and can tick Request Diary Notification. they will still have to approve it though, but once they done, you should see it on this screen as Yes in “They Notify You” column.
- From:Steve (Legacy)On:Wed Jul 04 2012You're correct with how it works, completely :-) It's a little confusing I know, but it unfortunately has to be this way (compared to the old site) because one diary can have multiple authors and one author multiple diaries. So you have to request notification now from a Diary, not a User. If that makes sense... Whereas when you SEND notifies, they're to a User, not a Diary... Confused? I was coding it - lol
- From:Misstick (Legacy)On:Wed Jul 04 2012LOl, clear as mud, Steve! nah, really, once you'd figured it out, it is all makes sense. Maybe you can add few "pop up/cursor over tips" to each option to clarify which is which, something like "do this to allow other people read your friends only" and "do that to ask other diary if you can read their friends only" or else. trust non-native english speaker, Add Friends page has a little bit confusing wordings and I'm sure I'm not the only one who finds it so. sorry :-/
- From:Misstick (Legacy)On:Wed Jul 04 2012HOW TO GET YOUR DD NAME TO BE DISPLAYED AS A HOT LINK WHEN YOU POST A COMMENT. I've noticed that it was a feature few of us miss from the old diary system: when someone posts a comment on your diary, their name isn't displayed as a link, so you cannot just click on it to go to their diary pages to respond. Apparently, it is NOT SO!!! The new diary can be set to display your name as a link to your diary very easy: just log on to your Dashboard-->Users-->Your Profile and edit it so that when it says: Contact Info: Website add the url of your Diary. as simple as that! :-)
- From:Misstick (Legacy)On:Wed Jul 04 2012Also, it is worth noticing that this won't work in retrospective, i.e. any comments you made before this edit, won't display your name as a Hot Link. So, Just leave a fresh comment then ;-)
- From:Yetzirah (Legacy)On:Wed Jul 04 2012I tried your trick for the hot link for our names and it's working! Thanks. I'm a bit more shaky on configuring the Genesis theme however. Things do not display as I like them to. (Crowded page with overlapping fields for some reason.) I need to spend some time with it and really parse in out, but there are a lot of distractions here right now. (Company) I want to get over to that theme because Steve is working with it more and I just don't want to get too comfortable and have to learn a bunch all over again. Frankly, all I want is to post and be able to stay in touch with other diarists. We can do the 'party' the first part of September, no problem… as soon as Steve gets the migration thing fixed that is!!!! Heh heh.