This help is supposed to be extensive. It’s really very easy to use this website for most people. We’re just covering our bases here.
You can read here why we built this website on wordpress.com, and how we migrated the old stuff.
How to Join
To post content on this website, you have to be a member of I4S. Joining is really easy:
- You join I4S (or you’re already a paying member).
- You get an invitation to register with wordpress.com. (Watch your SPAM folder etc.). (This takes 1-2 business days).
- You sign up to wordpress.com and set up your short profile on wordpress.com, adding your name, affiliation and whatever else you’d like to share. (More on that below).
- Done! There is no fourth step!
Remember:
If you don’t know what this means, you can probably ignore this (or read this). The two are completely separate.
If you don’t know what kind of wordpress account you have, go to the (other) wordpress site in question, scroll way down, and look for “Blog at WordPress.com”. If you can’t find it, that’s a self-hosted wordpress.org account.
How to Enter a Short Profile
Set up a short profile at wordpress.com upon signing up for the service, including:
- your full name (as “Public Display Name”)
- a short bio (“About Me”)
- one or more websites (“add URL”)
- a picture of you
We don’t offer more profile information than this, but users can explore content by member to learn more about a particular user’s interests etc.
Advanced Profiles
If you’re web-savvy and would like a more extensive profile including social media links, go to gravatar.com – another service by Automattic Inc. –, sign in with your wordpress.com account, and edit away.
Your gravatar profile will be shown on qmethod.org, along with other websites that use the service.
You’re All Set!
You can now edit, post, like and comment most of the content on qmethod.org. Newcomers start with a “contributor” status, which means that your posts will be moderated by the editors (this might take 1-2 working days). More experienced users graduate to “author” status, which means they can post things directly.
Published
(if you have the requisite rights), or Pending Review
, and we’ll publish it within 1-2 business days.Qmethod.org is for and by Q methodologists, so go ahead and make it yours.
Some more tips and tricks after the break.
Some Friendly Suggestions for Using qmethod.org
Images and Other Assets
If possible, add a good photo as a “featured image” to your post or page and people will engage more. The photo can be loosely connected to the topic of your post.
If you’re looking for an image to feature in your post or page, try these great sources of free and creative commons-licensed photos:
- Flickr image search with appropriate licensing filter
- Google Image Search with appropriate licensing filter
- Wikimedia Commons
- Wikipedia
Keep the media library tidy.
- Do not upload duplicates. Check the library first.
- Always add good meta-data to your uploaded images, like so:
Title: something meaningful, short, internal (this is hidden from visitors)
Caption: short licensing information, creator and source URL (external, this will be seen underneath/within pictures).
Alt Text: description (for blind people etc.) what happens in the image
Description: longer context, optional.
Authorship
Proper credit and recognition are very important at qmethod.org.
There are several ways to reflect authorship on this site:
- Authorship of posts and pages (if the authors are signed up to the platform)
- Authorship of comments (available to everyone, not just I4S members)
- @mentions (like so: @maxheld) anywhere in texts and comments.
Posts vs. Pages
Pages are about static, or canonical information, such as a Q conference, or the Q listserv. Posts are about dynamic, or partial information, such as some Q event, or some Q resource. (There’s also testimonials of Q-fans and portfolios of canonical sources in our setup, but that’s accessible only to editors and above).
You can choose different kinds of post (aside, link, regular, video etc.) depending on the kind of content you would like to post.
You (almost) cannot post too many posts. Whatever it is, it’s probably worthwhile as a post.
Tags and Categories
… are how we organise all this content on the website.
- Tags are substantive, such as “British School” or “William Stephenson” and the like.
- Categories are about the type of content, such as “Resources/Introductions” or “I4S/Awards“.
William Stephenson
).Fill in All the Blanks
There are lot of other fields in posts, including:
- author (if not you)
- excerpt
- date (should be correct, can be in the past)
- location
Fill in all that apply. The more, the better.
Comments and Likes
You can like and comment on pretty much anything you see at qmethod.org. We encourage you to use these features liberally.
Comments can be quite long and nested; knock yourself out. These comments would also be retained in the event this website ever moves to another service, because we’ve built a future-proof setup.
Apps
Oh, and yeah, there’s also an app for that!
Use wordpress.com apps for iOS, Android, OS X, Windows Phone and more to access qmethod.org.
Advanced Formatting and Features
We have some advanced formatting and features available here, that can help your content stand out.
To learn more, read the documentation for our theme.
In addition, we have two more – yet undocumented – formatting options:
Calls to Action
You can add something like this
by pasting the following (in <
brackets):
a class="custom-call-to-action">Take This Important Action</a
Callouts
To highlight some sections, use these:
notice
callout container. Callouts work great when wanting to call attention to a particular bit of content.info
callout container. Callouts work great when wanting to call attention to a particular bit of content.success
callout container. Callouts work great when wanting to call attention to a particular bit of content.error
callout container. Callouts work great when wanting to call attention to a particular bit of content.Do add them, change over to the text (or HTML) editor in your post and wrap your content with <div class="notice"
> and </div
>, respectively.
Or, all together:
Happy highlighting.
Easy!
glad it was understandable!