How-To tags About WellCommons.com

Posted by Ursula Rothrock on July 16, 2010 at 10:21 a.m.

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You can now upload photos to posts!

Great news for all WellCommons users: you can now upload photos straight from your computer to a WellCommons post.

You still are able to use the old copy-and-paste a URL from Flickr or LJWorld method, but you now have the convenience of uploading straight to our site. Videos cannot yet be uploaded and still use the same URL method.

The process if fairly self-explanatory, but here's a quick how-to:

Click on 'Upload a photo' and browse for the photo you want to upload from your computer. You can add a title, credit, caption and tags. Click 'Upload photo' and you're done!

Questions? Comment on this post and I'll answer.

Posted by Ursula Rothrock on June 28, 2010 at 9:15 a.m.

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Answering Your Questions About WellCommons

Hi, everyone! I’m an intern here at WellCommons for the summer and I’m having a wonderful time and taking in a lot of information. I’ve been in contact with quite a few members and I have come across a few basic issues from some of the people I’ve spoken with. So I made this post that will hopefully help out a few people, especially those who are group administrators.

Issue #1: "I want more members!"

Solution 1: Encourage your employees, peers, customers, volunteers, family and friends (everyone you know!) to create a WellCommons account and join your group.

More members on the site leads to more participation, more impact on the community and more awareness.
As people peruse the site, they will join other groups and create a web of connectivity.

Solution 2: Post things to your group page

Regular and interesting posts will attract people to your page and encourage them to check back.
Try to incorporate links, photos and video to your posts to make them more attractive and engaging. Anything you see on the web that's interesting is probably interesting to others. Here's information on how to embed photos and videos into your posts. It's as simple as copying and pasting a URL! Also, here's a detailed how-to on how to embed videos in your post and a detailed how-to for posting photos.
Update: You can now upload photos straight from your computer to WellCommons! Here's the how-to.

Solution 3: Submit events

Under “Upcoming events” there is a “Submit an event” button; click this and submit your events to be posted to the WellCommons site. Then write a post about your event to create some buzz.

Issue #2: "I don't have time to keep up my page!"

Solution 1: Yes you do!

Posts do not have to be outrageously lengthy nor cumbersome. In fact, they should be neither. A quick post about an upcoming event, fact of the day, interesting article, resource or anything relevant can take only five minutes. Dedicating only a few minutes out of your week to make a post will have a huge impact on the quality of your page.
If you have a newsletter, regular email or other correspondence you can simply copy some of that information and make it into a WellCommons post.

Solution 2: Add others as contributors

This goes back to the first issue. The more people on your group page, the more participation you will have and the less work there will be for you. One person does not control the page; let others help you out! You as a group owner can post into News and Resources. Your group members can post into the Commons section. But you must identify other people you trust, and make them into "contributors" to post into the News section. Here's how you upgrade a member to a contributor.
Encouraging those people who join your group to participate will make your page more interesting and helpful. WellCommons is an evolving network, not a stagnate page.

Issue #3: “I’m confused/I don’t understand how to __!”

Solution 1: We have very useful About, How-to and FAQ sections. Please read through these which will answer most basic questions. If you have questions, call or email me, or use the handy “Suggestions/Bug Report” form at the very bottom of every page.

Solution 2: The website is designed to be easy to use. I won’t repeat all the basics that are on our help pages here so please check them out.

So, here’s all of this in a nutshell:

WellCommons is easy to use and quite beneficial if you utilize it correctly.
You don’t need to be the sole contributor to your page, but you do need to put in some effort.
More members = more participation = more awareness = healthier community.

Hopefully this helped a least a few people out! If you have any more questions feel free to comment on this post, contact me through messaging on WellCommons or email me at urothrock@ljworld.com.

Posted by Jane Stevens on May 23, 2010 at 2:55 p.m.

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How WellCommons works….

The first order of business: sign up for WellCommons! If you already have an account on LJWorld.com, KUSports.com or Lawrence.com, just sign in. (You don't have to sign in to just look at pages, but if you want to participate, sign up.) We're asking each of you who sign up or sign in to fill out your profile and use your real name. We think that WellCommons will be a safer, more productive place if we all know each other.
This site is organized into five super-groups: Wellness, NoTrauma, Nosurance, Locavores and Wise. We'll add more as time goes on.
If you want to participate in a group -- leave comments on posts or post into the Commons sections -- you have to join a group. To join a group, all you have to do is click "Join". It'll ask you to confirm, and you're in! You can join as many groups as you want.
There are three levels of participation in a group: member, contributor and administrator. The group administrator -- the person who creates a group -- an upgrade a member to contributor or administrator.
Members can post in the Commons section of any group they've joined. They can also reply to (or add comments to) posts in the News, Resources and Commons sections.
Contributors can post in the News, Resources and Commons sections of groups that they've joined, and, of course, reply to any post in any of those sections.
Administrators can post in the News, Resources and Commons sections of the groups they create, and, of course, reply to any post in any of those sections. They can also edit the posts of other administrators and contributors. Administrators can change members to contributors or to administrators. They can also ban people. More on that in the How-To.
Anyone who's signed up for WellCommons can create a group. When you create it, we will categorize it under one of the super-groups. This is a health site. If you create the Buick Electra mechanics group, we'll ask you to wait a while until we set up the entertainment/events/hobby site.
The difference between a Quick Post and a Post: A quick post is just that....a sentence or two, a photo, a video. No headline. No editing tools. Blast it out and move on. A post has a headline, a place to put the first graph or two, and a place for extended content (what you see after you click on "Read on"). For both of these, the publish button is at the bottom of the post.
We like visuals....photos, videos, charts, graphs. Most people do. So, we've made it really easy for you to add them. Want to add a video from YouTube? Open a separate tab, find the video, copy the url and paste it into your post. Baddaboom. It appears and plays in the post when you publish. Do the same for video from Vimeo. (Yo ho I'm a poet and don't know it.) Or photos from Flickr. Or photos from LJWorld.com, KUSports.com or Lawrence.com. For everything else -- including text articles -- you'll have to embed just the link.

Posted by Jane Stevens on March 14, 2010 at 10:19 p.m.

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How-To’s added in Resources

I've added several files to the Resources section of this group, About WellCommons:

Top-Ten Basics....a quick overview of how the site works.
How to Participate....signing up, signing in, member privileges, what contributors and administrators do.
How to Post, Quick Post and Repost...it's soooo easy.
How to Advertise. We welcome businesses that provide health-related products and services that this community is interested in buying or using.
Other sections that are coming: How to Manage a Group, How to Make My Group the Most Interesting in WellCommons, and How to Make the Most of the Resources Section. Let me know if there's anything else that you'd like more details about.

As the How-To's are written, I'm also adding related questions in the FAQs in the Help section -- top right in the navigation bar, under search. Please let me know if you have any questions you'd like an answer to. I'll answer it here, I'll message you the answer, and I'll post it in the FAQs.

Posted by Jane Stevens on March 7, 2010 at 5:28 p.m.

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How to….Post and Repost

You can Post and Repost in the News and Commons sections.

Post -- This is how you put words, photos and video on WellCommons.com. Select "Post" and at the top, you'll see a narrow space for the TItle, or headline. The big white space is for the post -- text, photo, video. If you have a photo or video, make sure you put that toward the top, after the first sentence or two.

Posts don't have to be long and fancy. If you want to ask the WellCommons community a question, just post it. For example: Want to know about 5K running races in March? In the title, you could put "Running races in March?" In the body, you could type: "Does anyone know of any 5K running races in March?". Sweet. Simple.

Posts have editing tools: You can boldface, italicize, link to urls, embed a quote, make numbered and bulleted lists. In the gray area underneath the white space where you type in your content, the words and photo will show as they will appear in the post.

Boldface: Select the text you want to boldface, then click on "Bold".

Link: In a separate tab, open the page you want to link to, copy the url, return to your WellCommons.com post, select the text you want to link, click on "Link", and paste the url into the box. (Make sure the "http://" isn't repeated.)

Quote: Select the sentence or paragraph that is the quote (and make sure it has quote marks around it), click on "Quote", and what you've selected will indent.

If you want to put still photos or video into your post..... it's so easy. To add a photo from your own computer, click on "upload a photo", which is at the bottom of the white space for posting, and browse through your files to add a photo.

To add a photo from LJWorld, KUSports, lawrence.com or Flickr, click on "link to a photo or video", open a separate browser window, find the photo you want to share on the Internet, copy the URL, and then paste into the box that has a beginning of a url (http://). For detailed instruction, head to "How to Post a Photo".

You can add videos from YouTube or Vimeo, but not from your own computer yet.

To add a video from YouTube or Vimeo, click on "link to a photo or video", open a separate browser window, find the video you want to share on the Internet, copy the URL, and then paste into the box that has a beginning of a url (http://). If you need them, you'll see more instructions in the posting area.

Repost -- This is so cool. No more copy-and-pasting. If you want to repost your post or any post that you see, just click on "repost". A new page opens with a list of the places in which you're allowed to repost, i.e., all the groups that you're a member of, a contributor to, or that you administer. Either type in the group name or select it from the list, and the group name will appear at the top.

And just in case you haven't run across the word "Permalink" before....you'll see it at the top of every post. Click on that and you get a page with just that post, and, if you need it, its individual url.

Questions? Contact:

Jane Stevens -- jstevens@ljworld.com

Jonathan Kealing -- jkealing@ljworld.com

Karrey Britt -- kbritt@ljworld.com

If you're a business and want to start a group page, contact:

Alice Brewer -- abrewer@ljworld.com

Edwin Rothrock -- erothrock@ljworld.com

Or, scroll to the bottom of this page, and type in a question in the white space where it says: "Send us suggestions, bug reports or just say hi."

Posted by Jane Stevens on March 3, 2010 at 1:13 p.m.

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The Top-Ten Basics

The first order of business: sign up for WellCommons.com! If you already have an account on LJWorld.com, KUSports.com or Lawrence.com, just sign in. (You don't have to sign in to just look at pages, but if you want to participate, sign up.) We're asking each of you who sign up or sign in to fill out your profile and use your real name. We think that WellCommons will be a safer, more productive place if we all know each other. However, if you've posted a lot of anonymous comments in LJWorld and want to keep them that way, create a new sign-in on WellCommons. You'll need to use a different email address than the one you're using for LJWorld. But that's easy to obtain through Gmail or Yahoo, for example.
This site is organized into six super-groups: Wellness, Trauma, Nosurance, Locavores, Kiddos and Wise. We'll add more as time goes on.
If you want to participate in a group -- just start posting!
There are three levels of participation in a group: member, contributor and administrator. The group administrator is the person who creates a group.
Members can post into the group's resources section.
Contributors can edit other contributors' posts.
Administrators can change members to contributors or to administrators. They can also ban people. They can edit group settings. They can create sub-groups. There's more on all this in the How-To's.
Anyone who's signed up for WellCommons.com can create a group. Just click on "All groups"....which is in the upper left of the site, under the list of super-groups. That will bring you to the WellCommons group index. At the far right, see a button that says, "Create a Group". Click on that and it will open up a page to enter the information for your group. When you create it, we will relate it to one of the super-groups. This is a health site. If you create the Buick Electra mechanics group, we'll ask you to wait a while until we set up the entertainment/events/hobby site.
We like visuals....photos, videos, charts, graphs. Most people do. So, we've made it really easy for you to add them.

To add a photo from your own computer, click on "upload a photo", which is at the bottom of the white space for posting, and browse through your files to add a photo.

To add a photo from LJWorld, KUSports, lawrence.com or Flickr, click on "link to a photo or video", open a separate browser window, find the photo you want to share on the Internet, copy the URL, and then paste into the box that has a beginning of a url (http://). If you need them, you'll see more instructions in the posting area.

To add a video from YouTube or Vimeo, click on "link to a photo or video", open a separate browser window, find the video you want to share on the Internet, copy the URL, and then paste into the box that has a beginning of a url (http://). If you need them, you'll see more instructions in the posting area.