My My Page or Your My Page?

[Greg R. Fishbone]

I'm so amazed and grateful for all the folks who accepted my invitation to check out this new social site, kick the tires, and drive it around the block. The natural next question becomes, what next? What's it all for, and what can you do once you're here? I'll post some suggestions starting with this one:

Customize your My Page

Everyone who signs up for a MyNESCBWI account gets a My Page. You can get there by clicking on the My Page link in the top menu, or on your picture or name anywhere they appear, or by entering a memorable URL that you can set on your settings page. You can click on somebody else's name or picture to see their My Page page, and they can see yours.

Your My Page can be personalized and customized with all the information you want to share with your fellow MyNESCBWIans. Some examples...

• There's a headline at the top of the page--Mine is currently a default slogan that I like to use.
• There's a text block you can use to talk about yourself--I put a short biography into mine.
• There's an RSS block you can use to pull in content from another website--I used mine to display my latest LiveJournal blog post.
• There's a link to upload an avatar image to represent yourself--Mine is a photo of me with my book and my lucky shirt.
• There's a link to change the style of your My Page--Mine is currently set up to look like a sheet of legal notepaper.
• There are buttons to change the settings on each content block, and the blocks can be dragged and dropped into whatever order you prefer.

By the time you're done, your My Page won't look like anyone else's but yours, and you can keep changing it any time the mood strikes. Next we can talk about adding content, adding friends, and linking to other parts of the site.

[M.K. Kildor]

How is it that a writer can't think of anything to say? Guess I'll have to ask my character Katie while she's still around, what she thinks would be a good comment! It's nice to meet you all. I look forward to dropping in.