User blogs

When you get notified about a Newsfeed story there is a link to that story in the email. It looks like this.

https://gamerplus.org/newsfeed/1548

But where can you find that link. ZDL pointed out that the timestamp is the permalink.

It might say 3 minutes ago or it might say Yesterday and a time or Nov 1.

Click on that link and it will go to that Newsfeed story on it's own page. Copy the address bar to get your link.

Or right click on the link and Copy Link Location from the context menu.

Thanks to ZDL for helping me figure this out. I never realized that the timestamp was the link.

Thanks

Gamer+ News October 07, 2019

Inspired Unreality is once again hosting the Related To Geeks Podcast tonight at 9:00 PM in the gamerplus chatrooms at Tenkar's Tavern on Discord. We will be discussing putting on local conventions. Inspired Unreality is an open game chat, everyone is welcome to the discussion. After we finish recording the Related To Geeks Podcast we will continue with our usual open game chat where anyone can suggest a topic and all gaming is on topic.

There has been discussion about Buddhist UFO seekers and wizard's pointy hats so weird is the new normal at Gamer+. Or maybe it's the old normal?

CarlHeyl has been posting photos of his vintage miniatures, all painted up pretty.

https://gamerplus.org/photo/useralbum/CarlHeyl/68

I posted some of Mike's Free Maps with a link to more.

https://gamerplus.org/photo/useralbum/hairylarry/70

Hat tip to Froth and his Thought Eater blog where I found Mike's Maps.

https://gamerplus.org/user/Froth

I also posted a help blog called "Profiles, the Wall, Newsfeed, Dashboard, and Main". I'm the webmaster and I still don't understand everything but I tried to lay out some basics for beginners at Gamer+.

https://gamerplus.org/blogs/61

And ZDL posted a picture of her super cool bamboo dice tower.

https://gamerplus.org/photo/view/456/latest

Now that's cool.

I ended my blog post above with a paragraph about linking to your profile. Whether it's a link on your blog or a social network or just telling your friends about us we appreciate your help growing Gamer+

We are here to promote your game content. Please send me your links or add them by clicking Links on Gamer+.

Thanks,
Hairy Larry
hairylarry@deltaboogie.com

Your profile is your most important page. This is where you let other gamers know what you're interested in. You can get to your profile or other gamers profiles by clicking on the username or the avatar. On a person's profile page you can message them, send a Friend request, or follow them.

Your profile can optionally have The Wall. On a wall there are no replies or likes. The discussion on the wall just continues from what was entered on the wall before. A linear thread so to speak.

Newsfeed posts have the header NEWSFEED above them. Newsfeed posts can be made from a profile, the dashboard, or main. Newsfeed posts have likes and comments. So they are a little bit more like Facebook than The Wall. On the Newsfeed text entry boxes there is a triangle made from several lines in the bottom right corner. You can use this to resize the text box so you can see more of your entry. When you click in a Newsfeed text box a camera icon and a Send button appears. Since you hit Send to make your post you can hit enter in a Newsfeed text box and post several paragraphs. The Newsfeed posts also have a smart link feature. Post a link on it's own line and Gamer+ will follow that link and try to provide information about it below the post.

Both The Wall and Newsfeed posts show you the camera Icon. Click on this to add a picture to your post.

The Dashboard has fewer posts than Main. I think it's mostly your friends or people you follow. Main shows a lot more posts and it also has a left column where it shows recent activity in other areas of Gamer+ like Photos, Videos, Groups, Events, and Links. Some of these areas in the left column allow you to sort the items differently to change what you see. The default is always Latest or most recently posted. Most of the areas in the left column also have action buttons at the bottom of the area allowing your to View All, Add New or Go to.

Although this seems like a lot to digest and takes a while to figure out I do want to reassure you that on Gamer+ no one is tracking you and trying to figure out what you ought to read or trying to increase your engagement. There are no algorithms at work behind the scenes and unless you choose differently you will see everything with the most recent activity at the top. Newest first.

One more thing about your profile. If you want to invite someone to view Gamer+ or post a Gamer+ link to your blog or website there is no better spot to send them than your profile. At the bottom of your profile page there are instructions on how to create a link. If you post links to your profile on social media or other websites you will be helping Gamer+ grow.

Thanks

The RSS Feeds in the footers are blogs, vlogs, or podcasts by gamers on Gamer+. If you click on Podcasts you get a feed of only Podcasts. At the bottom of the Blogs page is a feed of only blogs.

The real gem in this lot is the link to View last 60 items here in the footer on ever page. This is a great way to find a bunch of recently posted gaming info.

If you have a blog, vlog, podcast, or anything else with an RSS feed let me know and I will add it.

Message me on my profile - hairylarry

Thanks

I have added a new question to your profile page, My blogs, vlogs, podcasts, websites.

So click on you avatar or username and add your stuff. These links do not have to be game related. Of course, if you have a gaming blog, vlog, or podcast we all want the link.

You can also post the link to your company if you are a publisher, artist, cartographer, writer or other creative.

Also if you post these links in Links on the top menu they will appear on the Main page until they scroll off. And they will appear in the sidebar on your profile page. These are good. But there's nothing quite as good as having your links front and center. Click on your name. See your links.

Starting a new project? Putting it on the web? Running a Kickstarter? Add the links.

Here's the link to my profile where you can see how this looks.

gamerplus.org/user/hairylarry

Thanks

Doseyclwn asks "Where is the appropriate place for me to place work on a module/adventure and get people to comment on it?"

If you click Blog in the menu and add a new blog with your module text and a request for comments that will appear in the Newsfeed and gamers will be able to comment. Then I would also go into the Writing Modules and Module Assets Group and post a link to the blog again asking for feedback. That would probably have a longer life in the view of those interested in writing modules. You can also message gamers you know who DM or work on modules and ask them if they would take a look and give you some feedback.

I think this can be generalized to many situations besides writing modules, basically anytime you are posting about a project hoping to get feedback.

Another advantage to posting as a Blog is that you can add tags which gives another search path to discovery for those interested.

I started writing this post on the Newsfeed but when I realized that it needed the tags, meta and help, I copied it and posted it as a blog.

Blogs also have the advantage of that Edit button making it the preferred way to post anything longer than two paragraphs.

TheEvilDM pointed out that email notifications weren't working so I googled around and found out about a cron job that takes care of that and other stuff.

I checked the cron jobs for Gamer+ and sure enough, there it was, trying to run a program on yourdomain.com. So I changed that to gamerplus.org and sure enough, email notifications started working.

So, you might be getting some email notifications. And you might not want to get email notifications.

In the upper right corner there is a dropdown menu with your username on it. Pick My Preferences. Then pick Mail Notifications. You can fine tune which notifications you want to get. This will control the notifications that you get in your Notifications menu, right next to your username in the upper right.

I left these all on because that little Notifications menu helps me keep up with my discussions on Gamer+.

Scroll down to the bottom of that page and you will find a section called, Also send by email.

So you can set it to Immediately if you want to receive an email as soon as someone responds to your post.

You can set it to Never it you would rather not receive notification emails at all.

And in the middle is the wonderful "Automatically (if you don't show up on the site for 2 days)". In other words, don't send me emails if I'm on Gamer+ checking them myself. But if I get busy for a few days I appreciate the reminders.

Additionally on the My Preferences screen there is a General tab where you can set your timezone and subscribe/unsubscribe from the Gamer+ newsletter.  We haven't sent one of these yet but we probably will sometime. In fact a weekly email isn't a bad idea. Think I'll start that today.

So you can turn that off too if you want to.

Thanks

If you have a blog, podcast, video channel, or other website and you want to send your readers to your profile page on Gamer+ you can copy the link code at the bottom of your profile page just above the footer.

Drag your mouse over the code or triple click to turn it blue. Hit Ctrl-C to copy it to the clipboard. Go to your website code and wherever you want the link hit Ctrl-V to paste the code in. Then change your_username to your username on Gamer+. Be sure to get it exactly right. It is case sensitive so it has to be capitalized just like it is on Gamer+. Test the link.

This is a great way to support Gamer+. Your readers will enjoy reading your profile and they may decide to sign up for a Gamer+ account.

Thanks

There's always room for improvement, especially on any web project, but I have all 4 legs reaching the ground so I'll take a minute to explain our new aggregated RSS feed featuring always new content created by Gamer+ gamers.

Most blogs, podcasts, and video channels have RSS feeds. (or atom feeds, same thing but different) When people follow a podcast so they don't miss any episodes they often use the RSS feed so their podcast is updated in their feedreader or even auto downloaded to their device.

Many of the gamers on Gamer+ are content creators. I am, Carl is, The EvilDM is, and lots more. As you will see. So my idea was to find a way to promote their work right here on this site to make it easy for gamers to find the podcasts, blogs, videos, etc. that other gamers on Gamer+ are creating.

So I installed Tiny Tiny RSS and TheEvilDM and I have been busy subscribing to all the feeds we can find that other gamers on this site have available.

If we missed you let us know in the comments. If you start a new web project let us know. Even if it doesn't have an RSS feed let us know. We want to feature your stuff.

So the four legs of the stool are:

1. A scrolling auto updating display of all the new posts on all the feeds we have subscribed to on Tiny Tiny RSS. This is on the left above the banner in the footer.

2. A link list to the homepages of 12 of these creators that changes each time you load a page. This is on the right above the banner in the footer.

3. An auto updating link list to 60 recent posts from the Gamer+ creators. You can access this link at the bottom left of item 2 above, the bottom left of the right block just above the footer. There, is that confusing enough? I think I'll just post the link here.

View last 60 items here

4. A manually updated categorized link list of all the homepages of every feed we have added to Tiny Tiny RSS. This is on the bottom right just above the banner and also on the far right in the footer next to Mobile version. And here's the link for that.

Gamer's Homepages

Did you notice I said manually updated? No, I don't type this stuff in. I run a program I wrote on the exported opml file from Tiny Tiny RSS and the program types it all in. Still it's a thing that has to happen so it won't always happen just as soon as the RSS feeds are updated. And it might happen before the RSS feeds are updated because there is often a delay of about an hour before new posts are displayed.

I am not done working on this but I am happy with it. It's really good. It's all there. It could be better. What else is new?

Like I said, if you're on Gamer+ we want to add your stuff. And if you're not on Gamer+, join, so we can add your stuff. There's a lot of content on Gamer+ already and more all the time. But the amount of content in these feeds that you can easily access right from the footer on every page is more than you will ever have time to consume.

So, Enjoy! And add a comment below.

Ok, if you scroll down you can see what I've been working on right above the banner in the footer of each page. The left hand box is an aggregated RSS feed including blogs, podcasts, and videos made by Gamer+ gamers. The right hand box is a link list to the home page of these blogs, podcasts, or video channels.

There are so many creative people here doing so many things I wanted to feature their work. By reading, listening, and viewing what they do you will get to know them better than you can just browsing Gamer+.

I have ideas to make this better. I'd like to put up a page that's a categorized link list with all the links in one place instead of just 12 at a time. So if you're looking for something to read you can check the Blogs category, if you want to listen while you're cleaning your office (lol) you can check the podcast category.

If you have ideas to improve this project or others please post them below in the comments.

It's really a big world out there and nobody has time to check out all the creative work that even some of us do. I can't even keep up with what my kids do! So after you listen to a podcast or watch a video give it a mention here on Gamer+. That will give others an incentive to make that connection.

And if you have a creative gaming endeavor, even if it doesn't have a feed, please post in the comments. I am going to devise a way to include links to projects that aren't feed friendly like fiction, art galleries, or other major projects.