opiummmm has offerred to start writing the portions that haven't been drafted yet, so here are some notes explaining the scope of the Guides that will make up this chapter. If anyone else has ideas to contribute, speak up.Guide: Viewing journal entries
In the table of contents, this will be the first of all the Guides. It should be understandable to someone who's never seen the site before. Imagine the reader doesn't have a journal yet, but they want to read someone else's. The main subject matter is stuff so obvious it hardly has to be documented: how to move between Recent Entries and the various Calendar pages. However, in the details, there are some points well worth making. URLs for journal pages should be fully documented. Explain why the day view doesn't always show as many entries as are listed in the calendar. Tout the benefits of the under-used month-by-month subject view.
This Guide should promote the basic concept behind LiveJournal: being able to view posts either as part of the writer's own journal, or on a subscription basis (the Friends view). Mention that having an account allows you to create your own Friends view, and to view Friends-only entries of users who befriend you. However, on Mentuhotep's recommendation, these features will be described in a separate Guide, so don't do more here than list the relevant benefits and provide a link to more information.
When this Guide is released, FAQ #70 should become an answer to whatever Calendar-related question is most frequently asked in Support -- maybe "Can I post to my calendar?", which is partly answered in the first paragraph of the existing FAQ page.
Guide: Profiles
The Guide to Profiles will describe the User Info and Community Info pages. This may turn out to be one of the shortest Guides, but certain facts probably wouldn't fit anywhere else. Emphasize the toolbar, because it's easily overlooked. List all of the sections that can appear (because users with new accounts won't have all of them). However, most or all of the individual sections will be documented elsewhere, so provide links to more information where possible, rather than describing the sections. Update:
highway started writing this Guide on Nov. 27.Guide: Topic Directory
This Guide will replace the existing Topic Directory FAQs -- with the exception of "Can I be an administrator?", which is being moved into a different Guide. The current plan is not to write new material, but to combine the existing FAQ answers into a single document listing
patrick as author and somebody else as editor. Update: opiummmm prepared this Guide on Nov. 27.Guide: Searching for Journals
This is the part of Chapter 1 I'm most eager to see. It should answer the broad question, "How can I find interesting journals?" Lots of possible methods could be mentioned. For coverage of certain topics, like searching by Interest, readers should be referred to other Guides, but other topics, like the Multisearch form, should be fully documented in this Guide.
Guide: Interests
This Guide was prepared way back, by
genders and eideteker. I believe beardoc is looking into doing the next revision. Update: I partially rewrote this Guide on Nov. 17.Guide: Where to Learn More
Draft already prepared. Comments welcome.