A U G - Chapter 1: Navigating The Website (Rev 2) Poem by Brian Johnston

PoemHunter 101

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Note: Any text topped and bottomed by '########' deserves special attention.


1. The Poet's Page -
The poet's page is divided into six main vertically stacked sections really....


I. 'Biography Section' - which appears to the left of the poet's picture or Avatar if he/she has supplied one.

II. 'Search Command'

III. 'New Poems' Section

IV. 'Popular Poems' Section

V. 'More Poems of XXXXX YYYYYYY' Command

VI. 'Comments about XXXXX YYYYYYY'



I. BIOGRAPHICAL: Section
This section can be quite valuable in getting or giving readers a sense of who the poet is, and as reader or as poet you should give careful consideration to the material published there. Especially to be avoided is information of a personal nature that could allow others to actually learn street addresses, email addresses, or telephone numbers. Use this space to give valuable insights into the poetry that follows, as well as who you are as a poet/human level. If you are a reader it can get you beyond a difficult encounter with a first poem that otherwise might be off-putting.

This section also allows the poet to give you links to previously published work that might interest you.

On the right side:
Many do not notice the plus and minus signs under the poet's picture or 'avatar' which allows the reader to give a general 'thumbs up' or 'thumbs down' to how you feel about his/her presentation.

On the left side:
'CLICK HERE to add this poet to your My Favorite Poets' does just what it says it will do, and helps you keep track of poets that you might wish to revisit in the future. See xxxxxxx for details of how you can view you own list of 'My Favorite Poets.'

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II. SEARCH COMMAND: Section
Let's say that you want to search for a poem by an author and you can't remember the exact title but you remember that the title (or the poem itself) had the word 'Girl' in it. Typing 'Girl' into the empty white box to the left of the word SEARCH and then clicking on the word search will find all poems that contain the word 'Girl.' This can be very handy if the poet you are visiting has written many poems.

After the 'Search Command' has done it's magic there could be many poems found that satisfy the search. If that is the case you can refine the search further by choosing a new way of viewing the poems found. Search will by default organize the poems alphabetically 'ORDER BY TITLE' but you can also organize them in two other ways, ORDER BY DATE and ORDER BY HIT which can be helpful.

If you select ORDER BY DATE for example, the poems will be displayed in THE ORDER OF THEIR BEING POSTED on PH. Unfortunately there is no way as yet for a poet to assign a poem it's true date of creation. The only date that matters is when it was posted on PH.

If you select ORDER BY HIT then the poems will be displayed in THE ORDER OF THE AMOUNT OF ATTENTION THEY HAVE RECEIVED, a kind of 'popularity index' as it were.

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III. NEW POEMS: Section
The NEW POEM section gives you a way to quickly locate the most recent poems of the poet whose page you are on. The fact that there are two columns of newer poems displayed side by side does give you a larger number of poems to choose from but then limits the number of words that can be displayed in the poem's title which can be problematic. When a poems title is followed by a red text '-new-' this means that the poem so identified is one of the poet's latest poems. Any poems in the NEW POEM section which does not have a red '-new-' appended to it is simply an older NEW POEM.

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IV. POPULAR POEMS: Section
The POPULAR POEM section gives you a quick way to locate a poet's most popular poems as a quick way of acquainting you with a poet. It seems to me that this popularity however is defined as spanning perhaps the poems popularity over the last few weeks as opposed to how many hits the poem has received since it was posted. I am not sure of how this works exactly.

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V. More Poems of XXXXX YYYYYYY: The Command
This is my favorite button to press on the whole Poet's Page. It is very powerful. Pressing it just once takes you to an Alphabetical Listing of every poem the poet has written. This allows a clever poet for example who prefaces his poem's titles with categories to give you a unique way to explore his/her poetry. He can thus steer you to poems that share some unique characteristics, such as stages of life, or subject matter for instance in the ORDER BY TITLE display.

The ORDER BY DATE heading shows you all of his/her poems in the ORDER OF THEIR BEING POSTED from the most recently posted poems to the most ancient poems posted.

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But the POWER USER command here is the ORDER BY HIT arrangement which shows you all of the poems written by a poet with the poems that have been visited the most listed first.
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VI, Comments about XXXXX YYYYYYY: Section
This section is intended for general comments about the poet/author himself and what you like or don't like about his/her poetry, philosophy of life, style of writing, etc. Simply click on the command label...

'Click here to write your comments about XXXXX YYYYYYY'

and a box will appear where you can comment your heart out.

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2. Member Area
Note: You must have joined PoemHunter to take advantage of these special features. I have rearraged them slightly to suggest which the 13 activities are the most useful in general.

I. My Profile

II. Poem and Poet Settings

III. Inbox

IV. Outbox

V. My Friends

VI. My Ban List

VII Searc in the Porld Database

VII. My Postings

VIII. My Favorite Poems

IX. My Favorite Poets

X. Who is Online?

XI. Member's Nearby

XII. E-Bulletin Subscriptions

XIII. Search:


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I. My Profile
This section is pretty straight forward and needs little explanation. You must enter an email address and password if you wish for Poemhunter to inform you on your email site of new emails you have received on the PoemHunter site.



Change Picture Section:
You can change your picture here as well. The GIF or JPG Photo must be reduced in size to to a very small 80x80 pixel picture to be entered here successfully. This is the picture that will be used when someone adds you to their 'Friends of xxxx xxxxxxx' list. This list is a way that you can public proclaim your support for a particular poet.

Easily overlooked in the 'My Profile' area are Free Subscriptions, Message Settings, and Message Notifications...


Free Subscriptions Section:
The free subscriptions are PoemHunter emails to your regular email address that you have supplied them with your membership. You may want to try one or more of these subscriptions to see if you like it. You can cancel later easily if you don't like it by simply unchecking the box.



Message Settings Section:
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The POWER USER commands here allow you to control who can send you email on Poemhunter. This can protect you from Trolls or from members that you wish to block from sending you an email for any reason. You can......

A. Allow everyone to send you email

B. Allow only members you have identified (chosen) in your 'Friends of xxxx xxxxxxx' list to send you email, or...

C. Block all emails from everyone.
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Message Notifications Section:
You can choose to be notified by regular email when you get mail in you PoemHunter account. You actual email address always remains safe and is not disclosed to anyone. You can set a timer to control how often you get these notifications but I have never changed the default of 24 hours myself. There is also a box that you can check so that you are never notified when new email arrives. It will just sit in your PH mailbox until you get around to reading it. I recommend checking this box.Why clog your regular email box with you've got mail' notifications?



Three Final Command Options Section:
A. 'I do not wish to add video to my poems.'

This command is the reverse of what I think it should be. I would like to see instead...

a. Block all Audio from ever playing with my poems. Do not read my poems please or play background music. Check box to block both!

b. Block all videos from ever playing with my poems, especially advertisements. I would rather pay an annual membership fee than force my readers to put up with such ridiculous and tasteless antics. Check box to block all videos.


B. 'Do not allow others to see that I am online.'

This command allows you to block your name from appearing on the 'who is online' page. It should also block your name from being identified as being online for people who claim that you are their friend. A Troll could use this technique otherwise to harass you. A check in the box should block both. Does anyone know if it does or not?


C. 'Sign me in automatically on this computer.' Better not to use this one if people besides yourself use your computer. Otherwise you might be vulnerable to mail snoops. It is convenient but could be embarrassing. Check box for automatic sign in. I recommend that you do not check this box.


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II. Poem and Poet Settings
There are Five Command Groups under this heading. They are....

POEMS

TOOLS

POET PROFILE

TOOLS

REPORTS

OPTIONS

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Poems Section:
This section handles basic poem entry...


Submit a new poem-
The instructions in this section are complete and well thought out. You should be able to enter your poem and its title with little trouble. The first fly in the ointment really appears with the obscure last instruction in the text entry instructions...

'Do not use HTML codes'

Those of you who are grateful for the explanation of this inanity please send $1.00 US to 'The International Red Cross' in my name. Ha! PH has about 75.000 members. This donation will not bring about world peace, but it should feed quite a few hungry kids.

Basically this instruction means that you should avoid pairs of symbols in your titles or poem bodies like '< >' or you may get unexpected results. Almost any other symbol such as! , @, #, $, %, ^, &, *, (,) , _, _, +, +, [, ], ., /, ? , ~, and ` should be OK. If someone know better than this I will correct this information in the future.


Topic:
Another section likely to confuse the new PH user, the White Box next to Topic that contains greyed out letters that says 'Enter Topic' wants you to do just that. This is an attempt by Poemhunter to get you to put your poem into some kind of category. The problem is that PoemHunter will not accept many words such as Bush, or Hopelessness, or Fraternity, or Eggheads, etc. You see the problem. You have to discover one of their words that comes close to the category of your poem with only a little bit of help. You are basically on your own.

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POWER USER TIP - If worse comes to worse just call your poem a 'poem.' That works every time for me. 'Girl' also works.
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Please raise your hands everyone who has sent them a topic so that 'They can consider adding your topic to their acceptable list.' Maybe they can write the poem for me too? Ha!



Want to add a Video or a Voice? :
Well thanks for asking but no I don't. I just want to write poetry. What a novel idea.



POWER COMMANDS:
Please pay special attention to the next two command. They will become very important if you ever have to deal with a Troll on Poemhunter.

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'Allow readers to vote this poem? ' If you are having trouble with Trolls you will be better off answering this question 'No! '

'Allow readers to write comments on this poem? ' I usually answer this question with a 'Yes.' It is much easier to delete a Trolls comments on a daily basis than it is to correct a high score that you are proud of.
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I will have much more to say about dealing with Trolls when I get to that section. I promise! For the present I will just focus mostly on the basics.

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Tools Section:
Coming Soon...

PS: No one is paying me a cent to write this manual. If you appreciate my efforts personally however a kind word of encouragement would be appreciated. When I started this project Poemhunter called it spam and threatened to remove it from the site. They still could do that so your vote of appreciation might just save my project.