Help - Edosia - Distraction-free publishing for artists

The Help-files

I bid you for a bit of patience. I am slowly but steadily building up this help section. Report all your uncatered questions and problems here. I'll add them to this section.

How do I create a site?

After registering for an account, a default site will automatically be created for you. From the 'Manage' page you can change the settings for this site and tweak it to your likings. Of importance here are the buttons under 'Manage your site'. You can find them in the sidebar. 'Edit general settings' lets you change the general properties. 'Edit design and content' lets you alter the look and feel. There are a number of site designs you can choose from, and advanced users can even add their own stylesheet tweaks to create the most sophisticated custom designs. You can use your own custom domain if you want, and if you have a Google Analytics account, you can start tracking site usage statistics in minutes.

With Edosia, you can create as many sites as you like. From the 'Manage' page, simply click the 'Create a new Edosia site'. After filling in the short form, you'll now have two sites. To switch from one site to the other, simply switch to the site you want to manage in the 'Switch to another site' section at the bottom right of the 'Manage' page.

How do I manage a site?

You always login through Edosia.org. Once signed in, you'll be automatically redirected to a dashboard (the 'Manage'-page) from where you can manage the site. Using the 'Manage bar' at the top you can easily switch between the dashboard and your site. This is currently not the case if you have a custom domain, but we're working on this issue.

If you have more than one site, simply switch between sites in the 'Switch to another site' section at the bottom right of the 'Manage' page.

How do I create posts?

Creating posts is a breeze. Click the 'Create a new post' button and voila: you can start creating content. For text markup, Edosia chose to use the Textile markup system instead of a WYSIWYG tool (read here why). At first it might look like a hassle, but you'll learn to appreciate it later (believe me on this one). A small manual has been added for your convenience to the post creation form.

You can save your posts as drafts or publish them. Saved as draft they will not be shown to the public, so you can use this mechanism to write your posts in multiple writing sessions. I'll be working hard on this post creation section, making it more easy to use, and doing automatic saves Gmail style. One more thing: if you date posts in the future, they will not be published until that date.

How do I create pages?

Creating pages happens in much the same way as creating posts. Just like posts, you can save pages as draft. In this case they are not visible to the public. Pages can be ordered by dragging and dropping them in the right position on Manage dashboard.

Pages can have sub-pages as well. Currently Edosia supports only one sublevel, meaning that sub-pages with sub-pages are not allowed. Also keep in mind that when you do have sub-pages, changing the display order of the pages/sub-pages is handled on the Page Edit form instead of on the Manage-page.

Adding uploaded photos

Making your posts and pages look great with uploaded photos is very easy in Edosia. First, you add your files to the system through the 'Manage Uploaded Files' page. Try it, click 'Upload a file' and add an image to the system. All uploaded files are automatically sliced to the right dimensions (you don't need to do that) and become part of a multimedia library that will always be ready for you while creating content (not tied to one post or page).

Before you can add uploaded files to your content, you have to place the file in 'your basket' (while still in the 'Manage Uploaded Files' page). Once it is in there the file will be available to you while creating content. To add a file from the basket to your content (be it posts, page or general site content), just click the 'Add' button.

Now your almost done, but you still have to position the images in your text. This is done by using the codes next to the image in your text: e.g. !1!, !2(right)! or !3(left)!.

Adding other multimedia

Adding embedded multimedia (Youtube movies, Slideshare presentations, ...) to your site's posts or pages is a piece of cake. These sites always offer an Embed code. This can be seen here in the example of Youtube. Just copy this code and paste it into the textfield for your post or page. Edosia takes care of the rest. If the end result is not to your liking, just drop me a line and i'll add a rule to the engine. Some services do need a bit of a helping hand sometimes. But once it is known in Edosia, subsequent embeds work flawlessly.

Multiple languages support

Currently Edosia supports sites in English and Dutch. This means that if you select Dutch as the language for a site, the site framework, the dates, commenting facilities will be in Dutch. As we get through the alpha stage of the application, and demand is sufficiently high, we will add more languages to the pack.

Please note that the management facilities of Edosia are entirely in English. Translating it to Dutch is on my list of priorities, but it is not at the top of that list.

Adding Google Analytics tracking

Are you curious about who is visiting your site? Do you want to know which pages or posts are the most popular? Google Analytics tracks all these things for you, and integration with Edosia is easy.

To set up Google Analytics for your site, just follow a few simple steps. First sign up for a free Google Analytics account: start here. If you are not familiar with the service, you can read more about it here.

Then, within Google Analytics, create an account for your site. Use your Edosia site url ("address.edosia.org") or if you are using a custom domain, use that url instead (e.g. "mydomain.com"). Copy the Google Analytics Domain ID for your site. This looks something like UA-123456-1. In the Edosia manage page, click 'Edit general settings' and paste the Google Analytics Domain ID into the Google Analytics field. Press 'Save your settings' and your all set! You can log into Google Analytics to see beautiful stats about your site.

Geotagging your content, working with geo-layers

It's very easy to add geographical identification metadata (i.e. Geotagging) to your content. While creating or editing posts, just add the address to the 'Geolocation' field. Examples could be 'Paris, France', or more detailed, 'Rue Duquesnoy 7 Brussels Belgium'. After saving, your post will automatically be geotagged. If you check the box below the 'Geolocation' field, the content becomes a 'Geobject' and will NOT be displayed on your blog as a post. It will only be viewable through the map interface.

Now how can you view your geotagged items on a map? Easy, there are two ways. First, check out our geo-layers section. There you can view the most recently created posts that are geotagged, but a lot more is possible. Try the example links you find at the bottom of each map and you see the flexibility of the system.

These are the possible layers: recent, recent near you, by tag, by site, by location, by user, by site/tag, by site/near you, by site/tag/near you, by site/location, by site/tag/location. By replacing the values in the example URLs you are empowered to create your own collections of geotagged content. E.g. http://edosia.org/geo/sites/<site address> will show all geotagged content for a certain site, http://edosia.org/geo/sites/<site address>tags/<tagname> will show content for that site tagged with a certain tag.

The Edosia Geo-layer pages have been created for the user's convenience. But you can also add maps on your own pages and posts. Just add the url for a geottaged content collection, place it between exclamation marks, and voila: the map will be added to your content (see picture above). You can see the result below:

Pretty cool, isn't it? And there's even more. If you need to add one of your Edosia geotagged collections to an external webpage, use our nifty widget to do so. You can even set the width and height of the map yourself. The image below shows an example that you may adapt to suit your own needs.

Not for the faint of heart at this moment, but we're working hard to make it more user-friendly in the future.

Integrating with Mailchimp Email lists

Do you need newsletter support for your site? No problem! Edosia integrates with the Mailchimp email list application. Mailchimp makes it easy to send email newsletters to your audience, by providing really powerful tools that are simple to use at the same time.

Using mailchimp is free if you have a small audience or if you just want to try it out. If your site grows larger, there are a number of affordable plans you can choose from. There are a number of resources on how to work with Mailchimp, including a series of useful videos. Check them out if you're interested.

Making the connection with Mailchimp from Edosia is a breeze. First, you'll need a Mailchimp account. You can get one for free here. After you've created a list for your site, two values are of importance to Edosia. First of all: the unique list ID. You can find it under 'List settings' (see picture below). The list id looks like this: d78ad7430a. Write it down and move to the next value, the API key.

You can create an API key from the account dashboard. You'll find a link on the top left of your screen (after being logged in of course). There you click on API Keys and Info (see pictures below). Finally, copy the Valid API key value. If there is no key created, click "Add a Key". Your API key looks like this: a67cb8e2b4de4fd0a0bf34c2ad36808d.

With these two values you go to the site settings for your Edosia site. Click the 'Edit general settings' button at the sidebar of your dashboard and enter both values in the designated areas (see picture below). Click save and an email list subscribe/unsubscribe form will have been automatically added to your site. If a user subscribes/unsubscribes from your site, this information is automatically sent to Mailchimp. Of course, you manage your email campaigns from the Mailchimp interface. And more functionality, like a history page with the older newsletters automatically accessible from your site are foreseen as future additions.

Easy, is it not? By default, this form will appear in the sidebar on the right of your blog page. In addition, you may add the form to any of the custom pages you've created for your site as well. Do this by checking the box in the Edit form for your page.

Set up a custom domain

With Edosia, you can use your own domain names. Custom domains let you host your site with a URL like "www.mydomain.com" instead of "address.edosia.org". It can however be a bit tricky to set up, and is only recommended for advanced users. If you are uncomfortable with this kind of thing, ask a friend who's done it before. She should be able to help you fairly quickly.

First you will need to buy a domain from a registrar like GoDaddy, Hostbasket or another one. This usually costs between 10 and 20eur per year. Then you'll need to follow the registrar's instructions to point the domain's A-record (IP address) to 209.20.94.3. Please note that you need to change your domain's or sub-domain's A Record, not its nameservers. And, you don't need to forward your domain, you only need to change its A Record.

Once you've done this, you may need to wait up to 72 hours for the change to take effect. If the domain is set up properly, you should see an Edosia page that says that your domain points in the right direction when you visit your domain. Almost done!

Now log in to Edosia and click 'Edit general settings' on the Manage page. There, in the 'Use a custom domain field', you add your domain name (ie. "mywebsite.com", so without the 'http:' or the 'www' parts!). Click "Save your settings", and if everything went right, visiting your domain should now show your Edosia site!

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