Table of Contents (Send me feedback, corrections, ideas or - better yet - links to great Radio documentation written by community members or by yourself. Download these documents in a zipped format for your PC or your Macintosh.) Introduction Every great software product deserves great documentation. If this isn't it, it won't be for lack of effort ... Talk(ing) Radio Userland Philosophy 101: Helping Us Write Userland has been pursuing the same fundamental goal for over a decade. Dave Winer, its founder, has pursued the same essential goal for twenty-five years. Userland Philosophy 102: Internet-Centered Authoring The browser is a lousy place within which to write stuff. This should tip us off that Userland must have darn good reasons for choosing the browser anyway. These guys aren't dumb. Post, Link and Annotate Action. Reaction. Interaction. Radio provides elegant support for three rhetorical devices. Which one suits your expressive requirements today? Two Views of Radio Radio is (choose one) a weblog on your personal computer, a website published to the Internet, a desktop Windows application or all of the above. Hint. It's all of the above. Learning HTML This page lists some of the best web sites around for learning HTML. Beginners welcome. Getting Started What Is Radio Userland? Documenting Userland's introductory explanation of Radio en route to downloading and installing it for the first time. How To Download Radio Userland It's easy, but that's what they always say. If you are having problems or would enjoy a bit of hand-holding, this is for you. What Is An Installer? Explaining how the Microsoft Windows standard installer works for beginners downloading Radio. How To Install Radio Userland An introduction as well as links to topics that help beginners get from here to there: their first post to a Radio weblog. How To Get Your User Number Radio assigns a unique number to you to manage your public weblog on its Community Server and other servers. How To Retrieve and Enter Your Serial Number If you misplace your serial number, you can recover it from Userland. You'll need it if you ever need to do a complete reinstall of Radio. How To Buy Radio If you really need this topic in a serious fashion, Userland is in big trouble. Don't forget to give me a commission along the way. How Many Copies Of Radio Do I Need? Almost certainly, the answer is 'one', but I tell you why. How To Get Radio Help Some words and tips on getting needed support from Userland when all else fails. Posting To Your Weblog Blogging What Is A Blogger? The world's simplest definition. What Is A Weblog? 'A weblog is just a website organized by time'. Of Weblogs and Websites Yet another take on simplifying our online life. Speak In Your Own Voice Otherwise, why are you blogging? You know things that no one else in the world does, by definition. Share those with us. We really want to know. Talking Terms Radio unavoidably borrows, modifies and - sometimes - creates new jargon. This topic meditates on some of the jargon and interweaves the pieces together. Enlightening. Hopefully. Creating and Editing Posts What Is The Difference Between WYSIWYG And Source Editing? If you are new to Radio, this topic will clear up a common area of confusion. How To Post To Your Weblog It only takes six steps and four of them are the same: write. Setting Prefs For WYSIWYG Editors The Radio method is straightforward but the same cannot be said for the way that browsers themselves are implemented by their creators. How To Enter Text Into Your Weblog While browser-centered editing is awkward at best, it is also extremely convenient. This topic describes the most important features and techniques for making the process as painless as possible. Keeping Two Browser Windows Open This allows you to view content in one (browser) window while working on another weblog task in a second, third or fouth (browser) window. Copy and Paste URLs Sometimes, you will want to paste a URL into your weblog or a template. There is slightly more to this than may meet the eye. How To Post To Weblog Categories A simple introduction to categorizing your posts. How To Create Shortcuts Use Shortcuts to associate a name or label with a longer text for Radio to substitute wherever it sees the name in your weblog. Inserting Graphics How To Place Pictures In Your Weblog This how-to will not turn you into a graphics designer but it will make you comfortable with integrating graphics into your weblog. Grabbing Graphics From The Internet A simple technique for cutting- or copying-and-pasting graphics from your web browser to your local computer file system. Copy and Paste Graphics Into Your Weblog What it says. Creating and Deleting Stories What Is The Difference Between Posts and Stories? You enter text into them the same way, but Radio stores them in different places and manages their archiving and retrieval distinctively. Deleting Stories Story deletions require a bit more effort (and a different method) than deleting posts. Creating A Link To Your Home Page This somewhat complex topic will help you understand how to modify the main template to add a link-to-home page button for your weblog stories. Look and Feel What Is A Template? Templates separate form and content to simplify your web design and make it easier for you to manage your writing over time. What Is A Macro? Radio uses macros liberally to substitute text and other nifty content elements to automatically assemble our weblogs. This is a big-time Radio building block and well worth the effort to understand so you can edit your templates. How To Download and Swap Themes You can change the look-and-feel of your weblog in a few minutes. Or change it back. Subscribing and Annotating Your Weblog What Is Publish and Subscribe? Publish and subscribe is not only a cool technical mechanism (Radio's News Aggregator implements it for you in your weblog) but a signficant advance for the civility of Internet collaboration. How To Post A News Item To Your Weblog Annotating posts from other weblogs to which you are subscribed and republishing them on your weblog is elegantly easy within Radio. Come on. Just do it. How It All Fits Together How To Organize Your Weblog Posts Really, how to understand and take advantage of the way that your weblog home page is designed. How To Use Your Calendar Sure, we are all familiar with calendaring. Still, this may help you bridge from your intuitive understanding to the way that calendars are used in weblogs. How To Clear Out Your Weblog It isn't necessarily obvious, but it is easy. You can delete your weblog contents and start over again if you wish. How To Clear Out Your Weblog - The Advanced Course Blow it all away by getting at the source - all those Radio Userland folders. How To Create Navigation Links You will use navigation links as a key means to organize access to sites of greatest interest to you and your readers.   Life On (And Off) The Cloud Upstreaming What Is Upstreaming? During the upstreaming process, Radio flows or publishes your content from the local weblog on your own machine to your public weblog, either to the Userland server or a different Internet server that you have chosen. What Is The Difference Between Upstreaming and Working Offline? While Radio consistently applies its local-or-public model (depending on whether you are composing or publishing your weblog content), it can become confusing at times. Hopefully, this will dispel the fog. How To Turn Upstreaming On Or Off Upstreaming is one of the foundation concepts behind Radio's design. You can manage upstreaming to suit your posting style and calibrate your machine's physical performance. Correcting for Blurred Vision: Local vs Online Posts We need to understand the difference between our local and our published weblog and why the two don't synchronize bi-directionally. How To Work Offline Online? Offline? Huh? I try my best to unravel some rather confusing concepts. Servers What Is A Server? ... Just a computer that offers services which other computers (clients) can receive. What Is The Community Server? Userland offers free weblog hosting for you during the period of your active subscription on its own Internet servers. What Is A Static IP? It's like your permanent street address. How would you like to ask the Post Office to calculate your address for each letter you received? What Is My Local IP? We all share the same local IP (Internet Protocol) address, enabling Radio to implement its local-public weblog model cleanly. What Is The URL For My Weblog? Radio gives you two URLS: an entirely local one on your own computer where you will compose your weblog content and a public, external URL in the location where your content has been published. What Is Hosting? If the Internet is still unfamiliar to you, a short lesson on this concept may help you understand Radio more easily.   Radio Housekeeping What Is The Radio Menu? An overview of the persistent menu that appears at the top of all of your local weblog pages. How To Manage Your Home Page A topic that ties together and links to other topics relating to your local weblog home page. How To Inspect Your WWW Folder Understanding the contents of your www folder will accelerate your mastery of Radio. How To Open Your WWW Folder Much of your content is stored by Radio to a www folder on your local hard drive. Opening the folder and inspecting the contents will become increasingly useful to you as your Radio expertise grows. How To Backup Important Radio Files Understanding not only how to use Radio's automatic backup but also backup a few other valuable files may save you lots of frustration when murphy strikes. How To Update Radio Userland offers a state-of-the-art model for receiving product enhancements. How To Reinstall Radio While you may never need to reinstall Radio, there are a few subtleties involved that may repay some close attention.   Customizing Radio With Preferences Overview of Preferences A short roadmap to the entire system of preferences. Tweaking these enables you to customize Radio to suit yourself. Overview: Basic Preferences Basic Preferences determine identity and upstreaming options. Overview: Weblog Preferences Weblog preferences give you control over your day-to-day posting and archiving options. Overview: Templates Preferences Templates preferences allow you to inspect the actual HTML contents of all templates used by Radio as well as edit them to change your weblog's look-and-feel. Overview: Internet and Server Settings Internet and server settings allow you to fine tune the way that your local copy of Radio communicates with the greater world out there in the Internet cloud. Overview: News Aggregator The News Aggregator is one of Radio's unique value-added contributions to the blogging world. Overview: Advanced Preferences Advanced preferences cover areas not easily sectioned elsewhere - you know, the kitchen sink. 3:32:23 PM