Here are some Help Resources on the CUNY Academic Commons and Elsewhere:
CUNY Academic Commons Help:
CUNY Academic Commons Codex – our main help resource
WordPress Help!! Group – join the group to ask questions on the group forum
CUNY Academic Commons Tour – learn more about different parts of the site
Frequency Asked Questions wiki page
Help blog
Email support
You can give the Commons team feedback and bug reports by clicking on the gray FEEDBACK button next to the scrollbar on the right-hand side of the Commons homepage
General WordPress Help:
WordPress Codex – main documentation of the platform. Check out the Getting Started section
Writing Posts – General help on writing a post in WordPress
WordPress TV
WordPress TV How-To Videos
As far as I can figure out, Questions/Suggestions/Discussion does not have a reply or comment box so I’m coming here.
Question: Is there any address book for user’s name available when sending a message? How are we supposed to know the user’s name? (It’s easier, of course, when the addressee is a “friend.”)
Question: Now with so many categories above, how can we go from one category to another without losing our work in the previous category. E.G. I may want to reference something in My Messages so I can ask about it here, but if I open that window (or room) I lose this current information.
Question: How does the “Discussion” in Question/Suggestion/Discussion differ from our ongoing discussion? Kinda confusing.
As far as I can figure out, Questions/Suggestions/Discussion does not have a reply or comment box so I’m coming here.
Good point! I’ll point this out to Scott.
Question: Is there any address book for user’s name available when sending a message? How are we supposed to know the user’s name? (It’s easier, of course, when the addressee is a “friend.”)
If you’re talking about the email system on the Commons (what you see under “My Messages”), yes, there is an address book. Just start typing someone’s name, and their avatar should pop up. If that doesn’t work for you, please use the “Feedback” tab on home page of the site (it appears elsewhere, as well) to let us know about the problem.
Question: Now with so many categories above, how can we go from one category to another without losing our work in the previous category. E.G. I may want to reference something in My Messages so I can ask about it here, but if I open that window (or room) I lose this current information.
Scott may want to chime in on this, but my suggestion would be to use a browser that allows for tabbed browsing. That way, you could have one tab open with your messages and one tab open with this blog.
Question: How does the “Discussion” in Question/Suggestion/Discussion differ from our ongoing discussion? Kinda confusing.
Another question for Scott. But maybe you can clarify: when you say “our ongoing discussion,” which discussion are you referring to? So far, we’ve had discussions via email, through the group discussion boards, and on the blog.
Hope some of this is helpful.
I used the tabbed browser too–often I’m looking at one page from this site while working on another. But this is really only necessary, if I’m understanding your problem correctly, when working on on making a comment (what you and I and Matt are doing here). Those can’t be saved and aren’t necessarily the most effective way to add things to this site. It’s better to add posts.
When you’re working on a post, you can save a draft at any time (and you should, just to be safe) and go to any other part of the site, then you can find the latest draft by clicking ‘posts’ on the left hand side of the dashboard.
So what we’re saying is, if you wanted to add something to, say, ‘questions/suggestions/discussion’ (more on this title in a second), you wouldn’t just post a comment, but rather you would create a post, then click ‘questions/suggestions/discussion’ category, and your post will appear on that page. I can clarify this if you’ve not done it before, but it’s very simple.
As for the confusing title, I entirely agree, and must confess that ‘questions/suggestions/discussion’ is an equivocation on my part, a placeholder while the group decided what it felt it needed. I would think the site requires a place for whatever random thoughts come up, and I was thinking this could be it, but we can call it whatever you like.
Hope that helps. Let me know if any of that needs clarifying.