Favourites! Remember our favourites on 360? I've often wanted to keep track of someone's blog without adding them to my friends list. Perhaps its just someone who writes interesting blogs, but not someone you necessarily want to call 'friend' or even 'buddy'. My friends list is very important to me. I prefer to have real friends there, but have been accepting people because there is no 'favourites'. Well, I found a way we can have favourites!
On your My Multiply, at the top right, click on "Custom". Once there, make sure that all of the top row of choices are unchecked (the people in your network). Under 'Groups', click on 'none'. Now, the fun part, next to "Specific individuals" fill in, with spaces between the names, the user name (the name under the profile pic on their page) of the person you want to add. Filter by type... all posts (or you can customise this part) and check 'only unread', again, this is a personal preference. Label your filter. I have mine labelled 'Favourites'. Yes, I'm original ;) Click 'Ok' and you're done. On your "My Multiply" go back to the far right and click on customise, then click on the filter you want, in this case, Favourites. There you have it... your Favourites!
Now I have to figure out how to edit it... that should be interesting...
On guestbooks... yes, this is a touchy subject. I work with gaphics all the time and love them. I love seeing a cheerful greeting. Thing is, a) many of the graphics come with nasty additives that the person using the code doesn't know of, not to mention freaky little floaties that cover a page or ads that block the edit/delete buttons; b) many of the graphics are huge and distort the page, especially for people like me with archaic smaller screens... folk go to so much trouble to put stunning themes on their sites only to have them warped by large graphics; c) the most important point... I have had a couple of friends leave Multiply and some who are still here, but struggling. Not everyone is on broadband. Once you add a bunch graphics, especially animated graphics, videos, slide shows, etc to your main page, it makes it really hard for anyone with a slow connection, or who's internet is having a bad hair day, to access your page. On a couple of pages, I know to click on the link and find something else to do, as my whole screen freezes for the time that page takes to load and I'm on adsl, not dial up.
There is a way to disable html coding in your guestbook by adding some code to your customised css. If you're interested, contact me and I'll give it to you.
On music... read my (c) comment on graphics. I love music! ... but.... My suggestion here is that if you want music on your main page, make it so that it doesn't play automatically. I know Imeem has that option and youtube, you have to click to play it anyway. Bear in mind that not everyone has the same tastes too. I have a very eclectic selection of friends... one who is enjoying her John Denver playlist may not enjoy landing on a page where Slipknot* is holding forth. To accomodate fans of both types, choosing to click to play the music is a great way to go and who knows, some may even broaden their music tastes that way. *Note, I have no idea what Slipknot sounds like. I got the name from Tat when I asked her for an example of 'wild' music LOL
When you rest your cursor on a friend's photo, you get a popup twirly thing with the option to go to their guestbook/add them/delete them/report them/etc. I, personally, don't like this feature, as when I click on their display picture, I go to where their guestbook is anyway, so I disabled it. If you want to disable it, go to "My Multiply" and look to the right at the top, above the 'custom' button and click on "Preferences". Once there, check "Hide mini-profile mouseover popups". While you're in there, you might want to check "Show subscribe, pin and remove links", as it's a very useful feature.
One thing I love about the My Multiply page is that if someone uploads a new photo, graphic, music, video, whatever, I get to know about it - especially now that I have my Favourites set up too. And don't you just love the fact that once you're on a page, you don't need to change the page to comment?
And now that I have blogged about something everyone already knows about and is probably either thoroughly bored, I will post the blog and go out to make an appointment or two. Tomorrow I really need to get into town to do a bit of Christmas shopping. It's already very late to be mailing stuff overseas.
