photo credit Diana

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photo credit Jenn

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photo credit Sisterlisa

Show us your favorite memorable expressions!

Lisa (Sisterlisa) blogs at The HomeSpun Life and is a contributor at The Homeschool Post. She enjoys blogging, photography, and cooking. Her homeschooling family is active in their community and enjoys traveling with friends and family.

Most bloggers know to be careful to add the proper photo credit when using images in their posts. Yet there are always going to be new bloggers who aren’t as aware of the netiquette we have come to embrace and respect for one another. Many bloggers are using Pinterest as their image search for their posts. There is, however, some concern from the photographer’s perspective.

Happy ‘pinners’ excitedly add pins of their favorite finds and the Pinterest site grabs the images from your blogs and hosts them on their server. In addition to this, your image (now being seen on their site) is given an embed code so that any Pinterest user can snag your images and use them on their blogs. Although, they may not be checking for the photo credit.

It’s very important to be sure you’re adding the blog post URL to the pin so that the precise article source is properly credited. If you find a discrepancy in how your content is being displayed, you can select “Report Pin”.

Once you select “Report Pin” you can select “Other” and add your details there for them to moderate.  If you want to report that it’s your content you can click the message “Is this your intellectual property?” and it will take you here for further instructions.

This does present some concern for Pix-O-Sphere users since now their images on other blogs are linking back to Pinterest, instead of to Pix-O-Sphere, which our members rely on. When our users are hoping that their images are directing people to their albums here, they now are being redirected back to Pinterest instead. We are working to resolve this dilemma with Pinterest as soon as possible.

In the meantime, you can choose to use the auto generated watermark that Pix-O-Sphere offers to every member. You can see below that when I pinned Christin’s article, her image was pulled in, but her Pix-O-Sphere watermark remains and the credit source links back to her blog.

For more in depth analysis, swing over to My 3 Boybarians to partake in the discussion with Darcy and her readers.

Happy Pinning!

Lisa (Sisterlisa) blogs at The HomeSpun Life and is a contributor at The Homeschool Post. She enjoys blogging, photography, and cooking. Her homeschooling family is active in their community and enjoys traveling with friends and family.

Some topics can be quite controversial and before you know it; your comment section can become a battlefield. Each community has different guidelines and even with those guidelines, you will need to monitor your community with wisdom.

{photo credit Marybeth}

Each type of community needs to be approached with a variety of moderation techniques. A blog’s comment section needs to be moderated differently than a Facebook group. An online forum requires different moderation guidelines than your personal social networking circle. The method in which these communities need to be moderated is somewhat different because each one has varying access to all sorts of people. While a blog’s comment section can be moderated to publish when you’re ready, a Facebook page is open 24 hours a day with no ability to moderate while you’re sleeping.

These are things you need to keep in mind before you post a wild controversial topic. How you handle the initial article or ‘status starter’ can help determine the response you might receive from your audience. You also have no way of knowing what each person has faced during their day before they come upon your article. Sometimes we present ideas, clichés, and statements that can become triggers for people on the verge of hostility as it is.

While there is no way we can accurately and efficiently predict the response we’ll get in our online communities, there are steps we can take to take our best guess and write our articles to get a good momentum started to cultivate healthy and respectful dialogue.

For a blog, you might want to consider comment moderation. In WordPress, you can set the moderation to allow comments from people you have allowed through at least twice. You can also set your blog to hold all comments and notify you by email. Some larger blogs require that you register with their site before their comments will be allowed. There are also some plug-ins you can use for WordPress and there are options for Blogger that have various settings for comment moderation. You need to decide which method of moderation will work best for your community. You can also add text near the comment section reminding them to be respectful or link to a page on your blog with your blog commenting policy.

When you have an online forum or group, you will want to establish guidelines that each member must agree to before they can participate in your online community. The larger your group grows, you may want to consider appointing officers to help moderate your community. Make sure your team is all in agreement on how to handle flare ups or abusive comments. When one of you has to discipline an abusive member, be sure to communicate that with your whole team.

On public Facebook pages where people from all over the world can come in and jump into conversations while you’re snoozing in bed for the night, may require that you ask a friend on another continent to keep an eye on things. Many online forums like Facebook or iVillage, have a report link for members to use and you’ll want to encourage them to use that if necessary. No matter what you decide, having a good plan for moderating can help you avoid social media burn out.

In what ways have you monitored your online communities?

Lisa (Sisterlisa) blogs at The HomeSpun Life and is a contributor at The Homeschool Post. She enjoys blogging, photography, and cooking. Her homeschooling family is active in their community and enjoys traveling with friends and family.

We were able to pitch our tents within a 3 minute walk from their RV, which made it safe for the kids to walk back and forth between the camp sites on their own. As much as I love tent camping, having a camp ground with restrooms, showers, and a laundry room is a plus!

We had a great time enjoying the tide pools the first morning we were there.

Although that first morning was overcast, we had sunshine on the other days. I enjoyed a quiet morning walk to the cove for some great photo opportunities and meditation too.

There was plenty to do during the days we were there. The Mendocino coast line has a lot to offer including the Mendocino Botanical Gardens. We packed up bottles of water into our small cooler, lathered ourselves with sun block, and headed out the RV door.

We had an amazing time in Mendocino! We enjoyed some others areas of Mendocino, but I’ll save those stories and photos for another post.

Do you travel and have a passion for photography? You can become a Travel Team Contributor for Pix-O-Sphere. We’d love to hear from you.

Thousands of photos from our trip have been uploaded to the following three profiles Scott, Jess, and Lisa

Lisa (Sisterlisa) blogs at The HomeSpun Life and is a contributor at The Homeschool Post. She enjoys blogging, photography, and cooking. Her homeschooling family is active in their community and enjoys traveling with friends and family.

With the new changes at Facebook, the settings are in some slightly different places. When you view your Home page, which gives you the News Feed of all your friends, there is a tab with a drop down arrow on the top right side of each status.

This is where you can select from several options that help control what you’ll see in your news feed. When you “Hide” the story, you won’t see it pop back up every time a mutual friend comments on it. You can also select from which kind of updates you want.

You can also set the types of subscriptions you want by hovering over a friend’s name, then uncheck the statuses you don’t want to see and check the ones that are most important to you. (That’s my husband smiling at me, aren’t we cute?) If you select “Unsubscribe” don’t worry..you’re still connected. You just won’t see any of their updates in your News Feed, but you can always go to their page if you want to pop in and say hello.

Another option is to create a List.You’ll see the Lists area on the left side of your News Feed. Click “more” to see all your lists. You can either “Create a List” or “Manage a List”.

You can select from several options for your Lists.

Once you have your Lists created, you can specify which List gets to see which updates. Just below the status bar you can click the icon for the status settings. When you select “Custom” you will be given the opportunity to set that status to allow certain Lists to view and comment.

I selected “Specific People or Lists” As you begin to type the title to one of your Lists, it will appear for you to click on. Then hit “save changes” and continue with posting your status. *Important* Once you’ve posted a status to a specific audience, all following statuses will be set to the same setting by default. You will need to RESET your status to your normal settings the next time you post a status.

Now when we go back to the News Feed page, we can also select which List we want to view in the News Feed. I can choose to view only statuses from My Homeschool List or Family List. Simply go back to your Home page and on the left find the “Lists” section and click “More”. Each List has its own News Feed. Find the List you want to view and click. Now you’ll only see those friends in your News Feed. You can also post a status directly to that List right on that page.

Another thing to keep in mind is: when you’re commenting on a status, each of your friends have different settings. If you find a status set with the World icon, that is a Public discussion and everything you say there will have the potential to be seen by millions of people.

 I hope these settings will assist you in keeping the peace with your friends and family. No need to make waves by unfriending those special, although eccentric, loved ones.

When you nurture and give to the community, you are growing your own heart to make room for others to embrace you and to give back.

In future blog posts, we will begin to share how this blogging philosophy can be introduced to the blogosphere and the steps we recommend to nurturing your blog community. As we grow together, we will be building one another up and will be preparing ourselves for a strong and vibrant launch to the Family Blog Network. 

Lisa (Sisterlisa) blogs at The HomeSpun Life and is a contributor at The Homeschool Post. She enjoys blogging, photography, and cooking. Her homeschooling family is active in their community and enjoys traveling with friends and family.

Not only is this an opportunity to plug your blog into a network where people of like interests can find you, but we will be teaching you how to connect with them in a relational way.

Short statement of our vision: Real leadership is serving and lifting up one another. This is not a network where you have to click on a button to vote each day,  it’s not by popularity, or by paying to be in the top 10. This network is about establishing and nurturing relationships with one another.  Our philosophy is comprised of  1 Principle….

When you nurture and give to the community, you are growing your own heart to make room for others to embrace you and to give back.

In future blog posts, we will begin to share how this blogging philosophy can be introduced to the blogosphere and the steps we recommend to nurturing your blog community. As we grow together, we will be building one another up and will be preparing ourselves for a strong and vibrant launch to the Family Blog Network. 

Lisa (Sisterlisa) blogs at The HomeSpun Life and is a contributor at The Homeschool Post. She enjoys blogging, photography, and cooking. Her homeschooling family is active in their community and enjoys traveling with friends and family.

I received the annual email about Technoarti’s survey and wanted to be sure to send out this information to you and ask you to spread the word. The survey is going to take you a few minutes, so be sure you’re ready to sit down uninterrupted. It’s very important for Mom Bloggers to take part in this survey. Pass it along!

From the email:

Every year, you help us make State of the Blogosphere the most
comprehensive resource for bloggers, and about bloggers. The 2011
survey is live, and your input is critical.
http://www.psasurveys.com/detect.aspx?I.Project=a18214

We’d love for you to share some information about blogging as your
passion or your profession, that we can then share back with you, the
bloggers, and everyone who is interested in you. It should take just
15 minutes of your time.

The more responses we get the better the data we can deliver to you,
so please share this link with other bloggers.
http://www.psasurveys.com/detect.aspx?I.Project=a18214

 

 

Lisa (Sisterlisa) blogs at The HomeSpun Life and is a contributor at The Homeschool Post. She enjoys blogging, photography, and cooking. Her homeschooling family is active in their community and enjoys traveling with friends and family.

Your profile photo says a lot about you. Most people like to see an actual photo of you rather than a flower or your pet. A head shot is a better representation of you than a distant shot. Being a part of the Pix-O-Sphere community is an opportunity to network with other photographers and bloggers. They will take you, your photos, and your blog more seriously if you have a good profile photo. It’s the first impression they have of you.

If you don’t have someone to take a photo of you, then try using the timer on your camera. If you don’t have a timer then use a web cam, but position yourself so the natural indirect sunlight shines on your face. Some smartphone camera apps have a reverse setting so you can take a picture of yourself and make sure it’s centered well. You can upload a photo from your phone to the Pix-O-Sphere network if you have web browsing capabilities. Simply go to pixosphere.com, log in, and upload.

Here’s what we need to know:

• What link you clicked on when the error page appeared.
• A screenshot of  the error page or copy all the text and send it in to lbertolini@pixosphere.com

Since we updated to a new blog, there might be a few links I haven’t gotten to yet. If you happen upon those you can simply reply on that blog post and tell me which link is directing to an empty page and I’ll get it updated.

I have been mentioning the Family Blog Network for quite some time and I am ecstatic with what the developers will be adding to our network to make it the best family friendly blog network ever. My heart for the Family Blog Network is to build community among you all in an innovative way that will benefit you as a blogger. I can’t leak too much information about it just yet, but I am confident that you will be very pleased with what we will be providing. In the meantime, I will begin to post articles that will lead us up to the launch of the features we have for this. So stay tuned to the blog for those.

We have added a few things to the Daily Digest that I wanted to point out. Some of you have opted out of the Digest, which means you won’t be receiving anything through your inbox. However, if you have chosen ‘every other day’, ‘weekly’, or ‘monthly, you will get the most recent Digest in your inbox. Something you will want to notice is that I am featuring some member’s photos in the digest along with some insider information about our network that is not posted anywhere else. If you would like to get back to getting those, all you need to do is log in, update profile, and scroll down to select how often you want to get the Digest.

A few other things we have done recently:

• Added a people search to the search filter
• Search friends photos
• Update the Pix-O-Sphere Tour
• Log In and View Your Profile from the blog’s front page

Coming Soon:

• Awards given to various photos in the network
• Featured Photographers
• New upgrades to paid member’s accounts at no extra charge. (TBA)
• Most recent uploads will appear first in the search filter.
• More from the Travel-Sphere

In the meantime, enjoy the following photos that came in recently:

{Lady Jess}

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{Abigail}

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{Tim W}

If you would like to get your photo featured here’s what you need to do:

Upload your best photos to your “Shared” album. When you upload your photo you have the option to select “Shared Pix” when you add your tags and descriptions.

We keep an eye on all the new uploaded photos and select from there. Happy Snapping!

“This is an automated message to let you know there may be a discrepancy in your photo.
It could be the quality of your photo, a disruption in your upload, or a breach in our terms.
Please review your photo and our guidelines to determine your discrepancy.
If your photo does not meet the requirement of our terms you will need to delete your photo.
Feel free to reply if you have any further questions.”

Photo Quality:
Your photo may be flagged for quality issues such as:
Out of focus
View obstructed by finger or camera strap
Harsh shadows
Too much light
Not enough light
Debris on your lens producing flaws in the photo

Disruption in Uploading:
If you clicked ‘continue’ too soon your photo may not have uploaded correctly. When this happens your photo only shows partially.
Be sure to wait for your entire file uploads to have the green check mark next to them.

Breach in Terms:
Your photo might have been flagged for a breach in terms, which usually indicates that your photo has violated our G and PG standard.
We realize that each person has slightly different standards on what they feel is family friendly. The ultimate decision will rest with our moderation team.

Our team is more flexible with the photo quality of your personal pictures from your “My Pix” albums, but we want to portray a good reputation for “Shared Photos”. Your “Shared Photos” are an advertisement to your gallery on our site. The higher quality photos you share, the more followers your gallery will have. Our team frequently promotes the shared and selling photos from Pix-O-Sphere to help generate more members to the community.

Selling Photos: If you have uploaded a selling photo and you receive a Discrepancy Notice for that photo, this means your photo was not approved to sell, and has been moved to your private album. You may decide to move it to your shared folder at that point. We reserve the right to not communicate why your photo was not approved to sell.

Feel free to reply to a message from a Moderator for further discussion if you have not found your answer in this article.