Finding Your Way Around the New NaNo Site - Part 1

Hello Sockmonkeys!

This post will be part one in a short series of posts to help you find your way around the new NaNoWriMo site, especially related to our region and communication.  (To set up your own profile and other information, you only need to click on the "My NaNoWriMo" dropdown in the top bar and select what part of your profile you'd like to view or work on - the top bar is the same no matter which page you're viewing.)  Above you can see a picture of what our Regional Hub area currently looks like - minus the box with the names and pictures of the Regional MLs (for privacy).  In the upper left is a box with a welcome message for you.

To get to our region hub from your profile page (or anywhere on the site), click on the Community dropdown menu and then click where it says "Home Region".  (This only works if you already have our region selected as your home, though.  The next post will discuss how to set it as your home region, if it isn't already, just to keep this post from being too long.)  Once you've done that, you should see Sockmonkey in the header image and then the welcome message and other boxes as shown previously.

These icons will take you to our various year round social media sites, if you're a member of any of them and choose to join us there.

This link takes you directly to our regional forums on the NaNoWriMo Discourse forums. (Don't click on the blue words above the link - they won't take you anywhere, only the link will.)  They are planning to integrate a link to the regional forums into the regional hub in the near future, but for now, this is an easy way to get to us. The forums is the place for longer conversations, games, support and updates on events or planning that might be taking place, among other things.

This link will bring you to our blog (which is where you are now).  This blog will be a helpful central reference, especially if the forums are a bit bogged down (something they're working on) or if you're not following any of our social media (which is totally fine, of course).

The final link will connect you to our region's Discord chat server, if you choose to join.  It's not required, though.  In our forums, you will find a post with instructions for how to join the ChatNaNo for our region, which is also used.  Both of these will be used during online write ins and events and can also be used by participants at any time to run sprints or chat with other regional participants.

This final large box is a sort of quick chat hub.  It currently works similar to the way the chat worked in the Camp Cabins.  They may be making some changes to functionality, but, it is basically a way to send quick messages to the rest of the region.  Longer conversations are best saved for private messages with Buddies (which will be covered in another post) or in the regional forums where many members can join the conversation, but this is good for quick hellos or updates, that sort of thing.  Regional messages from your MLs will also show up in this box, but, in order to keep from having to scroll to find them, they are also in your Official Messages - a box that will be explained in another post.

Hopefully, this helps you get started on the new site, if you're planning on participating in NaNo this year.  Please come back for future posts on the site changes and hopefully they'll answer some of your questions.

Any questions about what's been posted so far?  Please leave them in the comments and I'll answer them as soon as possible.