Click here to pursue the steps listed below. (Only Stage I is currently complete.)

Stage I: "Newbie"

1. Register
   
2. Update "Who am I" in their LWPS profile
   
3. Join a community
   
4. Learn about Access Restrictions (ARs)
   
5. Respond ("Add a comment") to a community blog post
   
6. Create a post
   

Stage II: "Frequent flyer"

1. Stage I, plus ...
   
2. Learn and use tags
   
3. Learn and use hyperlinks
   

Stage III: "Preferred Customer"

1. Stage II, plus ...
   
2. Create a community
   
3. Teach prospective new LWPS members about Stages I-III
   

Below are brief descriptions of key posts that should help you decide if LWPS is for you.

1. My LifeWork Portal is the penultimate product of my lifework/career planning activities on LWPS. It's a summary/profile/snapshot of who I am at this instant. I am within three (3) mouse-clicks of ALL of my posts from my LWPortal.
   
2. Why is creating lifework/career planning posts in my personal blog so important?
3. The four (4) most important aggregating posts in your personal LWPS blog.
4. Here is a listing of the titles to all of my posts.
   
5. This is my "tagcloud" - an alphabetical listing of all of the tags I have used in all of my posts. They are all hyperlinks to each of those posts. More frequently used tags have larger font sizes.
   

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Click your browser's BACK/Return arrow to return to the post that brought you here, or return to

• the location of this post in the sequential LifeWork Planning process program chain
  

Add your comments or questions in the "Comments" section below.

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Use the LWPS WYSIWYG editor to either COPY (parts of) this post to your blog or COPY/PASTE the hyperlink below.
title

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When a new member joins LWPS, I will (do my best to) post a welcome msg in their personal weblog. [1]

I will add the tag "welcome" to that post. I've added that tag below.

"Mark this post as interesting" and I will add a comment when I have added another welcome message and then you can click on the "welcome" tag and look at the top of the listing to see the username of the person(s) who joined.

If appropriate, you may want to post your own personal welcoming message.

[1] I have prepared design specs for an LWPS plugin 02 (program) to do this automagically. It is on my PHP programmer list at priority #2. When I have the funds, and I find a skilled PHP programmer (I'm looking), I'll contract to have it done.

Welcome to LifeWork Planning Services (LWPS)

I've prepared a welcoming message for you and invite you to read it to learn a few things about LWPS and begin participating, if and when you wish.

Pete

Add-a-comment test post

Add a simple comment to this post.

"Hi" will do, or anything else you choose.

Housekeeping

After a week or two, please delete that comment by clicking on "View your activity" under your "gold" box, then click on "Last week" or "Last month" to see all of your comments and Delete those that are no longer pertinent.

Click here to return to the lesson.

Tags, tagging (keywords)

Definition: "Tags are pieces of information separate from, but related to, an object (I.e. post or file). In the practice of collaborative categorization using freely chosen keywords, tags are descriptors that individuals assign to objects."

The value of tags is the ability to help you to quickly and easily locate friends, people, posts (yours and others), communities, resources, etc.. It is another powerful feature in Elgg and in many other popular Web 2.0 applications I.e. 43Things, Flickr, del.icio.us, technorati, etc..

“Every object (I.e. post or file) in Elgg can have a set of keywords, or 'tags', attached to it. Click on a tag to see every other object associated with that tag - people interested in it, essays about it, and so on. A world of related information, one click away!”

As you add tags to your posts (and/or your LWPS profile) and see them turn into hyperlinks (because others have assigned the same tag to their posts,) you will make new friends and explore new possibilities.

How do I create my ePortfolio?

There are many kinds of ePortfolios. (Need a link here to describe each) As ePortfolio standards emerge, LWPS will offer services to help you create yours. Meantime, you can begin by collecting your ePortfolio artifacts either in your personal/professional posts, or in your LWPS file archive.

Here are examples of Elgg posts that contain some artifiacts.

1. video inserts: a, b, c
   
2. audio inserts: a, b, c
   
3. picture inserts: a, b, c
   
4. graphic inserts: a, b, c
   
5. an Elgg post on a cell phone
   
6. My ... posts (the basis of your LWP) (Click here to search for all of my posts with the tag of "My")

   Keywords: 20%, 4/30, e-portfolio, e-portfolios, eportfolio, eportfolios, How do I create my ePortfolio?, hph, new

Hyperlinks permit users to jump to other webpages on the Internet with only ONE mouse click.

You most likely came to this post because you clicked on a link.

Generally speaking, a hyperlink is composed of a URL¹ that is surrounded by some html code. The URL for this post is - http://lifeworkps.com/new/weblog/585.html. You will see it in your browser's address box.

I can COPY that URL then PASTE it here like this - http://lifeworkps.com/new/weblog/585.html - but it is not a hyperlink yet.

Here's the URL for the Roadmap - http://lifeworkps.com/new/weblog/3455.html .It too is not a hyperlink yet; I can't click on it to go to the Roadmap. 

It is very easy to use the WYSIWYG ("What You See Is What You Get") editor to convert a URL or any text into a hyperlink.

1. First, select (highlight) the URL for this post and COPY it
   1. I press Ctrl and C together to do the COPY (If a MAC, use Cmd and C)
2. Then go to a new or edited post and locate where you want to PASTE the URL.  Type a phrase like "Link to hyperlink post".
3. Select (highlight) that phrase, then click on the "GO" button in the WYSIWYG toolbar above.
   
4. PASTE the URL in your clipboard into the "Link URL" box using Ctrl and V (MAC, Cmd and V)
   
5. Click "Insert"
   
6. Save your post and try out the hyperlink.

If you edit your post again and click on the "HTML" button, you will see how the WYSIWYG editor surrounds your URL with the necessary html ocde to make it a hyperlink. You don't really need to understand this at this time, but I have included an explanation below of that code.

<a href=http://lifeworkps.com/new/weblog/585.html>Link to hyperlink post.</a>

1. <a href=: Is html code that tells the browser to expect a URL - http://lifeworkps.com/new/weblog/585.html.
   
2. >: Tells the browser that this is the end of the URL and the beginning of text "Link to hyperlink post." that will be displayed for the hyperlink.
   
3. </a>: Tells the browser that this is the end of the text to be displayed and the end of the html command line to create a hyperlink.
   

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¹ URL = Universal Resource Locator. It is way to find a webpage on the WWW. If you look at your browsers address box you will see a link to this posts. It looks like this - http://lifeworkps.com/new/weblog/585.html

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Go to the next milepost of Find that post, or return to this milepost in the Roadmap or return to ...

• Lesson 1, Lesson 2, Lesson 3, or Lesson 4.

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LWPS communities are gathering places similar to a town hall meeting. They can be public, private or moderated. We encourage you to create a community that supports the purpose of LWPS, if one does not already exist in LWPS.

Here are a few general guideliens.

Is your topic appropriate for an LWPS community or a series of posts?

1. If you topic is broad enough to attract many members and many posts then you should create a community.
   
2. If your topic is very broad, and you expect many, many posts, then you might want to consider dividing it up into smaller communities.
   
3. If you only expect a few members to join and only a few posts, then just create a series of posts in your personal blog or in another more general community and connect them via the same tag/keyword. (More on tags.)
   

Does a similar community already exist?

A few LWPS members have created most of the communities on LWPS. They are:

• Pete Hubbard
• Sally Gelardin
• Edward Colozzi

(In the next release of LWPS, all communities will be listed in one place for easy review.)

Please review their "Owned Communities" and if one already exists that covers the topics you are interested in, contact the community owner to see if she might be willing to include your topic in her community. If she declines, then feel free to create your own, but provide a link in your community to her community so readers know that two similar communities exists.

Steps for creating a community

1. To create a new community click on "Your Network", then "Owned Communities" and follow the instructions.
   • Notice the "Membership restriction:" pulldown box with three (3) options. If you want to restrict access choose either the 2nd or 3rd option.
   • Click here to read more about protecting your personal information in your profiles, posts and files.
2. Create a short and simple community-username for your community. The community URL will read lifeworkps.com/[community-username]. So try to make the community-username as short as possible so it is easy for users to remember. Also, try to make your community-username as much like the name of the community as possible.
   
3. Create an introductory post and add a "Community introduction" tag so others can find your community
   
4. Create a "Welcome" post that includes additional instructions once someone has joined your community. Click here to view a "Welcome-template", then follow the instructions at the top to download and customize your own "Welcome" post for your community. Then include a link to that Welcome post in your invitation to join it and/or the community profile.
   
5. Create a "Mailbox for [community-name] community" post so new community members can add a comment to tell you that they have joined. Click here to learn more about mailboxes.
   

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Add your comments or questions in the "Comments" section below.

Return to either

• LWPS Communities, or
• Lesson 3, or

Jump (back) to Lesson 1, Lesson 2, or Lesson 4.

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