Help: My Page
Help Home > Atlas Quest > My Page
- How do I change the location on the Weather widget?
- How do historical events, birthdays, and anniversaries get added or updated?
- What's the Wassa Widget do?
- How do I create a favorite search?
- How do I use the Image Viewer widget?
- How do I use the Letterboxing News widget?
- How is the Box of the Week selected?
- Can we suggest facts and birthdays for the This Day in History widget?
- What's the Billboard widget do?
How do I change the location on the Weather widget?
Click the little picture of the pencil in the title bar. It's the button that allows you to set your preferences on a widget. In the case of the weather widget, you can set the zip code for the area whose weather you want to follow. At this time, only US locations are supported. (If you know the zipcode of the town you want weather for!!)
Help Home > Atlas Quest > My Page
How do historical events, birthdays, and anniversaries get added or updated?
AQ administrators and hand-picked volunteers can add, edit, and remove historical events and birthdays for the This Day In History widget. More often, it's the Green Tortuga who's doing the data entry.
The list of AQ anniversaries can be custom set to use your own list of friends if you edit the widget. Create a contact group with the folks whose anniversaries you want to be notified of, then set the widget to use that contact group.
If no contact group is specified, Atlas Quest will automatically list more of the noteworthy members who have an anniversary. Given the sheer numbers of people signing up every day, it's not really practical to display every anniversary. So the widget will only include members who have signed in within the past year and have large numbers of plants, finds, or are active message board participants whose names you're likely to recognize.
Help Home > Atlas Quest > My Page
What's the Wassa Widget do?
This Widget will choose a random day, and display the Funniest Post of the Day, as determined by the number of times people voted via the [ Funny ] button.
Enjoy!
Help Home > Atlas Quest > My Page
How do I create a favorite search?
Run a search like you normally would. Use a Simple Search or an Advanced Search. Run a search for letterboxes, groups, or events. When looking at the search results, you'll see a link in the upper-right corner of the page called "Save Search." Click it, give the search a name, and you've saved a favorite search!
Help Home > Atlas Quest > My Page
How do I use the Image Viewer widget?
Click the Edit option—it's that pencil in the title bar—then include an optional name for the image (it'll be displayed in the titlebar for the widget instead of "Image Viewer"), and the URL for the image you want to see.
Remember, though, that the URL must point directly to the image you want to see. Pointing to a webpage with your image is not sufficient. Most images on the web typically end with the extensions JPG, JPEG, GIF, or PNG, but many others are available. A quick test is to type the URL into your browser's address bar. If you see a picture and nothing but a picture, it's a valid URL you can use. If you see an entire webpage, it won't work.
If the image is larger than the space in the widget allows, the image will be shrunk to fit the available size. Ideally, the images you link to should be exactly the width of the available space in the widget. Anything larger is just wasted bandwidth and causes the image to degrade in the shrinking process.
For the original post about it, check out this link: http://www.atlasquest.com/boards/message.html?gMsgId=354314
Help Home > Atlas Quest > My Page
How do I use the Letterboxing News widget?
This widget pulls in blog posts from AQ members and displays the ones you're most interested in. It's kind of like subscribing to magazines, except that every blog is a magazine, the magazines are free, and you can subscribe to as many of them you want. When you first sign up on Atlas Quest, some of the more interesting and popular blogs you are automatically subscribed to, but you can drop ones that don't interest you and add others.
To edit your subscription choices, click the Subscriptions button near the bottom of the widget. You'll be taken to a page where you can drop existing subscriptions or add new ones.
To edit the number of blog entries displayed in the widget, use the Edit button in the titlebar. (It looks like a pencil.) You can set the maximum number of blog entries to display, and how old the oldest blog entries should be before they're no longer displayed.
Each blog on Atlas Quest is checked, on average, about once per hour for new entries, but the blog checks are staggered so new entries could show up at any time.
To made your own blog available for others (or yourself) to subscribe to, add your blog to Atlas Quest. It will then automatically be available for anyone to subscribe to. (You will automatically be subscribed to your own blogs when they're added, but you can unsubscribe to it if you really want to.)
Help Home > Atlas Quest > My Page
How is the Box of the Week selected?
The Box of the Week is chosen based on the votes provided when members record a find on boxes, much like how blue diamond boxes are chosen. In a sense, it's the very best of the blue diamonds.
The process is automated and far from perfect. Atlas Quest will pick the highest ranked box each Sunday morning, just after midnight, that has never been selected as a Box of the Week before. This does mean that letterboxes that have never been found or have no votes cannot be picked as the Box of the Week—but hopefully as people find them that will change! Additionally, only letterboxes known to be active will be chosen as Box of the Week. We want to encourage you to check out the finest examples of letterboxes anywhere, and those that are missing, retired, or even suspected of being missing will not be included.
Anyone who opts out of the blue diamond process for their letterboxes will not be eligible for the Box of the Week, under the assumption that they also feel the Box of the Week is morally wrong. However, once a box is a Box of the Week, it is permanent. Opting out at a later date will not remove the listing from the Box of the Week list. Nor will it be removed if the box later goes missing or is retired. Opting in will not make your boxes eligible retroactively, but it will make all of your boxes available in future weeks. Replacing a missing box will once again make that box eligible.
If one of your boxes is selected as Box of the Week, Atlas Quest will send you an AQ mail informing you of the selection.
Help Home > Atlas Quest > My Page
Can we suggest facts and birthdays for the This Day in History widget?
You're certainly welcome to make suggestions! There are several volunteers who help maintain the data in this widget, fixing typos, adding new events, and removing old birthdays of those who have died recently. If you post a suggestion to the Suggestion Box message board, eventually someone who can add it will read your message. This does not mean, however, that all suggestions will be added.
The section for birthdays is reserved for living individuals. If your suggested birthday is of someone who is deceased, their death may be added an an 'event,' but typically only on 'slow news days.' For events, we prefer interesting, educational, or historical factoids rather historical birthdays or anniversaries. Events must be on the same day each year—AQ doesn't have any mechanism in place to automatically update the date from year to year. Think of holidays such as Chinese New Year, Easter, or even Thanksgiving. The first Thanksgiving is historical and never changes, but current ones are not particularly interesting or relevant for the widget.
Also, the This Day In History Widget only supports dates that come after year 0. Any event in B.C. cannot be added.
Help Home > Atlas Quest > My Page
What's the Billboard widget do?
The Billboard widget is something of a cross between the message boards (where what you type will stick around essentially forever) and a chat room (where the messages are as fleeting as the duration you're in the chat room). By default, you'll only see the last ten messages posted to the billboard, and only if they had been posted within the past 24 hours. You can change these defaults by clicking the 'Edit Preferences' link, the small pencil in the title bar (
). The maximums allowed show 99 messages posted within the past 99 hours. The messages posted to the billboard are temporary in nature, and there is no mechanism provided to review or archive old messages.This widget is a premium member perk, so you must be a premium member to add it to My Page. The messages are public that essentially anyone may read, so you are expected to conduct yourself just like you would in a chat room or on the message boards. Moderators can delete messages that they feel are inappropriate.
One use where this widget may be useful is to ask questions that you don't want to last for eternity on the message boards, such as, "How do I record a find on an unlisted box?" You might get an answer just as fast as by posting on the message boards, but the conversation essentially deletes itself after a period of time keep the message boards less cluttered with constantly repeated questions. Or you could just root for your favorite sports team, or wish everyone a happy holiday.
The widget does not auto-refresh, but it will update whenever you post a message, open My Page, or click the "Refresh" link in the title bar. The refresh link is the green, circular arrow in the title bar of the widget. (
)Help Home > Atlas Quest > My Page