FAQ: I'm Overwhelmed With Groups! What Do I Do!? What Do I Do!?

Dear Gaia Community Members,

I understand your plea. I myself am a member of gazillions of pods! But it's part of my job as a member of the Gaia Team to be able to hyper-zip from one pod to another like a Super Mario Bros. warp zone. For most people, having too much pods on their hands is a daunting task. And besides, most people have a life. But don't worry, here are some ways on how to manage your Groups (or Pods).

It's ok to say, “No.”

The bigger your network of friends grow the more pod invites you'll get. So learn how to politely decline invitations from friends to join their pods if you don't feel like it. Focus your attention and psychic energy on pods that really interest you. By *not* spreading yourself too thin you'll be able to focus on the pods that matter to you and you'll be able to make a bigger difference. Your friends would understand. We're all grown ups here :)

Hey, look! You can actually leave a pod!

If you feel like you've got too much pods to handle already you can always hit the “Leave this pod” escape hatch any time on the main page of the pod. Don't feel guilty. You're just being honest and fair with your fellow podwans. It's better to leave the pod if you don't have the passion and drive to continue on rather than stay there and do nothing. You can always JOIN another day.

Subscribe to a “Daily Digest” of Your Pods

One of the best ways to keep up with your pods is to setup your pod notifications to send you a Daily Digest of all the updates and stuff on your pod. Once you've setup your pod notifications, all you need to do is check your email at least once a day and you'll have a neat summary of all the stuff that happens on a pod. 

Here's how to set up your pod  “Daily Digest” notifications:

– From the top page, click on My Account.

– On the My Account page, scroll down to the Subscriptions and Notifications section. From here you can control your pod, blogs, comments, and incoming mail notifications. Groovy. All of them are setup the same way so you can do the following steps for each subscription type.

– Click on “Pod Discussions”.

– On the Subscription Settings screen you'll see Email Address, Send Notifications, and Full Content columns. Go ahead and edit those columns to your liking.

– Set the Send Notifications field to “Daily Digest” and check the Full Content column field. This way you'll only receive one notification per day for each pod and you'll see the full contents of your messages on your personal email without having to go to your Zaadz inbox. 

NOTE: If you don't want to receive email notifications then just set the Send Notifications field to “Do Not Send Email” (this is the default). See also, HOW TO: Minimize Your Zaadz-flavored “Spam”.

Use RSS Readers to Keep You in the Loop

Another excellent way to keep up with your pods is to take advantage of RSS feeds, Web Feed, or simply “Feeds”, generated by each pod. (side note: What's a Feed?)

Each pod has feed icons like this:  

Whenever you see that little orange pill, that means that you can use the link to that feed (like this one) and plug it into your favorite RSS Readers or Aggregators. This way you can subscribe to a pod at a pod-level, and/or discussion board-level, giving you the option of nitpicking only the discussion boards you are interested with. Life is sweet.

Re: FAQ: I'm Overwhelmed With zPods! What Do I Do!? What Do I Do!

~

i love the foto

and YES plssssssssssssssssssss 

May the Force be with all of us so v r able to keep up with ~C4's ten thousand daily blog updates

~

Re: FAQ: I'm Overwhelmed With zPods! What Do I Do!? What Do I Do!

C4 - “Whenever you see that little orange pill, that means that you can use the link to that feed (like this one) and plug it into your favorite RSS Readers or Aggregators. This way you can subscribe to a pod at a pod-level, and/or discussion board-level, giving you the option of nitpicking only the discussion boards you are interested with. Life is sweet. ”

Cool! How? How do I “plug it in” to my Reader? Are the Readers free?

Mark

Re: FAQ: I'm Overwhelmed With zPods! What Do I Do!? What Do I Do!

OK, I think I see one thing, if not the whole RSS thing.
I saw that at the bottom right of a pod page is a little RSS button. When I click it, that pod page gets added to my SBC Yahoo homepage making it easier to keep track of.

On The RSS thing

I' as sure I am being an idiot, but - the links to the pods don't seem to register in the My Yahoo RSS page.

Try it yourself - you do not get -

a.  The typical Add To My Yahoo button (Yahoo Toolbar doesn't recognize RSS on the page)
b. If you plug in the link to My Yahoo, this also doesn't work.

At any rate, it would be great if you would let me know what I am missing.

Re: FAQ: I'm Overwhelmed With zPods! What Do I Do!? What Do I Do!

Wholeogram, Ebuddha

It seems our RSS feeds for discussions were inadvertantly disabled in some recent changes here.  Sorry about that!  Try it now - I tried it with My Yahoo and it seems to work.  Let me know if you still have some problems.

Ryan