It is easy to feel like a deer in the headlights when you first become a member in an on-line community where you have the chance to contribute content throughout the web site.
One place to start is to understand the various kinds of content that you can contribute. Once you understand the types of contributions you can make, it will become easier to decide when and how you want to make your voice heard as a member of the Chandler Guild.
Comments are 'info bits' associated with particular 'info nodes', like a story, article or diary entry. Comments can't be categorized like the full 'node' bits can, since they only tend to make sense in the context of the conversation in which they are contributed.
Once you make a relevant diary or story entry, you can then create a 'place relevant' comment in the original story or other 'info node' that stimulated you to contribute your new content. Then, you can include a link in your comment to your new diary entry or story.
Diary Entries are actually blogs or what is also called web logs. As you 'self-publish' your own diary entries, they become a kind of personal magazine that folks can read in an on-going stream by visiting your profile page. In addition, your diary entries can be categorized and thereby linked into other places on the web site.
Stories and articles are pretty much like a diary entry without being included in your diary. If you want to contribute a news item or some content for the Village Chandler Handbook, you probably want to contribute a story or article rather than a diary entry.
The pivotal question that will help you to decide if something is a diary entry is to ask yourself, "Is this contribution about me and my experience as a village chandler?" If your contribution is not part of your personal story, then make it a story/article rather than a diary entry.
I know, sounds confusing, but deciding whether your content contributions should be a comment, story, article or diary entry is one of the basic skills you'll develop over time as a Guildmember. And it may not be apparent how to create links and other formatting 'tags' for those of us unfamilar with handwriting HTML (hypertext mark-up language).
As soon as I can, I'll create some How To advice stories to help folks learn how to jazz up their content contributions and, more importantly, to include