Start by getting familiar with what you can do inside your profile pages……
There is a series of tabs along the top. Inside the yellow box in the picture below, the most important tab is the “MEMBERS INFO” tab. That is where your profile questionnaire answers are for everyone to see.
When you click/tap on the More tab (red box), there is a link to a page that lists all of the groups you belong to. You can access each group right from within your profile.
In the green box you will find a tab for your friends, a mail tab (envelope icon) and a notifications tab (globe icon). The little down arrow (in the blue box) gives you the links to your profile settings, account settings and to change your password.
Managing your messages
The green arrow in the picture below points to the mail tab icon. When you click/tap it, your message page shows up, like the picture below. The red arrow highlights the message tabs that organize your messages. You have an Inbox for new messages; you can star some messages as a reminder; you can see a list of your sent messages; there is a tab for composing messages and a search function.
The yellow arrow above shows where you click/tap to open a specific message. You can also mark messages as unread/read or delete them.
Please note that when someone sends you a message, you will receive an email from our website to let you know (see picture below). This email is NOT from the person who sent you the message; it is simply a notification that you received a message from the person.
Do not respond directly to this email. If you do, your response will be sent to the website, not to the person who sent you the message.
Instead, use the “Go to the discussion” link inside the email as shown by the red arrow in the picture below. This takes you directly to the message section of your profile, if you are logged in.
Checking your notifications…
The little globe icon in the tabs at the top of your profile page is for notifications (as indicated by the red arrow in the pic below). Whenever someone “likes” or comments on something you have written or whenever there is a post added into your groups, this is where you will find out about it. It’s a good idea to check your notifications frequently, and then contact those who seem like a good fit for you. Just one contact with the right person, can get you well on the way to success.
Once you click/tap on the notifications icon, a page like the one in the pic below will show up. This is a list of your notifications which is dated, and you can mark them as read/unread (red arrow) and sort them (yellow arrow).
Be sure to check your settings…
There is a small up/down arrow to the right of your small picture (as shown by the yellow arrow in the pic below). This opens a list of your settings pages.
The profile settings page is where you answer the profile questionnaires. The account settings page (as shown by the red arrow above) is also important to check out.
When you open the account settings page, you will see that you can change your email address and your password. As well, you can change the settings for your notifications (as indicated by the red arrow below).
When you click/press the notifications link (red arrow above), another page opens like the one in the pic below.
On this page, you can decide which notifications you want to receive. The top red arrow indicates that the particular notification is turned off. The second red arrow indicates that the notification is turned on. Just click/press on the toggle switch to turn each notification on or off.
Using the Chats
There are three types of chats.
1. Personal chats between individual members.
2. Messages to ALL members
3. Messages to the members of a group. There is a group chat option in each of the geographic groups.
This chat program is very similar to Facebook messenger. It’s text chatting, so your text message will follow the previous one.
Chatting between members
In the following picture of my profile page, you can see where the chats are located (bottom right side). This is where you will find them on your profile page.
The following picture shows the “global” channel (green arrow) and the “Users and Channels” (blue arrow). To open the global channel or the Users section, you click on the small plus signs (red arrows). Your message archives are found by clicking in the area indicated by the purple box in the picture below.
The following picture shows the global channel opened up. The global channel is seen by ALL members so be sure your message is not just for one person. You can use this channel to ask general questions about shared-living, the website or to make an announcement.
If you wanted to respond to my message, you would click on my name as indicated by the yellow arrow. The series of icons in a white rectangle shows up and you would choose the back arrow icon (indicated by the purple arrow). Then you would type your message in the space indicated by the blue arrow. Before you press “Send” you could add an emoticon, a voice message, a picture or a file by pressing the appropriate icon shown by the green arrow.
The following picture shows the Users and Channels section opened up. You can send individual messages to any specific member. You can see if the member is currently logged in by the green dot beside their username, as shown by the black arrow beside my name. You can send a message even if they aren’t logged in and they will receive an email to let them know about your message.
Unlike the global channel, these messages are completely private; only you and the person you send the message to can see your conversation.
You can search for a username as shown by the green arrow and if you open the “customize” spot (red arrow) you can choose to receive email notifications or not. We highly recommend you accept email notifications or you may miss an important opportunity for a great homemate.