How To Use Your Calendar

Your Radio calendar provides you (and your readers) with a time-based method for retrieving your weblog posts. Put another way, each weblog post is automatically indexed by the calendar day on which you created it.

This holds even if you later edit that post on a different day. In other words, a weblog post is always archived according to the time that it was first created.

(Note: stories are indexed by date too but are not archived into the calendar. You cannot find a story by clicking on the calendar date. Instead, go to the stories page in your local weblog by selecting the "Stories" item in the Radio command menu).

Your calendar will behave differently, depending on whether you are working locally (only you have visibility into your work there) or whether you are reading your weblog in its public, published location. You are "just another" reader like any other person on the Internet who finds your weblog in its public location.

Using the Calendar

Your calendar will reveal that posts exist for a given day by displaying a clickable, underlined link for that day.

To go to those posts themselves, click the link for the desired day.

Your calendar will reveal posts for the next previous month (if you made any posts) with a clickable, underlined link to that month just under the current month's list of days.

To go to the previous month's posts, click the link for that month. This will display that month's posts. To return to the current month, click on its (now) active link below the list of days.

Your Local Calendar

When you select a date from your local calendar, Radio will display the posts from that date on your home page below the text editing area.

You may edit a post freely, keeping in mind that an edit will not change its date in the calendar when you republish (upstream) it.

(Retaining the original calendar date protects published links to your posts from being broken. After all, folks may have already linked to a given post from their own weblogs.)

If you delete a post, this will break any links already created to that post by someone else. The world will not come to an end. Their weblogs will remain intact. Your weblog will remain intact. That said, do keep in mind that good etiquette suggests we keep as many of our posts for posterity as we can bear.

If you delete all posts for a given calendar day, your calendar will no longer show any active, clickable link for that day.

Your External Calendar

When you upstream (publish) your weblog to your public location, the calendar on your local weblog will be synchonized with your public calendar.

Both you (and your readers) can find your weblog posts by clicking on your public calendar.

The difference between your local and your public calendar is that the public calendar points to different URLs than your local calendar. That is, it points to your public weblog posts, not to your local weblog posts.

(While, in most cases, your local and public weblog posts will have identical content, their content may be different if you are re-editing them locally .... until you synchronize them with your next upstream event).

As an example, your local calendar may point to this URL:

http://127.0.0.1:5335/?d=2002/03/12

Your public calendar may point to a URL that resembles one:

http://radio.weblogs.com/0100059/2002/03/12.html

(Don't worry about the details of these URLs. If you click the ones above, you may see strange results, because they are coordinated to my weblog).

Remember To Post Once A Month ...

For rather sensible reasons that may seem mysterious to us, Userland 'chains' the months of our calendar together for display purposes.

Your calendar will show the current month's individual dates as well as an underlined link to the past month and an inactive link to next month (hey, next month hasn't happened yet, right)?

If you don't post anything in the current month, Radio won't have a way to make that underlined "last month" link active when "next month" comes.

So, if this month is April, your calendar will show April's entries on a day by day basis as well as an active underlined link back to March.

If you make at least one post in April, Radio will load the new May calendar on May 1 and automatically create an active, underlined link back to April (which is now the first "past" month). But, if you didn't post at all in April, the April link under your new May calendar will not be clickable.

That may not seem so bad, but how will you then find your March posts? Radio 'chains' the calendar months backwards one-by-one?

Got it? No? Clear as mud? Ready to scream?

The solution is far simpler than the explanation. Just be sure to make at least one post into your weblog each month. That will keep your calendar purring along and help you keep your sanity intact.

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