How To Use Your Status Center Links

The Status Center links display on the right side of your local weblog's home page, just under the Cloud Links. Here is a partial display of those links:

Let's explore them one-by-one.

Cloud Status:  

At the time of writing, Userland offers us 20 megabytes of space as one of the benefits of an annual subscription. I still have 92% of 20 megabytes to fool with.

Clicking on your own active 'Cloud Status' link displays a Radio 'weather report':

(I don't show a screen capture here because some of the data is security-sensitive).

You should be able to puzzle out much of the information in the Weather Report even if you are unfamiliar with Internet technologies. Here are two that might not seem so obvious: 

The 'upstreams' number tells you how many times you have published one or more files to Userland's Community Server.

The 'pings' statistic reveals how many times your copy of Radio has made interstellar contact with Userland's Community Server.

News Aggregator:

Clicking on the News Aggregator's active link will display the most recent delivery of new stories to your local copy of Radio. Of course, you must be subscribed to a particular weblog for this to work (more about that in a moment). 

I will cover this subject in greater detail shortly as a separate topic. For now, a few simple points:

Each item contains the full text that was originally displayed in the weblog that published it. Any active links (for instance, 'Hewlett files suit ...' above appear just the same way they would in the original weblog. Clicking on the link will also behave just as it would if you were actually 'at' the original weblog. In this case, I expect that it would take me to the full article published on the subject.

You can 'post' this item - just as it appears on the News Aggregator page - to your own weblog by clicking the 'POST' button. When you do, you will be returned to your local weblog home page and the item will be inserted into the text entry area:

You can edit it and then upstream it directly to your own weblog if you like. You may want to explain to your readers why you posted this link. Be sure and respect the original text of the news item. Don't change that!

If you want to organize your News Aggregator page a bit by deleting stories that aren't of interest, just click in one or more item checkboxes and then choose 'Delete'.

Subscribing to news sources - let's take another look at this small piece of your status center:

Clicking on the active 'subscribed' link in your own status center will enable you to add new weblogs that you want to receive on a regular basis:

To subscribe, enter the URL in its entirety in the text field as shown above. Then choose 'Add'.

To unsubscribe, click one or more of the checkboxes to the left of a weblog. Then choose 'Unsubscribe' at the bottom of the page.

When you select an XMLCoffeeCup icon   from a participating weblog's public home page, Radio will bring you to your local Subscription page automatically - with the URL already filled in - so you can add it conveniently to your subscription list.

I will cover this in more detail when I address News Aggregation as a distinct topic.

Hot List:

Clicking on the active Hotlist link will show you which weblogs have the greatest number of subscribers. Subscribers have asked Radio to ship updated weblog posts from a given weblog directly to their local copy of Radio so they can read those within the News Aggregator.

Radio's own instructions as shown directly above are fairly clear.

When you want to add a new subscription, click in the checkbox to display a checkmark for a given weblog. Then, choose the 'Subscribe' button. As long as you are subscribed, Radio will ship content from this weblog to you on a regular basis.

To unsubscribe, uncheck a particular Weblog and then select 'Subscribe' again. Yeah, I know. It works, though.

You can take a look at any of these weblogs first by clicking on their title, which is an active link to their location on the Web.

Any description provided by the weblog's author is displayed next to the weblog's title.

The number next to the description tells us how many Radio users are subscribed to a particular weblog. So, 1,481 have asked that Scripting News send automated updates.

The little 'xml' icon at the far right will display whatever you currently have for this weblog in your local copy of Radio in an XML format. Take a look by clicking it. Strange, eh? If you know what to do with this, you'll love it. If you don't, ignore it.

There are some nuances to the scheduling and archiving of your news feeds which I won't cover here. I don't want to overload this topic with too much detail.

Weblogs:

Clicking on the active "Weblogs" link will display lots and lots of weblogs that have been changed (updated) recently.

The list on the left displays all the weblogs that have changed since 9AM - that is, in the last hour.

Click on the active link to go directly to that weblog. For instance, clicking on 'A Clan Lord Journal' above would take me to that weblog. This is a nice way to while away the hours and make new friends in the blogging world. Or, at least, a weird way.

The list on the right displays all the weblogs you have asked Radio to list as your favorites.  My favorites at the moment are John Robb's Radio Weblog, Scripting News and Jon's Radio. These are listed if they have been updated in the most recent 24 hour period.

(Selecting favorites lets you focus on weblogs of interest without having to scan endless numbers of other weblogs).

To remove a Favorite from the Favorites list, click in its checkbox and then choose 'Disfavor'. Radio will remove that weblog from the Favorites list. Of course, it will still appear in the left column whenever it updates.

Now, how do you add a Favorite? Easy.

First, click in one or more of the checkboxes to the left of the complete weblog list (not the Favorites list but the list of weblogs that have changed within the past hour) to make it one of your favorites.

Then select the 'Add to Favorites' button at the bottom of the weblog list to tell Radio you want one or more weblogs added to the Favorites list.

Web Server:

Clicking on the active 'Web Server' link displays a page listing the last 100 requests processed by your local server (remember: your desktop copy of Radio runs its own HTTP server to serve your private needs, although your posts, stories and images are upstreamed to the external Community Server).

In other words, the sample below shows my personal activity. It has nothing to do with what is happening on the Userland Community Server or some other external server to which I may be connected.

Here is a brief explanation of the fields within your Log:

Time: the time the particular event was noted by your web server.

IP address: everything on the Internet resolves (that is, can be calculated as) a numerical IP address. So, "mydomain.com" could be seen by computers as 179.232.15.132.

By convention, most software (including Radio) treats the specific IP address 127.0.0.1 as entirely local to your desktop.

Secs: the time in seconds that a particular event took to complete on your local web server.

Type: the kind of file that was handled by the event. You may have a file open that has not yet been saved (that was true above for two files at the time the screen was captured); these will not show a type until they are saved for the first time.

Path: this does not provide a complete path, but it lists the name of the file and packages it as an active link. So, you can use this page conveniently to find files that you have been working on recently.

Events:  

Clicking on the active link will display the Events page. Here is a snapshot of mine at the given moment in time when I captured it:

Don't sweat the jargon if it leaves you shaking your head. Basically, it tracks a set of operations handled for you periodically behind the scenes by Radio.

My page tells me that my own copy of Radio has not downloaded any new themes from the Userland Community Server, retrieved some stories from sites I am subscribed to, created a list of weblogs that upstreamed new posts recently, did not install any new Radio fixes or features, kept its glossary up-to-date and retrieved the most current list of popular weblogs.

As you would expect, 'Time' shows when the event took place and 'Secs' the number of seconds it took to complete processing the event.

User Number:

If you ever forget your user number, it is conveniently displayed at the bottom of the Status Center links.

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