New to Squidoo? The Lounge Is For You!
The SquidU Lensmaster Lounge is a great place to learn new Squidoo techniques, ask questions, and get to know your fellow Lensmasters.
But what if you've never used an online discussion forum before? Are you trying to get links to work? Wonder how to get that picture to show up under your name? Here's some help so you can kick back and get comfortable.
Disclaimer: The author of this lens is an ordinary Squidoo user just like you. I am NOT Squidoo staff! If you have questions about Squidoo, SquidU, or need technical help, please post in the Lensmaster Lounge Help Forum.
Table of Contents
Getting Started: Setting Up Your Profile
First things first: set up your profile. Go to the Lounge and click Profile, then...1. You'll want to add a picture that appears next to your posts. Choose "Personality" from the lefthand menu, then "Upload Avatar". Then browse your computer for a graphic to upload. Your avatar (icon) may be up to 60x60 pixels and no larger than 10K.
2. While in the "Personality" menu, you may want to add a signature, text that appears beneath all your posts. Many folks include links to their best lenses. See below for how to do links.
3. Browse the other options in your Profile to see if there's anything else you want to set up. You can come back later, of course!
4. Click the "Index" tab near the top of the page to get back to the Forums. Now, you'll probably want to Introduce Yourself if you haven't already, or go to the Critique Me... forum to get feedback on a lens you've made.
Squidoo member USVIA suggests that original titles will help your thread get read, since all the "Hi, I'm new!" threads start blurring together.
BBCode: How To Make Links and Format Text
To Make Links
[url]http://www.squidoo.com/mylens[/url] makes http://www.squidoo.com/mylens
[url=http://www.squidoo.com/mylens]Click this link[/url] makes Click this link
To Make Bold or Italic Text
[b]This text will be bold[/b] [i]This text will be italic[/i]
To Make Smilies
They're silly, but they help make up for the fact that you can't tell tone of voice from text. For example, ;) makes
.Here is the complete list of smilies.
There's a few other codes available. At the bottom of each thread, below the reply box, there's a "BBCode" link that will give you...
the complete list of BBCodes.
Note: These BBcodes are for the SquidU Lensmaster Lounge! Your own lenses use HTML.
Titles Under People's Names
There are also Moderators/Mods, in charge of keeping order in the forum; Squid Staff, official employees of Squidoo; Giant Squids, lensmasters with 50+ quality lenses; and Citizen Squids, a rotating thinktank of experienced lensmasters chosen by the Squidoo Team. See The Giant Squids (and how to become one) and the Citizen Squids (Squidizens) HQ for more info on these two groups. For a who's who of the Squidoo Team, see About Squidoo.Finally, there are Squid Angels, whose blessings to your lens will give it a small lensrank boost. Be careful! For quality purposes, they can't bless a lens that's sloppy and doesn't meet their standards. Read Megan's thread about Squid Angels for more information, or Squid Angel rksmythe's helpful What I Look For in a Lens.
Useful Lenses About Squidoo
Below are a few lenses that you may find helpful. Also, DON'T MISS the Crash Course in Squidooing thread in the Tricks of the Trade forum for many free, useful "How to Squidoo" lenses put together by various Lensmasters.-
SquidDon't!
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It's simple: given our pedigree, our point of view and our dyed-in-the-wool, we-will-never-change-our-mind conviction on this issue, spam is not okay at Squidoo. This page outlines our thinking on the issue. It supplements our terms of service. Don't...
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Basic HTML for Squidoo
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You can use basic HTML in a few of the lens modules. Mostly used to create hyperlinks (they are the "live links" to other sites). Though there are also other uses for HTML. If you find yourself in need of quick tutorial on how to do it, her...
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Squidoo Tagging Tricks: (how to get more visitors and a better search engine ranking using only tags)
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Adding tags to your lens is a great way to get found by more people. Through Google, through Squidoo Search, and through lensmasters clicking on their own tags links. Basically, tagging is very very good. But only if you know what you're doing. So...
Typical Squidoo Traffic
Newbies! You can click "skip voting" to see the results and still vote later.
Squidoo Vets! Help newbies out by answering this poll. If you have had a published lens on Squidoo for at least 3 months...
The Squidblog
The Squidblog is where members of the Squidoo Administration Team post news, comments, and announcements of interest to Squidoo members and the net at large.
Fetching RSS feed... please stand byMoneymaking on Squidoo
Newbies! You can click "skip voting" to see the results and still vote later.
Experienced Lensmasters! Help give newbies some idea what to expect. If you have received Squidoo payments for at least 3 months...
My Other Squidoo-Related Lenses
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GreekGeek's Squidoo Tips: How to Get Your Lens Found
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So, you want to learn how to build good Squidoo lenses (or any kind of webpage) and attract lots of visitors! Here's ten quick steps to help bring web traffic your way. Credentials: I came here with zero web marketing experience, but my first lens was...
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Greekgeek's Squidoo Stats
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Following Giant Squid bdkz's lead, I'm going to start tracking my Squidoo stats here: lensrank, earnings, and traffic. For consistency's sake, I'm going to use her method of tracking Lensrank: # of Lenses in the Top 100 = I count 1 - 100 # of Lense...
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Squidoo Modules List
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Modules are the building blocks of Squidoo, like widgets in blogs. Each module has certain settings you can change and customize to fit your lens (web page). For example, there's modules for photo galleries, displaying a Youtube video, polls, lists...
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Greekgeek's Lensography
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Greetings from Greekgeek, storyteller and scholar. Here are most of my Squidoo lenses, for your delectation and bewilderment. For newcomers to Squidoo, a "lens" is a web page focusing on one topic, combining original information with...
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Aligning Graphics on Web Pages
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Want to place a picture on a web page or lens? Need side-by-side graphics and text? Or are just trying to align an image left, right or center? First, I'll review Squidoo's built-in ways of uploading pictures onto your lenses. Then I'll show you how...
Reader Feedback
That's it! Now go forth and Squid! Remember to play nicely. Also remember that the Squid Team and other Squidsters can't be online 24/7 to answer questions, so please be patient waiting for replies.
If you have questions about Squidoo, SquidU, or the Lensmaster Lounge, please ask in the Lensmaster Lounge Help Forum. If you want to leave feedback or comments about this page, do it here!
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BlessedOne
Thanks for all the great information posted on this lens. As a very new newbie, I love all the help that is offered. I'd love to have a "pro" like yourself take a look at my lenses and let me know what you think and how I could perhaps improve. Thanks again and have a blessed day! ~ Tracy Posted May 20, 2008 |
| poddys
Very informative lens. Nice job. Posted May 12, 2008 |
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spirituality
Great lens. Thanks for the tip on how to do links. Posted May 10, 2008 |
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pyle_mountain
Great 5 star lens! Posted May 04, 2008 |
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Greekgeek
XP -- I don't think you can have different username in SquidU from your Squidoo account, so when you follow the instructions I gave below for changing "Screen name," that changes your username in SquidU as well. Of course, you could set up a second Squidoo account! It's fine to have multiple accounts, as long as you don't use them to "sock puppet" -- give replies, attention, or ratings to yourself by pretending to be another user (this practice can get an account locked.) Posted April 23, 2008 |
