ZCustomization Pages

Help with Customization
& Custom Pages

Please note: This page isn't quite done... This week we are planning to add additional ZStaff created templates that you can work with. Also - the whole customization facility is new - so please be a little patient. If you have have any problems or suggestions, do send us an email.
 

Basic Summary

From this Cumulative ZCustomization Page you can look at various people's custom pages. If you are a Sustainer with Customization privileges and you see one you like, you can copy it for your own. You just click the link to see it, and then up near your name under the tabbed menu, you click the link to copy it - and if you do that, it will take a couple of minutes but it will replace your own custom page of the same ZNet or ZSpace type.

Here is an example to clarify.

Suppose I go to the Customization Page and I look around and decide that I like Joe's custom ZNet page. I go to his creation and I click to copy it, and now it becomes my custom ZNet top page, replacing whatever I may have had before, or perhaps it is my first one. Then if I go to my custom ZNet, of course I can edit Joe's creation, in effect using his creation as a jumping off place to create my own.

Further, the pages that ZStaff have supplied as templates you can copy in the same way, and then you can edit and otherwise refine them however you like, as well, to be your own. We are putting them up for your pleasure and have tried to give them indicative names revealing their relevance to people with certain interests.

Basically, the customization feature let's users see ZNet and ZSpace in very nearly whatever look, feel, and content mix you desire. The Customization and Templates Pages let you see what others have created, including ZStaff templates, and adopt anything you like as your own, then editing further, if you so choose.

• Is there too much in our menus for your taste - no problem. Cut it back.
• Do you want links to favorite sites of yours. No problem, add them.
• Do we have, in your opinion, not enough international content on the top page. No problem. Add more to your custom version.
• Want different graphics - fine, pick and place them.
• Want more videos front and center - go for it.
• Want some countries in particular, to have content boxes, or some topics to have content boxes, no problem. place them where you want.
• Want particular people's work featured, on particular topics, its easy to do with the content box filters.
• Want to see your friends efforts front and center, automatically, in content boxes. Just filter for friends content in one of the content boxes.
• And so on.

Is the Above Unclear? Try This Further Explanation...

ZNet and ZSpace are massive. Each has a public top page that visitors see by default which tries to provide menus for efficient navigation to all that is available. Each also has "content boxes" for lucid display of what ZStaff chooses to emphasize.

However, your personal priorities are likely quite different from our efforts to simultaneously accommodate hundreds of thousands of users. In other words, each of you, if you could have your way, would likely want menus pointing in somewhat different directions than what we publicly offer and different content boxes highlighting different topics, places, people's work, etc., than we highlight.

The only way to bridge that gap between your precise preferences, and the site's specific public choices is to let you customize the site to your liking. We can't give that away free - there are too many costs associated with it. But we can give it to Sustainers who donate $3 or more, on average, per month. And in coming months, if many more people become Sustainers, we will be able to provide this feature at lower donation levels.

At any rate, here's how it works. A Sustainer visits the site and logs in. Right below the tab menu he or she sees this set of links - in my case -

Hello Michael Albert  | My Account | Custom ZNet | Custom ZSpace | My ZSpace | Open Chat |  Logout

If I then click "Custom ZNet," I see my Custom ZNet top page (and likewise for "Custom ZSpace"). If I don't have a custom page yet, I continue to see the public top page, but now with point and click tools available that I can use to edit the tab and left menu systems (moving, adding, or deleting items), and also the content boxes including adding or deleting and/or moving boxes. I can even control what graphics, text, videos, or other content appear in the boxes, and what links are dynamically selected by the system according to filters that I set, and thus highlighting the topics, places, people's work, types of work, etc., that I want quick access to.

Okay, but  what is the purpose of this ZCustomization Page? Is this page just about viewing what ZStaff and others have done? 

Suppose you click a link here to visit a ZStaff created template, or to visit a custom page created by some Sustainer. Suppose then that the page you have visited isn't exactly your taste, but it is pretty close. Okay, in that case, in the group of links under the tab menu, while you are on another person's or a staff created custom page that you largely like, you can click copy. When you do that the page you are on becomes yours. It literally replaces, or is adopted, as your custom page - whether of ZNet or ZSpace.

If you then click to go back to ZNet top say, and you click Custom ZNet next to your name beneath the tab menu, you will see see your new custom page, and now you can edit it any way you want, further refining it to match your needs!

This cumulative customization page, in other words, is an aid that will help you quickly arrive at having your own personally customized version of the site.

Please remember, however, two last very critical points.

1. Once you have a custom page, when you visit it you not only see it, but you also see your new menus. not the menus familiar to the public version. More, when you then click around the site, you will keep the custom version of menus - they will follow you - until and unless you click the link to visit the public ZNet top page, at which point the menus you see will revert to their public form and content. In other words thare are two versions of the site at your disposal, and you can toggle between seeing it one way, or the other way!

2. You can, at any time, change your custom pages again. You can also come back to this page, at any time, to start over if you want a big change, choosing a new jumping off template or person's page to build a new custom page for yourself.