Ghost in the Machine

Happy New Year friends of Crechemania!

Please allow me to introduce myself. I'm the Benjamin, Alexis' godson, who he talks about in his Christmas Day 2008 blog post, his For Auld Lang Syne blog post, and his A Christmas Manger Set, perfect for a child blog post.

Although I am the guy who built the Pompeiian house with Alexis... I'm not really a creche aficionado. But I am helping Alexis with the mechanics and features of this site so that you (who are) can get the most out of the Crechemania experience.

So I have started my own blog (Titled "Ghost in the Machine") to explain and demonstrate some of the features of Crechemania.com.

The first thing that I'd like to talk to you about is YOU! To put it more plainly... we want to see and hear from you. The wonderful thing about the web is that it's graphical by nature (as demonstrated by Alexis' wonderful blog posts) and it's interactive. So we want to encourage you to be as interactive as possible -- both with your words and your images.

Let's start with your avatar. Your avatar represents you visually to everyone on crechemania.com. So please pick a good picture of yourself and upload it to the site using your User Control Panel options.

For those of you who don't know how to do this, here is a step-by-step course in adding your avatar to your user profile...

1. If you haven't registered yet, please go through the registration process (using the Register link on the main page shown in the screen shot below). It's worth it. Not only will you be able to interact with the site but you'll also be able to access the downloads area on Crechemania.com.

2. If you're already registered, go ahead and login to Crechemania.com using the login window (see the screen shot below).

3. If you're sucessfull at logging in, you will see a message welcomeing you to the site in the upper right hand corner of the screen (as shown in the screen shot below).

Note: If you don't see this and you don't get an error message, then you may have to refresh your browser. If this doesn't work you'll need to quit your browser, relaunch your browser, and try logging in again.

4. Once you're logged in, you need to access your User Control Panel. To do this, click on the User CP link in the upper left corner of the screen (shown in the screen shot below).

5. Along the left side of this new screen you will see a whole bunch of links that will allow you to modify and optimize your personal settings. But here we're just talking about your Avatar... so you would select the Edit Avatar link from this screen (as shown in the screen shot below).

6. The screen will change again -- giving you the options needed to upload an avatar from your computer. Check the Use Custom Avatar radio button and then click on the Browse button (shown in the screen shot below).

7. This will open a File Upload window allowing you to navigate through your own computer, select an image, and then open/choose and image that you wish to upload to crechemania.com as your avatar (shown in the Mac OS X screen shot below).

Note: This File Upload window is what shows up on a Mac running OS 10.4 or higher. If you have a different OS, your File Upload window may be different.

8. Once you click the Open or OK button on your File Upload window (shown in the screen shot above) the File Upload window will disappear and you will be back to your Edit Avatar screen with a file path showing in the Option 2 field. This file path represents the path that your browser understands as the location of the image you wish to make your avatar. To upload this image click on Save Changes button in this screen (as shown in the screen shot below).

9. After a brief pause, your Edit Avatar screen will refresh and you will see your new Custom Avatar smiling back at you (shown in the screen shot below).

You can feel free to leave the User Control Panel area at this time if you want. From now on, each time you post a comment about a blog post, work with your pictures & albums, or participate in the social group Creche-Maniacs (we'll talk more about comments, albums, and social groups in future posts), your picture will accompany your interaction with the site.

I hope this helps get you started.

All my best.

- Benjamin