I owe the very fact of this recording to the quick thinking, patience, and grace of Foster. I’m deeply grateful. More about that below.
Table Stakes & Office Hours
I’d made a big fuss over moving the Office Hours sessions from Zoom to Substack. I tested features and chatted up vendors. Then it didn’t work.1 When we finally decamped to Zoom, we enjoyed a lively conversation and I think covered a lot of ground you’ll see in the recording.
Before I dive into the notes I promised in today’s program, I want to address a question
asked right from the start (remember, this was after 3 false-starts…)Why fool around with Substack Live? You’ll hear my answer in the recording. But let me start with this: I use these Office Hours to help as many family historians and genealogists get comfortable with this platform as quickly as possible. Video like YouTube is just the “tablestakes.”
The interesting part is what we can do beyond that.
Why live video? Interactive video like Zoom or Substack allow me to get the feedback of my audience as I do demos or answer questions. I’d like to think this would be a useful complement to the formal feature demos and documentation available from Substack itself, or the healthy ecosystem of content creators developing online guides.
Why attempt Substack’s Live? I mostly wanted the very high quality of video from Substack Live and the energy of realtime chat as a means to interact while sharing screens. BUT, as we saw today, it’s not ready yet, at least not with my limited equipment.
Today, I was both ringleader and high-wire act. Not a good combination.
I’d initially planned a presentation with a follow-up Q&A, possibly moving to Zoom. Instead, we ended up with a lively Q&A in Zoom. I’m eager to hear what you think of today’s session. On the whole, do you think it worked?
Should I do more sessions like this in the future? Do you have topics you’d like me to cover.
Today’s Topics
URL structures within Substack such as
publicationsubdomain.substack.com/t or /s for tags and sections
default slugs like /newsletters, /welcome, or /recommendations
We specifically discussed when someone might use…
Tags to sort through types of posts.
Sections, with their 1:1 association between post and section and how they can be useful for creating separately-subscribed newsletters within a given publication.
Publications, and why someone might have two different publications in a single account.
Multiple accounts for an individual such as I have for
and this
Next month, I’ve opened it to you to vote on the best time for these Office Hours. Here’s the poll. I look forward to your feedback.
Topics I’d previously proposed included:
Navigating Substack in a browser, desktop app, or mobile app — relevant support article about the mobile app.
How to handle and manage notifications — it’s a big topic with nearly 60 support articles.
How to search and find posts, notes, and more — you’ll find support articles about “search,” but there are some subtleties they don’t tell you.
How the “recommendation” engine works — and how it can work for you. (Tip: You must have a publication, then go here.)
Where to go for help — I’ve added some handy resources will get you started. We’ll talk about building from there.
What do you think of any and all of these ☝️. I’d love to hear your thoughts in comments.
Finally, I want to acknowledge of the contributions of my wonderful friend
without whom this publication would never have gotten off the ground. As she shared in an email last evening, she’s stepped back from her role as my partner in . I know you’ll join me in thanking her for her contributions and her terrific work on GenStack and GenealogyMatters and that you’ll continue to subscribe and support her there.
Again, I apologize for asking you to reconnect to Substack live three times. My configuration failed for reasons that will take further debugging to isolate, but I don’t believe were directly related to Substack. After three tries, it was clearly NOT working with my Substack Live configuration so I moved to use my backup Zoom link that didn’t require a registration. Whew. I know I lost at least a few of you on the scavenger hunt for the link.
There’s more: About 30 minutes after it was over (and I was feeling pleased with myself) I realized that I’d neglected to hit the record button (⏺️). Gasp.
That’s where Robin Foster stepped in to save me. Her default configuration for a software platform she was trialing, Fathom, captured the whole recording. She was gracious enough to share the recording with me so that I can share it with all of you. 😮💨. Thank you, thank you, thank you, Robin.
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