In case you don’t know how to post on your blog…
As an experienced user of PokerVibez I amI’ve been asked tons of times how to post on a blog that has been created.
It’s pretty obvious how to create a blog, so I won’t lose time on that.
I suppose that for many Wordpress users the way to post is pretty obvious. Unfortunatly many of you aren’t Wordpress users. Ok, the FAQ is there to solve your doubts (but I don’t check FAQs unless I’m in huge troubles neither), but just in case you don’t like to be answered by developers I’ll tell you how to do it.
I assume that you created the blog.
Ok, now go to the "Blogs" tab. There, on the right you’ll se a green "Go to my blog" button. Click on it. In the navigation bar of your Explorer, Firefox or whatever it is, you’ll see the URL of your blog.
Let’s suppose yours is: http://www.blog.pokervibez.com/ShakeMyAss/
Nice, all you have to do to get inside the place where to write and post stuff is to add wp-admin to URL. The resultant URL should be:
http://www.blog.pokervibez.com/ShakeMyAss/wp-admin
I’m sure many of you have lots of interesting things to say, so I hope to see you blogging often.
And I hope this was useful.
See you all!!!
PkVz Tutorial Part 4 – Groups
Groups are a very important part of any kind of social networks. I suppose this is due to many reasons. If the main purpose of one is to share things, groups are a very good way of doing so.
There are as much kind of groups as you could imagine, from silly things (like one I joined sometime of people who cannot stop using ‘lol’) to fan sites. There are, of course, specific poker groups, some of them with a lot of interest. I’ve created a Hold’em Manager group, for example. I’d like to post every new version link and open discussions about average stats and other freak things. I mean… there lots of things to do within groups, so even in poker is an useful tool.
Let’s describe how to create one, ok? Click on the Group tab (this step is pretty intuitive). There you’ll see the groups recently joined by your friends, groups that have been unptaded recently and finally your groups. You can search for any group through the search bar, and add some filters if you want. To create one go to the Create New Group button.
I think there is nothing interesting to say about the Group info editor. Well, yes. There aren’t much networks at the moment, so it’ll be great if you could create the one you really thought your group belongs to. And another thing: this steps will be the same that you’ll find whenever you’ll want to edit your group, so this is the place to write every recent new (this is the place where I post HM’s new versions).
The step 2 is about uploading the main picture of the group. It is important to say that here you’ll be able to edit the access, and wall options.
Finally you can invite all of your friends (and I definitly suggest you to do that).
Inside groups you can upload more photos and videos. This is specially interesting if you’d like to share some of your recorded hands, for example. Like ‘This is my fan site. This is how good I play’ or something lol. An user created recently a High Stakes Poker group, I suggest you to go there and post your favourite hands of the show. I think everybody loves to comment those hands (check out the latest durrrr’s bluff against Greenstein and Eastgate, so sick).
So this is what I have to say about groups. If I forgot something important comment it.
See ya!
PkVz Tutorial Part III: Privacy options
Today we’re going to take a look at the Privacy set up. I don’t really what the default options are, so we’re not going to describe anything about that. We’ll discuss how to set the Privacy options in a standard and positive way for the community.
In fact, what is the purpose of activating all the possible privacy filters, when you’re inside a community where sharing poker knowledge and stuff is the goal? Probably it has no sense indeed. So, we’re going to suggest the better options to achieve this.
This doesn’t mean you have to share absolutly all your information and everything you have on your profile. It’s only about sharing everything that could be positive your friends to know.
Let’s first take a look at the profile privacy. Click on edit settings inside the profile tab. You’ll see many categories, being posible to decide whether we want all our networks, friends, some of them, or just friends, to be able to see every single category. I really suggest actually all the four upper categories (Profile, Online Status, Friends and wall) to be visible. The contacto info is something that you could share through messages to those who request some of this kind, so perhaps with the exception of the e-mail I suggest you not to share this info but just to friends, or directly not editing it in the Profile editor.
Let’s go now to the Search options. I suggest your profile to be visible for all those who look after it, of course and let the people to see your photo, send messages, add you as a friend. Depending of how proud of your friends are you, feel free to let everyone to see your list.
Now we get to one of the most important privacy options: the News Feeds. I really suggest you to activate all of them, so all of your friends can see what you’re doing in their Home Page. This is specially important because is the best way to keep active the community. I know you want your friends to comment your hands and know what hands you commented, for example. Active these News Feed and I suggest all of them, folk!
Same thing applies to the Mini Feeds (only that this will only visible in your profile).
These are overall the important things. Only two more things to say. Perhaps it’ll be convenient that you let see your basic info and photo to those persons, not friends of yours, to who you send a message.
The last two tabs are about blocking people. Did you see a person who’s sending you Spam. There are two things to do. Block him first and then contact the PkVz team and notify that we have a spammer inside the community.
Hope this was helpful.
Regards!
PkVz Tutorial Part 2: The Profile
So you registered your account and want to start making things in PkVz. Wait a sec. Maybe it’s the case to start with your profile. Certainly friends are important, but don’t start looking for them without offering some info to people.
Let’s do some things on our profile then. There are many options related with it. You can go and see it by just clicking on the profile tab. But if you point on the tab without clicking you’ll see a menu. There you’ll find some options. First let’s take a look to the Editor. Click on Edit.
You’ll get to a section where you can edit all your info; different tabs let the user edit different categories. Poker info could be specially interesting to edit, since other users will see you profile and see what game you play, what level, room, etc…
Of course the privacy of your information of any kind can be changed by going to the Privacy section. For doing this just go to the link on the top of the screen, on the right of the PkVz navigation bar.
Now let’s go to your profile. You should see that all the info you edited and let different kind of users to watch is visible. Now it’s time to upload a photo as your profile photo. Below the place where there should be one there’s a link that will redirect you to one of the tabs of the Editor (did you notice the option before? 
I didn’t). Upload one and let people see how you are.
Let’s go back to the profile. You can see many boxes, for personal challenges, stats, hands, minifeeds, and wall. By default every box is distributed this way (to be honest I don’t remember how it was before I changed them). The thing is you can change their position. Do you want the wall to be above the challenge? Then just click on the upper part of the box, where its name is, and move it wherever you want. Same thing can be done with the boxes on the left part of your profile.
These display the friends you have, groups and networks. There’s an option there you can start to use in order to find your friends. You got it, it’s the ‘Search for friends option’. Clicking on it you’ll get to a section where writing your e-mail and password (it’s safe, don’t be suspicious ;)) the application will find who of your contacts are already on PkVz.
I think all those things are pretty obvious, but perhaps useful for someones who’s not familiar with any kind of social network.
By the way all the profiles of every user work this way, so you could see all the friends of a friend of yours, or whatever kind of information you want to consult (hands commented, posted, history, groups, networks, etc.)
Hey! Of course you should spend some time uploading photos and videos. I suppose this is intuitive, but we’ll talk about that in another entry though.
See ya!!
PkVz Tutorial Part 1: The Home
I start the PkVz tutorial with a description of the Home page and its functions.
Right now the user can perform many actions through the Home. Many of them are pretty obvious and useful but I think there’s one we should specially comment.
First of all let’s say that the home informs you about your requests and, through the News feeds, about what your friends have done in PkVz. You should receive feeds about what groups your friends have joined, what hands posted and commented, blog’s posts, duels, the new friends of them, events they’re attending, photos, videos… So in general through them you’ll be informed about most of the activities your friends have done in PkVz (exceptions are, of course, those things that your friends didn’t want to publicy in any Feed, which something that can be decided by every user).
The other main thing in the Home is the calendar. There’s no need to go to the Calendar tab in order to check what are the events, tournaments, duels or even challenges about to expire. Green day boxes will let you know that there’s something remarkable happening; then you can just click on the calendar and you’ll be redirected to the current month and get further information about what’s going to happen. We will return to the calendar in other tutorial part.
Anyway, below the calendar there are three boxes that will tell you what’s about to happen.
Below the request box, on the left side of the screen you’ll find a box to invite friends. This is a Private Beta so the number of invitations is now limited to three. If you don’t know people to invite (maybe because you’re new in the poker world) you may communicate that to your friends in PkVz; perhaps they would need more invitations.
Below there’s another important part of the Home page now during the first PkVz’ steps. There’s a feedback box where the user can inform the PkVz’ team about possible improvements. Imo this is an essential part. I don’t how people got into PkVz, but I think that is kind of a privilege to be inside something like this. Of course I’m not telling that the user has some sort of moral duty of giving feedback; I mean that if you like the application and you’re using it you may want it to become better, so it’ll only a few minutes to write a report.
Below this upper part of the home there’s a section that I consider the most innovative and interesting function of the Home. The user can use PkVz as it was some kind of Feed Reader, so he’ll receive RSS of those blogs or webs he decide to subscribe. Example: I’m a regular reader of Ed Miller’s blog Noted Poker Authority (if any of you knows Ed, please tell him to join us!!! Anyway I’ll create an Ed Fan Site soon!). Well I can subscribe to his blog through PkVz and see what are the latest posts in the PkVz’ Home. This should be possible for every blog and website that have an RSS system. In fact, you could check what’s new on the poker world just taking a look at you Home.
The way to add content right now may be confusing for some users, so I think an explanation can be useful. You’ll find a button to add content. Clicking on it a window will be displayed asking you an URL. If you paste de URL of the site you want to add you’ll receive a message telling you that you must insert a valid URL. What’s the valid URL? Say you’re on Noted Poker Authority. You shouldn’t copy the URL of the blog. You need to click on the orange button on the right of the URL in the navigation bar. Then copy the URL of the RSS and paste it on the PkVz add content window. This way you’ll start to receive RSS from that site and get the latest news on the PkVz’ Home.
Finally, below the websites you’ll find a Poukker section. Poukker is another website. It’s like a poker Twitter. I suggest you to go and create a profile. You’ll be able to subscribe to other users’ posts, so you’ll receive them on PkVz. I think Poukker is an interesting tool to comment things like a tournament being played at that moment, in a better way than in a forum. Whatever you think about Twitter it applies to Poukker. For those who don’t know what Twitter is… well, it’s some kind of thing between a forum and a chat. That is: something useful for non-inmediate purpouse, but still fast comments.
Those are right now the actions that can be performed through the Home.
I hope this helped you someway.
Welcome Newcomers!
During this week in PokerVibez I’ve investigated the application and checked the various functions it offers.
I think there’s lots of things to do with it and lots of things still to improve. I really like PkVz so while I wait my creativity to come back in order to suggest improvents, I decided to help the community through a small tutorial. Specially cuz… yes guys I hate FAQs as well!
So the next posts in my blog will be parts of the PkVz tutorial. I hope you’ll like it. I’m sorry for those that don’t understand English, because I don’t think I’ll publish the tutorial on my Spanish blog (or at least ’til I finished it).
One more thing. Writing a tutorial is a hard work (and I’ll need some time to complete it; of course you’ll need to be patient) so I want this work to be useful. I’d like all the users in trouble to have access to it, so if you know someone having problems of any kind maybe these posts would help him. Anyway feel free to tell him to add me as a friend and I’ll try to explain how things work here 
Have fun!