pleroma-fe/docs/USER_GUIDE.md

Be prepared for breaking changes, unexpected behavior and this user guide becoming obsolete and wrong.

If there was no insanity

it would be necessary to create it.

--Catbag

Pleroma-FE user guide

Pleroma-FE user interface is modeled after Qvitter which is modeled after older Twitter design. It provides a simple 2-column interface for microblogging. While being simple by default it also provides many powerful customization options.

Posting, reading, basic functions.

After registering and logging in you're presented with your timeline in right column and new post form with timeline list and notifications in the left column.

Posts will contain the text you are posting, but some content will be modified:

1. Mentions: Mentions have the form of @user or @user@instance.tld. These will become links to the user's profile. In addition, the mentioned user will always get a notification about the post they have been mentioned in, so only mention users that you want to receive this message.
2. URLs: URLs like http://example.com will be automatically be turned into a clickable links.
3. Hashtags: Hashtags like #cofe will also be turned into links.

Depending on your instance some of the options might not be available or have different defaults

Let's clear up some basic stuff. When you post something it's called a post or it could be called a status or even a toot or a prööt depending on whom you ask. Post has body/content but it also has some other stuff in it - from attachments, visibility scope, subject line.

• Attachments are fairly simple - you can attach any file to a post as long as the file is within maximum size limits. If you're uploading explicit material you can mark all of your attachments as sensitive (or add #nsfw tag) - it will hide the images and videos behind a warning so that it won't be displayed instantly.
• Subject line also known as CW (Content Warning) could be used as a header to the post and/or to warn others about contents of the post having something that might upset somebody or something among those lines. Several applications allow to hide post content leaving only subject line visible. As a side-effect using subject line will also mark your images as sensitive (see above).
• Visiblity scope controls who will be able to see your posts. There are four scopes available:

1. Public: This is the default, and some fediverse software like GNU Social only supports this. This means that your post is accessible by anyone and will be shown in the public timelines.
2. Unlisted: This is the same as public, but your post won't appear in the public timelines. The post will still be accessible by anyone who comes across it (for example, by looking at your profile) or by direct linking. They will also appear in public searches.
3. Followers only: This will show your post only to your followers. Only they will be able to interact with it. Be careful: When somebody follows you, they will be able to see all your previous followers only posts as well! If you want to restrict who can follow you, consider locking your account down to only approved followers.
4. Direct: This will only send the message to the people explicitly mentioned in the post.

A few things to consider about the security and usage of these scopes:

• None of these options will change the fact that the messages are all saved in the database unencrypted. They will be visible to your server admin and to any other admin of a server who receives this post. Do not share information that you would consider secret or dangerous. Use encrypted messaging systems for these things.
• Follower-only posts can lead to fragmented conversations. If you post a follower-only post and somebody else replies to it with a follower-only post, only people following both of you will see the whole conversation thread. Everybody else will only see half of it. Keep this in mind and keep conversations public if possible.
• Changing scopes during a thread or adding people to a direct message will not retroactively make them see the whole conversation. If you add someone to a direct message conversation, they will not see the post that happened before they were mentioned.

• Reply-to if you are replying to someone, your post will also contain a note that your post is referring to the post you're replying to. Person you're replying to will receive a notification even if you remove them from mentioned people. You won't receive notifications when replying to your own posts, but it's useful to reply to your own posts to provide people some context if it's a follow-up to a previous post. There's a small "Reply to ..." label under post author's name which you can hover on to see what post it's referring to.

Sometimes you may encounter posts that seem different than what they are supposed to. For example, you might see a direct message without any mentions in the text. This can happen because internally, the Fediverse has a different addressing mechanism similar to email, with to and cc fields. While these are not directly accessible in PleromaFE, other software in the Fediverse might generate those posts. Do not worry in these cases, these are normal and not a bug.

Rich text

By default new posts you make are plaintext, meaning you can't make text bold or add custom links or make lists or anything like that. However if your instance allows it you can use Markdown or BBCode or HTML to spice up your text, however there are certain limitations to what HTML tags and what features of Markdown you can use.

this section will be expanded later

Other actions

In addition to posting you can also favorite post also known as liking them and repeat posts (also known as retweeting, boosting and even reprööting). Favoriting a post increments a counter on it, notifies post author of your affection towards that post and also adds that post to your "favorited" posts list (in your own profile, "Favorites" tab). Reprööting a post does all that and also repeats this post to your followers and your profile page with a note "user repeated post".

Your own posts can be deleted, but this will only reliably delete the post from your own instance. Other instances will receive a deletion notice, but there's no way to force them to actually delete a post. In addition, not all instances that contain the message might even receive the deletion notice, because they might be offline or not known to have the post because they received it through a repeat.

If you are a moderator, you can also delete posts by other people. If those people are on your instance, it will delete the post and send out the deletion notice to other servers. If they are not on your instance, it will just remove the post from your local instance.

There's also an option to report a user via a post (if the feature is available on your instance) which could be used to notify your (and probably other instance's) admin that someone is being naughty.

Users

When you see someone, you can click on their user picture to view their profile, and click on the userpic in that to see full profile. You can follow them, mute and block them. Following is self-explanatory, it adds them t your Home Timeline, lists you as a follower and gives you access to follower-only posts if they have any. Muting makes posts and notifications made by them very tiny, giving you an option to see the post if you're curious. However on clients other than PleromaFE their posts will be completely removed. Blocking a user removes them from your timeline and notifications and prevents them from following you (automatically unfollows them from you).

Please note that some users can be "locked", meaning instead of following them you send a follow request they need to approve for you to become their follower.

Timelines

Currently you have several timelines to browse trough:

• Timeline aka Home Timeline - this timeline contains all posts by people you follow and your own posts, as well as posts mentioning you directly.
• Interactions all interactions you've had with people on the network, basically same as notifications except grouped in convenient way - mentions separate from favorites with repeats separate from follows
• Direct Messages all posts with direct scope addressed to you or mentioning you.
• Public Timelines all posts made by users on instance you're on
• The Whole Known Network also known as TWKN or Federated Timeline - all posts on the network by everyone, almost. Due to nature of the network your instance may not know all* the instances on the network, so only posts originating from known instances are shown there.

Other stuff

By default you can see ALL posts made by other users on your Home Timeline, this contrast behavior of Twitter and Mastodon, which shows you only non-reply posts and replies to people you follow. You can set it up to replicate the said behavior, however the option is currently broken.

You can view other people's profiles and search for users (top-right corner, person with a plus icon). Tag search is possible but not implemented properly yet, right now you can click on tag link in a post to see posts tagged with that post.

You can also view posts you've favorited on your own profile, but you cannot see favorites by other people.

Due to nature of how Pleroma (backend) operates you might see old posts appear as if they are new, this is because instance just learned about that post (i.e. your instance is younger that some other ones) and someone interacted with old post. Posts are sorted by date of when they are received, not date they have been posted because it's very easy to spoof the date, so a post claiming it "was" made in year 2077 could hand at top of your TL forever.

Customization and configuration

TODO