How to Tell a Commontales Story (It's So Easy!)

Sign in to Commontales using your email address and password (it's easy to tell if you are signed in – just look for the words 'My stuff' in the upper-right corner).

Click the tab at the top of the page.

You'll see the title-entry screen:

Enter a title (you can always change it later) and click 'Continue.'

A screen that looks like a word processor (called the 'Editor') will appear. This is where you will type your story. The Editor screen looks like this:

Enter some or all of your story. You can add pictures using the button under your title.

Click the button at the top or bottom of the page. (You can always come back later to edit or add more to your story.)

This will take you to the 'Privacy' and 'Parental advisory' screen.

The 'Privacy' and 'Parental advisory' screen looks like this:

Commontales has three privacy choices:

'Parental advisory': Yes or No?

No: Select this if there's nothing "R-rated" in your story.

Yes: If you select this and someone clicks on the title of your story, they'll see an intermediate page that says, 'This story may not be suitable for children.' Users simply click 'Continue' to go on to your story or they can go back to the previous page.

We take this setting seriously. Parents should be able to share Commontales with their children. If your story contains anything that you believe would cause a parent concern, please use this feature.

The left-hand sidebar has several sections for metadata, which are keywords and other terms that describe the content you have created, and which allow you and others to find stories you and others tell.

The story's author appears at the top of the 'Who' list with a pen next to their name.

Beneath the author is everyone who's read the story. Each reader has an eye next to their name; you may click on anyone's name to go to that person's story list.

The 'What' section is where you put keywords that describe your story. Click any keyword to run a site-wide search for other stories where that word appears in either the sidebar or the story itself.

'When' is a place to put the day, month, and/or year when the story occurred. You can also put a date range if your story took place over an extended period of time. Entering the year is especially important, because that's how we place it on your personal timeline. Again, these dates are linked site-wide, so you can find stories from specific times.

'Where' is where your story took place. It might be several places, as often happens when people travel. You can enter anything you like: an address, a neighborhood, a town, state, county, province, nation, and/or continent. You can even enter a zip code if you want and it will be linked and searchable to yourself and others accordingly.

You must click after entering data into the sidebar. (TIP: You can edit both the story and the sidebar at the same time and you only need to click save once.)

After you click , your story loads in view mode. To make changes, click Edit this story above the title.

Now's your chance to add more words and pictures.

If you're feeling advanced, click the angle brackets    next to the pencil at the bottom of the story window to directly edit HTML. (Clicking the pencil takes you back to regular edit mode.)

To add a video clip directly to your story rather than linking to it, click the HTML button, then paste the <embed> code you've copied from your video hosting service (e.g., YouTube, Vimeo), then click the pencil icon next to the HTML button to make sure it's in the place you want it. If not, highlight it by dragging your mouse across it, cut and paste it somewhere else.

When you finish, click .

And that's it. Pretty easy, right?

Remember, if you ever need help, click at the top-right corner of the page.

One more time — remember to click the button before you sign out!

Want to add more? Just click Edit this story again to go back to edit mode.

Good work!