Technical Support

[Paul, A wanderer in unknown realms]

I've started a topic for any questions members might have relating to technical aspects of a Goodreads forum and account.
Ask any questions and myself or other mods (or any member who knows) will try answer.
I'll post a few common queries to start

[Paul, A wanderer in unknown realms]

Some have had trouble with their accounts crashing and while its easy to set up a new account and find your way back to the group its not so easy to start your bookshelves from the start. All your hard work on reviews can be lost.
Thankfully these can be backed up easily and uploaded again if you have to create a new account.Also lets you save your bookshelves in a handy csv file that can be viewed in excel

These instructions are for the Desktop version of the Goodreads pages.

1 - Select My Books from the top panel of the page.

2 - On the left hand side of the page find the option import/export and click

3. On the right hand side of this page Find the Export Your Books section and click export to a csv file.

4. Select save and the file will be saved to your documents or downloads folder as goodreads_export.csv This file can be opened and viewed in Excel, open office and notepad.

5. Do this back up every few weeks to keep it current.

6. If you have to create a new account for whatever reason to load your books and bookshelves back up follow step 1 and 2 above.

7. In the section Import from a file click browse and navigate to the saved backup (this will be saved in My Documents or My Downloads)

8. Once selected click Import Books and it will write them all to your account


Any questions let me know

[Paul, A wanderer in unknown realms]

Quick guide to add a picture #
You need to upload the picture to a sharing site lile tinypics.com or imgur.com
I use tinypics because it gives you options of the links one of which contains the html code prewritten so all you do is copy this link and paste it into the goodreads thread and it should work ( the correct link to copy is the one with code written between arrow brackets like these. 《》
If its a picture already on the net , just get its link by right clicking on it and place to address in the following code instead of the goodreads web address also change the brackets to these symbols <> -
(img src="http://www.goodreads.com/image..." width="40" height="100" alt="description"/)

[Brendan]

Great idea for a thread. Had no clue you could make a backup, thanks.

[Paul, A wanderer in unknown realms]

I had a few friends who's accounts either disapeared or where hacked so a backup is always a good idea

[Kirsty, Jedi Master]

Paul wrote: "Quick guide to add a picture #
You need to upload the picture to a sharing site lile tinypics.com or imgur.com
I use tinypics because it gives you options of the links one of which contains the htm..."

Aha, Just seen this, trying to work it out through Imgur as i have an account there, no success yet...

[Paul, A wanderer in unknown realms]

Kirsty , if you right click on an image in imgur then select properties a pop up shows up which has a URL to the JPG , this can then be submitted using the code above , also change the height and width so its not silly small , so your shelf is as follows -

[Kirsty, Jedi Master]

Aha! Got it! Thanks :D

[Paul, A wanderer in unknown realms]

An easier way here would be great but once you do it a few times its grand

[Audrey, Queen of the Potato People]

I was wondering if GR lets you have sub-shelves. I want to have sub-categories for some of my shelves, but I don't see a way to do it. Is anyone aware of such a possibility?

[Rinn, (Retired mod) Captain of the SSV Normandy]

I don't think that's an option, hence why some people have shelves like 'genre-fantasy', 'genre-sf' etc :(

[Paul, A wanderer in unknown realms]

No its not built in similar to an excel table so fairly limited in that respects

[Cupcakes & Machetes, Hybrid Creature]

How do you link your reviews?

[Rinn, (Retired mod) Captain of the SSV Normandy]

Just the usual way of creating a hyperlink:

Replace ( with < :

(a href="http://www.yourlinkhere.com") Text (/a)

[Cupcakes & Machetes, Hybrid Creature]

Rinn wrote: "Just the usual way of creating a hyperlink:

Replace ( with < :

(a href="http://www.yourlinkhere.com") Text (/a)"

Thanks!

[Freya, Dragon Rider]

Not a technical question, but GOOD NEWS EVERYBODY! Goodreads has finally decided to make it so you can record each time you reread books :) I don't have a link at present as I'm writing this from my phone, but I'll find one at some point.

[Roger, Knight Radiant]

Freya wrote: "Not a technical question, but GOOD NEWS EVERYBODY! Goodreads has finally decided to make it so you can record each time you reread books :) I don't have a link at present as I'm writing this from m..."

Here's the link Freya:

https://www.goodreads.com/blog/show/8...

[Freya, Dragon Rider]

Brilliant - thanks Roger :)

[Vinca]

Freya wrote: "Not a technical question, but GOOD NEWS EVERYBODY! Goodreads has finally decided to make it so you can record each time you reread books :) I don't have a link at present as I'm writing this from m..."

That is *excellent* news! It's really the only functionality I've been annoyed that Goodreads doesn't have.

[Rinn, (Retired mod) Captain of the SSV Normandy]

Freya wrote: "Not a technical question, but GOOD NEWS EVERYBODY! Goodreads has finally decided to make it so you can record each time you reread books :) I don't have a link at present as I'm writing this from m..."

SO HAPPY! Although I've been updating my re-reads and seems to already know I re-read them :o

[Nic, Wormhole Technician]

This really threw me as it happened while I was re-reading Consider Phlebas! I wasn't sure how it all worked, but I think i've got the hang of it. What I used to do previously was to just add a different version of the book, but this looks much better!

[Carolyn]

This is great! I'm excited.

[Audrey, Queen of the Potato People]

Okay -- how do you add images and gifs? Can you upload from the computer?

[Greg]

Audrey wrote: "Okay -- how do you add images and gifs? Can you upload from the computer?"

[Edit - actually Paul already answered this in post #3 but I'll leave mine here in case it helps]

Step 1: Upload the image

Hi Audrey, you have a few options for how to upload pictures.

1. You can upload them to your profile pics, but that's a little cumbersome and limiting for me.
2. You can find a place already on the web with the pic. Then you just copy the whole web address of the image. Some websites make that easier than others by right clicking on the image and getting the link to the image itself.
3. My favorite because it always works even from my mobile phone is to upload it using www.tinypic.com.

Step 2: Put image into a post

In your post put < img src="the web address of the image itself"> where you want the image to go
except without the space between the < and img

That's it.

[Kirsty, Jedi Master]

So this business of adding an extra reading of a book. I'm currenty back in the wheel of time world. I have reviews on both the audiobook and paperback. I am currently re-listening to the audiobook, i have added a start date on the review as an additional read. Can I then change it to "currently reading" to show up in current;ly reading books without messing things up? or should i just wait until ive finished it?

does that make any sense??

[Rinn, (Retired mod) Captain of the SSV Normandy]

I think if you change it to currently reading now, it'll add ANOTHER start date, but I could be wrong. However, if it does you should just be able to delete the duplicate? It's done that a few times with books I've re-read, listed 3 reads instead of 2, and you can just manually delete them.

[Shawnie]

I'm frustrated with the new GR changes. Does anyone know how to change the edition with the update? I keep getting stuck with editions that aren't in my language. It was so easy to switch editions before the last GR changes. Thanks in advance!

[Eric]

When you click on the book, there's a section called "More editions" which includes the line "Show all N editions" where N is the number of editions. You click on it and you'll get all of the editions like before and you can switch to it.

[Shawnie]

That was it! Thanks, Eric. :)