Play Book Tag discussion
Archives 2016-2017
>
Q &A: Transitioning from Shelfari
As I was exploring my personal shelf (not the PBT group shelf), I came across some helpful tips to make your shelf work better for you. Thought I would share!1. I have not noticed a limit on the shelves that I can either add to a single book or add to my bookshelf.
2. I can search my own personal shelves for multiple tags but I think it is limited to three categories. If you go to "My Books" and select any of your shelves other than "all," you will see a list of shelves down the left hand side. Scroll to the bottom of the list and you will see a little hyperlink that says "Select multiple." Click that and you will get a little "+" beside each of the shelves and you can select the ones you want to filter by.
This does not work on the PBT group shelf though.
3. Go to "My Books" and then select "settings" at the top and you can select what categories you would like displayed for each book.
4. Go to "My books" and then by "Bookshelves" select the edit option. From here, you can change a number of options including what shelves are at the top of your list at all times. Interested in always having your personal Play Book Tag shelf at the top? Select that "sticky" box. For me, I will likely make some of my challenge shelves sticky.
2. I can search my own personal shelves for multiple tags but I think it is limited to three categories. If you go to "My Books" you will see a list of shelves down the left hand side. Scroll to the bottom of the list and you will see a little hyperlink that says "Select multiple." Click that and you will get a little "+" beside each of the shelves and you can select the ones you want to filter by.I do not see that hyperlink. This is what I see
dnf (2)
« 1 2 3 »
add shelf
owned books
tools
recommendations
add Amazon book purchases
widgets
import/export
find duplicates
shelf cloud
most read authors
stats
api
Linda wrote: "2. I can search my own personal shelves for multiple tags .....I do not see that hyperlink. This is what I see..."Linda, I have amended my post above. It seems that you cannot see the "select multiple" link if you are viewing all of your books. If you chose a single shelf and then scroll to the bottom of the shelf list on the left, you should see "select multiple."
I have a few questions:1. You don't want us to create new shelves, correct? But where do I put tags for books I add to the shelf. All in my own page? For example, I want to tag Jane Eyre as "classics" I've already tagged it that way on my bookshelf. I also tagged it PBT shelfagories on this group's page. Is that I all do?
2. How do I post a link to my book review but label it "my review" See my response on shelfagories thread
Jen wrote: 1. You don't want us to create new shelves, correct? But where do I put tags for books I add to the shelf.
Jen, great question. And you basically answered it correctly yourself!
Yes, please do not add new shelves to the group shelf. If you add a book, please only use the shelves we have provided, in your case, the tag on our group shelf is simply "shelfagories". Any additional tagging you wish to do, please simply do on your own personal shelf!
Jen wrote: "I have a few questions:1. You don't want us to create new shelves, correct? But where do I put tags for books I add to the shelf. All in my own page? For example, I want to tag Jane Eyre as "clas..."
1. We ask that you please limit the tags on the PBT Group Shelf to tags that are associated with Play Book Tag (monthly tags and challenges) and any other tags you would like to use please add on your personal shelf. So, in this case, you would add Jane Eyre to the PBT "Shelfagories" Shelf but you would only tag it "classics" on your personal shelf.
If there is a tag that you feel should be on the PBT Shelf but is not, then please contact Cindy.
2. I am a bit confused on this one. What do you mean by post a link to your review? You mean somehow indicate on the PBT shelf that the book is yours?
Jen wrote: "How do I post a link to my book review but label it "my review" See my response on shelfagories thread" To do this, you need you use html code. When you post a new comment, you will see a tiny link in the upper right hand corner of the comment box that says (some html is ok). Here's where you can find the code you need to use. It is the code to create a link.
For convenience, I will post it below.
To create a link, you use the following code (removing ALL the asterisks):
<*a href="http://www.goodreads.com">my link text<*/a>
So, you would pull up the book page on the group shelf, and then copy the URL for that page into the code.
Then, where it says "my link text", you would replace those words with the words saying "my review".
We definitely don't require that you do this! But if you wish to try it out, here's how you do it.
Everyone will soon learn that if they want to see your review, all they need to do is access the book you indicate on our group shelf. All member reviews will display. The link is a lovely courtesy.
Jen wrote: "I have a few questions:1. You don't want us to create new shelves, correct? But where do I put tags for books I add to the shelf. All in my own page? For example, I want to tag Jane Eyre as "clas..."
2. Jen, I see what you mean by linking to your review as I did above you in the Shelfagories thread.
Here is what you do:
Go to the PBT bookshelf and find the book that you reviewed. For you, it is Jane Eyre. All the way to the right, click on "view activity."
That will bring up a page that has "From the bookshelf of Play Book Tag" on it and your review is the first one I see! You can hyperlink to that page link.
You will notice that all members reviews of that book show up first when you view the book from our shelf. If you want to link to a review for a book that is very popular, you may also choose to link directly to your review on your personal shelf.
To do that, you go to your personal bookshelf, click on the name of the book you reviewed, and then on the personal details page you will see your review posted first. Right above your review it says "My Review." Click that and you will get to a page entitled (for example) "Nicole Rohr's Reviews > Neverhome".
If you copy and paste that page's link, it will direct to to a page that looks like this.
I hope that helps! Feel free to link to whichever review you are more comfortable with!
Anita wrote: "Jen wrote: "How do I post a link to my book review but label it "my review" See my response on shelfagories thread" To do this, you need you use html code. When you post a new comment, you will s..."
Ah, I think Anita got the gist of what you were asking while it went right over my head! lol.
How do I insert a hyperlink?To do this, you need you use html code. When you post a new comment, you will see a tiny link in the upper right hand corner of the comment box that says (some html is ok). Here's where you can find the code you need to use. It is the code to create a link.
For convenience, I will post it below.
To create a link, you use the following code (removing ALL the asterisks):
<*a href="http://www.goodreads.com">my link text<*/a>
So, let's say you want to link to your book review on the PBT Group Shelf.
You would pull up the book page on the group shelf, click the "view activity" link to the far right, and then copy the URL for that page into the code, replacing the generic http://www.goodreads.com address in the code above.
Then, where it says "my link text", you would replace those words with the words saying "my review," or whatever words you wanted it to say.
We definitely don't require that you do this! But if you wish to try it out, here's how you do it.
How do I insert a link to a book or a link to a book cover?When you post a new comment, do not post the title of the book you want to insert, but instead click on the "add book/author" hyperlink directly above the comment box.
A dialogue box will pop up and you will see two options at the bottom: link or cover. Choose the appropriate one and then type in the name of the book in the search box then click search.
A list of books will pop up and simple click "add" next to the appropriate one. This will insert the name of the book or a picture of the book cover (depending on the method you chose) and both are hyperlinked to the book details page.
If you want to add a hyperlink to the author's page as well, click the "add book/author" link above the comment box again. You should see the book you just searched for in the dialogue box. At the top of the box, select "author" instead of "book" and the author of the book should already be listed.
Nicole wrote: "How do I insert a link to a book or a link to a book cover?When you post a new comment, do not post the title of the book you want to insert, but instead click on the "add book/author" hyperlink ..."
The original pop-up box will display the cover of the most popular edition. If you want a specific edition/cover, click the other editions link directly under the ADD box.
Now you'll see all the editions of that book .... if there are more than 5 editions, you'll need to advance to other pages to see more editions.
For example: If I type in "Tess of the D'Urbervilles" in the original box and click the first one that comes up I get:
Tess of the D'Urbervilles or
But if I click the OTHER EDITIONS and then go to page two I can link to THIS edition
Book Concierge wrote: "The original pop-up box will display the cover of the most popular edition. If you want a specific edition/cover, click the other editions link directly under the ADD box."Great addition, BC! Thank you for the information. I am not one who tracks my editions too closely but I know many people do and I may change in the future :)
Nicole wrote: "How do I insert a link to a book or a link to a book cover?."Several people recently expressed preference for the title of the book over the cover in discussions.
Do the moderators have any preference?
Booknblues wrote: Several people recently expressed preference for the title of the book over the cover in discussions. Do the moderator..."
If it is in the initial review, then we have no preference. It seems to be more streamlined to only include the link in the discussion afterwards but we do not have a stated rule regarding it.
Back to Jen's question about tagging.....maybe more information than you would like. I actually create a shelf/tag for each challenge that I am in on my bookshelf. So for the Shelfagories challenge, I would create ch16-shelfagories as my name for the challenge. For Jane Eyre, I would tag as classics and ch16-shelfagories.
The tags on the group shelves allow you to look at the books by the shelves on the group shelf, but it doesn't link in any way to the books that you have on your own shelves.
JoLene wrote: "Back to Jen's question about tagging.....maybe more information than you would like...."That is correct, JoLene.
So, the PBT Group Shelf is really a snapshot of what the group as a whole has read but is not intended as a place for everyone to track their individual challenges.
If a member wants a shelf record of their personal challenges, then he needs to do so on his personal shelf.
You can track for challenges like Shelfagories in the tracking thread or your individual tracking thread that we invite everyone to start on Play Book Tag.
One cool aspect of the new shelf is that if you click on any book on the group shelf, then reviews by group members will automatically be shown first! It doesn't necessarily mean you read it for a specific challenge or tag, but it is a feature I really like.
I have a question for our very smart members!Is there a way to adjust my settings so that when I open a thread with new responses that it will automatically jump down to the first unread response instead of my having to scroll through all of the older/read material first?
Nicole wrote: "I have a question for our very smart members!Is there a way to adjust my settings so that when I open a thread with new responses that it will automatically jump down to the first unread response..."
You can do this, but it is prior to opening the thread. From the top level, it will tell you how many posts are in the thread and indicate how many are new which is usually in a red color. You can click on the new and it will take you directly to that thread.
Also, when you reply to a thread, under the comment box is a checkbox with Notify me when people reply. If you check this, you will get an email. The email will have a link to take you directly to the "new comments" --- you will only get 1 email, until you look at the thread. Meaning, if you reply post something else in this thread, and then several other people post after, I will only get 1 email until I click on the link.
Another tip and trick for everyone moving their libraries over.In GR, there is the concept of an exclusive shelf. Everyone starts with 3 exclusive shelves: read, currently reading, and to-read. These three shelves have some special properties in that when you put a book on them, they set specific dates, which can be viewed when looking at your shelves:
read: date read
currently reading: date started
to-read: date added
When wandering around GR, if you see a book you are interested in, you can click the "want to read" button and it will automatically put on the "to read" shelf.
In addition, you can actually create additional exclusive shelves. Exclusive means that a book can only be on one of the exclusive shelves at a time. For me, I have added 3 other exclusive shelves. - DNF: did not finish
- own-tbr: for books that I own but haven't read
- reference: for books like cookbooks and craft books that I don't usually read cover to cover
The reason I did this is so that my reading stats which are triggered by items being put on the "read" shelf will not have items that I did not finish, or did not really read (like a cookbook). The own-tbr allows me to search for books that I already have when doing a challenge or playing PBT vs looking at books which are interesting to me, which are on the "to read" shelf.
Hopefully this is useful info --- I didn't discover that for a while and then had to spend some time moving my books around to get them on the correct shelves.
Also, by having an exclusive shelf that indicates books that I have read, when I click on the "monthly shelf", it will indicate any books that are on one of my exclusive shelves including own-tbr.
JoLene wrote: "You can do this, but it is prior to opening the thread...."Thank you!!!
JoLene wrote: "Another tip and trick for everyone moving their libraries over.In GR, there is the concept of an exclusive shelf...."
Great tip, JoLene!
I just want to clarify that the exclusive shelves are on your personal shelves (not the PBT Group Shelf).
However, when I look at the PBT shelf, I do not see the list of books with the green and white buttons at the right that say things like "want to read," "read," "currently reading," etc. I DO see those when I look at a general book list like the one for "World War II."
Is this a setting that the admins can change?
Nicole wrote: "JoLene wrote: "Another tip and trick for everyone moving their libraries over.Is this a setting that the admins can change? ."
No, the group bookshelf doesn't have that feature that I know of....you might want to post in the mod group.
JoLene wrote: No, the group bookshelf doesn't have that feature that I know of....you might want to post in the mod group. ..."I will add that. I am sure that GR is being bombarded with requests from new Shelfari members right now...
I might be pushing it a bit... will you be using the challenge widgets? Would love it for the shelfagories challenge to track my progress? :)
Tien wrote: "I might be pushing it a bit... will you be using the challenge widgets? Would love it for the shelfagories challenge to track my progress? :)"We probably will once people are settled in, but honestly we were thinking it was better suited for the non fiction challenge.
We didn't want to introduce too many new things too quickly and also don't love how the widget is above the discussions. But once everyone is more accustomed to the new group, we will try it out!
Anita wrote: "We probably will once people are settled in, but honestly we were thinking it was better suited for the non fiction challenge.Any particular reason?
Anyone who wants to actually use the widget is free to nominate the number of books they'd like to read to complete the challenge...
Thing is when they use the widget they'll have to nominate / create a shelf on their own profile that relates to the challenge and only whatever's book is noted as read (within challenge period) on that shelf will be counted towards the challenge.
So, if they've nominated 'non-fiction' for their PBT NF challenge but include all other NF books they've read on his / her 'non-fiction' shelf, it'll be counted towards the challenge whether or not they've intended to use it for the challenge or not (that is if date-read is set within challenge period).
Am hoping I made some sense there...
We didn't want to introduce too many new things too quickly and also don't love how the widget is above the discussions. But once everyone is more accustomed to the new group, we will try it out! "
I thought that was the case :)
Tien wrote: "Any particular reason?..."For the Shelfagories challenge it is not merely counting books since you can use one book for up to two tags. The challenge widget doesn't seem to fit that particular challenge that well.
The nonfiction challenge, on the other hand, is a simple count of books and is much more conducive to the widget as you said!
I do understand how the widget works, but with Shelfagories, I would prefer to look at the challenge thread to see which categories the various books fulfilled. A straight count of books read isn't as pertinent. The non fiction challenge has us all working off a single list, and a straightforward tally is more meaningful.
That's my thinking for what it's worth!
Sounds reasonable...I guess since I'm planning 1 book per category, I wanted to be able to use / see the widget, but not everyone does! ;p
Shuva wrote: "I have a question. When GR transferred my books over, everything was marked as read. Since then I have been changing the tbr ones to want-to-read manually. But, they have also rated my books with ..."
If you go to the book on your bookshelf and then click the "edit" button over on the right, it will bring up a book description box for the star rating and review. To the right of the star rating area, there is some light gray text that says "clear." Click that and your rating should reset!
Nicole wrote: "As I was exploring my personal shelf (not the PBT group shelf), I came across some helpful tips to make your shelf work better for you. Thought I would share!1. I have not noticed a limit on the ..."
I tried it and it showed I had one WWII book........
Regina, it only searches what you have personally shelved books. Do you have all of your WWII books shelves with that exact name?
Oh! I'm not sure. Will check. Thanks
Shuva wrote: "I have a question. When GR transferred my books over, everything was marked as read. Since then I have been changing the tbr ones to want-to-read manually. But, they have also rated my books with ..."
I had the exact opposite happen to me - when I transferred my books, all of my books were marked as want to read instead of read so I have to go through over a thousand books and post when I read them - a real pain.
Brad wrote: "When GR transferred my books over, everything was marked as read. Since then I have been changing the tbr ones to want-to-read manually. But, they have also rated ..."
ARGH! Ok, I do think that's worse. That is just so strange. Mine did what Shuva's did.
This may be patently obvious to everyone else, but I noticed that when a discussion has a "new" marker, if I click on the red new letters, I am taken right to the posts that are new to me - - as opposed to clicking on the discussion and then scrolling through all the entries.Yeah, I'm probably not the fastest learner in the world, but sharing in case others didn't notice this!
Anita wrote: "This may be patently obvious to everyone else, but I noticed that when a discussion has a "new" marker, if I click on the red new letters, I am taken right to the posts that are new to me - - as op..."The learning curve on this whole thing is going to be huge. I appreciate any tidbits but I know they'll get lost in all the stuff I have to learn and I'll probably have to hear it again!
I've been going back and forth between GR and Shelfari. I just went to see what I might have on my TBR shelf by using multiple tags on Shelfari - my initials and the WWII tag. Guess what? The tag link under books tab has disappeared! Grrrrrr.
Nicole wrote: "Book Concierge wrote: "The original pop-up box will display the cover of the most popular edition. If you want a specific edition/cover, click the other editions link directly under the ADD box."..."
I like to track my edition if it's audio vs. print so this would help me.
Is there a way to attach a photo to a message or topic? I wanted to post a few photos of my Folio edition of Jane Eyre -- I posted that review for shelfagories. I know there's a photo link but I think that adds photos to the group and not to a specific message and I didn't want to do that
Can you edit posts? For instance if we create a thread in the Challenges thread can I go back and edit to add books to the list? or do I have to report the entire list with the new additions?
Regina wrote: "Can you edit posts? For instance if we create a thread in the Challenges thread can I go back and edit to add books to the list? or do I have to report the entire list with the new additions?"yes. You can go back to your post and hit the "edit" button at the bottom right of your post
Jen wrote: "Regina wrote: "Can you edit posts? For instance if we create a thread in the Challenges thread can I go back and edit to add books to the list? or do I have to report the entire list with the new a..."I looked all over for a little edit button! Thanks for pointing it out for me. My daughter and I both have a learning disability that makes it difficult for us to find small details in a large amount of other info. This is the perfect example of how it manifests.
Jen wrote: "Is there a way to attach a photo to a message or topic? I wanted to post a few photos of my Folio edition of Jane Eyre -- I posted that review for shelfagories. I know there's a photo link but I th..."Jen, yes you can attach a photo if it is something that is found online (I believe). You can find the little HTML code in the link above the comment box.
Nicole wrote: "Jen wrote: "Is there a way to attach a photo to a message or topic? I wanted to post a few photos of my Folio edition of Jane Eyre -- I posted that review for shelfagories. I know there's a photo l..."unfortunately not a web photo. It's a photo I took myself. Thanks though
Jen wrote: "Nicole wrote: "Jen wrote: "Is there a way to attach a photo to a message or topic? I wanted to post a few photos of my Folio edition of Jane Eyre -- I posted that review for shelfagories. I know th..."Hmmm...I don't know about that one.
Nicole wrote: "Jen wrote: "Nicole wrote: "Jen wrote: "Is there a way to attach a photo to a message or topic? I wanted to post a few photos of my Folio edition of Jane Eyre -- I posted that review for shelfagorie..."So, you can attach photos with URLs as Nicole mentioned. I created a photo bucket account (free) and they give you a URL for any uploaded photos. I uploaded a copy of a photo I took of my Jane Eyre book then used html to insert the photo. I just posted it in the feb other reviews. People can check it out to see how it worked.
I would use the tags on Shelfari to note why I added a book to my TBR - if I found it on a specific list such as the Booker longlist or which Shelfarian's review piqued my interest. Then when I hovered over the cover on my Shelfari TBR, I could quickly see why I added the book. The read shelf has a spot for notes and recommender if you select them in shelf settings but I can't find a way to put that on my TBR.
Play Book Tag
Books mentioned in this topic
There are Little Kingdoms: Stories (other topics)The Lilac Bus (other topics)
The Execution of Private Slovik (other topics)
North (other topics)
Tess of the D’Urbervilles (other topics)
More...
Let's help each other out to make our new home as comfortable as possible!
Pose your "how to" questions here, or anything else you may need to know while making this transition.