Getting Started (ESR Help Topic)

By now you've hopefully already created yourself an account and are logged in. If you haven't, go do that now, don't worry it's painless.

There's a few basics to cover first that will ensure you know your way around ESR and how we do things around here. At the top of the site you will find most of what you need to create and view content and to manage your personal stuff like friends and your profile. At the very bottom of the page you'll find a nifty little thing called My Garage (if you haven't noticed it yet move overtop of it and it'll open). My Garage is a place to collect content so you can quickly go back to it anytime -- think of it like bookmarking, only better since you can also insert that content into new content you're creating!

At the top, from left to right...

Create - that big green create button is your first stop when you want to share something with the rest of the ESR crowd. Roll over it and it'll expand to show you all of your options, like write a post or upload images. Easy.

Content is organized by type to make navigating to what you want to see a snap. For instance, click on the route icon and the main feed of content will change to show only routes.

Below the main navigation bar is a big box with "[your username] says". This is always there, except for when you're creating content, and it's all about quick, short messages, perhaps something like "ESR is amazing, who did I live without it?". There is a limit of 140 characters for these updates, so if you need more space try writing a post instead.

To the right side you will find the user control panel. Here you can access your messages, friends, groups and your profile.

So now what? The best place to start is to find your friends, invite them if they're not already signed up and hey, maybe make some new ones! Oh, and make sure your profile is all filled out too so people know who you are.

Once you've connected with some friends and personalized your profile, jump in and start posting! Get your toes wet by adding comments to existing content or dive right in and create some new content of your own.