Zude Pages and the Future of Social Networks - Setting up Your Page
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The last step to signing up is to choose the page template for your default home page. There are 18 to choose from, including a completely blank page. Themes include various colors, surfing, dragons, a family gallery, "hodge-podge" (a bit of everything in one page) and others.
I wasn't quite ready to face a blank page, but I wanted as much freedom as I could get. I thought the minimalist page might do the trick. I quickly discovered, not too surprisingly, that I had to have cookies enabled to be able to completely sign in. If you don't have cookies enabled, you get ERROR in the security screen (the captcha), and you go on to the next screen where you can pick your template, but after you pick it you get a message saying the session has timed out. It does not tell you that you need to activate cookies, or at least permit cookies for the Zude web site.
The first thing I wanted to do was change the background image of my page. This could be done by grabbing images from the web, the Zude Image Library, or by uploading my own photos to use as wallpaper. Zude gave explicit directions as to how to create wallpaper from Google images. It involved searching on Google Images in a different window while keeping Zude open. Then, after locating the image, you simply hold down the CTL key on your keyboard while dragging and dropping the image onto the Zude page.
Before doing that, though, I went ahead and uploaded a photo. Zude said that it would automatically crop it so as not to exceed a 130 by 160 frame. The photo itself had to be less than 150K in size. After you upload the photo, Zude also asks you for the usual information you'd expect from a networking site. I was a little surprised that it asked for skin tone. And the options for marital status went far beyond the usual three or four (a very good thing, in my opinion).
But when I tried to get some new wallpaper up, I discovered that everyone's comments about Zude having a horrendous interface were true. It took me quite a while to get it to work as advertised. Ideally, I should have just been able to click on the image I wanted, and drag and drop it to my page while holding down the CTR key. It took quite a bit of fiddling and some help from someone who is more technologically savvy to get the appropriate image in place.
Let me make a further, more positive note about the interface: it does get easier with practice. I found that you do eventually get an "a-ha!" moment where suddenly it all makes sense, and you realize what you can do with it. It doesn't take too long to get to that moment, especially if you have someone experienced talking you through it (and here I'd like to give a big "thank you" to Matt Wulkan). Then of course you start to have more questions about what you can do, but at that point you're able to reason that what you want to do is not only possible, but probably easy. That reduces the frustration factor with learning new stuff, because you're over the first hurdle. The trick is getting to that moment.
Next: Adding Stuff >>
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