Searching for a member and more on affiliations

Now that the most recent changes to Community Weaver have been implemented, I want to go over the changes in how you can search for a member. You can click on the Time Trader banner above to open Community Weaver in a new window. Once you have logged in, hover your mouse over the "Give & Receive" tab and click on "View All Members."

This will bring up the active member roster, organized alphabetically by member's first name. Clicking on any of the blue column headings will change the way the information is sorted. For example, click "Name" and the arrow pointing down, and the list will start at first names beginning with Z and work backwards through the alphabet. Click "Joined" and you can see who joined first, or who has most recently joined and might be interested in an exchange to get started.

The white boxes above can also be useful in narrowing a search. Use the "Neighborhood" search if you are looking for someone in your community or neighborhood, perhaps for pet sitting or to help with a quick project.

I want to be sure to call your attention to the "Affiliations" box: in fact, you may want to log in and make sure that yours are current. Affiliations are community groups and organizations you belong to or are affiliated with, such as churches, civic groups, scouting organizations, schools, employers and charitable organizations that you may volunteer with. You can list multiple affiliations. To do this, log in and click the "My Account" tab. Though it doesn't look like it, you can click the actual words, "My Account." Looking at the box on the left (where you can upload a photo if you wish), scroll down until you see the words "Edit profile details" and click on them.

The first big white box is the Affiliations box. Scroll down and click on something you are affiliated with. If you want to be affiliated with more than one thing, you must then HOLD DOWN THE CONTROL (CTRL) KEY AS YOU CLICK. This will allow you to highlight multiple affiliations. If you would like to see additional affiliations, please let me know via email and I will add them.

Why are affiliations helpful? Well, if someone new to Time Trader is looking for a ride to church, they can search who is affiliated with that church and see who might just be going there anyway. If someone is looking to join an organization, they could look to see if any of the people they have traded with is already part of that group and perhaps could provide an introduction or answer questions.

As you scroll further down, check your availability, your birthday and year (which will not be public but helps me with demographics), your "About Me" box, add your Twitter URL or your website URL, and click "Save." Don't forget to click "Save!"

If you use Twitter, let me know. If we have enough interest we could perhaps create a unique hashtag that would let Time Traders communicate in a more immediate fashion.