With more and more users joining the site every single day we thought it would help to pull together a guide to help people get the most out of the platform. Here are our top 5 tips.
1. Make sure you add a vehicle photo
The image associated with your vehicle is used in lots of places in both the web and mobile appa. To help prevent the default blank placeholder image from appearing in peoples feeds and to make sure your car stands out, make sure you add an image.
There are two ways of doing this, either ensure you add the image when the vehicle is first created:
Or if you have already created your vehicle then you can add an image afterwards. From the web app simply click on your vehicle in the left had side menu and on your vehicle record page, click the edit symbol to return to the ‘Edit Vehicle’ screen:
This simple step will help to transform your vehicle record.
2. Add descriptions to records
Pictures are worth a thousand words, but a few words can really transform a picture. Make sure when you are adding records that you enter a description. Can’t think of anything to say, try these pointers:
Why was it taken?
What does it show?
Why is it important to you?
Why is it important to the car?
Even the briefest descriptions really add colour to the history and start to provide context to your records.
3. Use Search and Filters
You will have noticed the search and filters box at the top of the activity feed in the web app, but did you know that these two items actually work together? For example if I wanted to find videos of Porsches, I could simply click ‘videos’ in the filters and then search on ‘porsche’ in the search box. Hey presto, now I only see the videos that are related to Porsche:
All the content in Patina is fully indexed, making sure that we have very powerful search functionality. In addition partial searches work, so a search for ‘Mcla’ would return all ‘Mclarens’
4. Find the layout that suits you
Did you know that Patina actually has two different layouts that can be used for the activity feed in the web app? The first view is called the grid view which we use by default as we feel this shows of the great images and content that our users add:
If you would like to try an alternate view, at the top right of the screen click on the list icon:
And voila, a view that show you more information about each vehicle and record without having to roll over it:
5. Share your content
Everything you see in Patina (that is public) can be shared for others to view. Let others enjoy the great content that you find and submit by using the sharing icons at the bottom of each picture, video or document. Click to share via Twitter, Facebook or Email:
As we release more and more features we will make sure that we let you know how to get the best out of them. For now hopefully these 5 tips help you with the basic functionality.