dorfteich/docs/manual/user-guide.md

User guide

Deutsche Fassung: docs/de/manual/user-guide.md

How to find your way around Dorfteich as a regular member. For pond configuration see the pond-admin guide; for instance administration the site-admin guide.

Signing up and signing in

• Sign up (if the instance allows open registration): username, e-mail, display name, password, language. You confirm your e-mail via the link in the verification mail; that also creates your personal pond — your own space that only you can see until you share it.
• Sign in with username or e-mail. Forgot your password? The sign-in page has a reset link (requires the instance to have mail configured).
• Your sessions are listed under Settings → Sessions; you can revoke any device from there.

Ponds and pages

• The pond switcher in the top bar moves you between the ponds you can see — and "+ New pond" at its bottom creates a new shared pond (subject to a quota the site admin sets). The sidebar lists the pages of the current pond — sort them A–Z, by creation date, or drag them into a manual order (the sort mode is a pond setting).
• + New page at the bottom of the sidebar creates a page. Page addresses are readable: /p/<pond>/<page>.
• Pages form a tree. A page created while another page is open becomes its subpage (the form says so); pages nest up to six levels. The sidebar's folder view shows the tree with collapsible branches; the label view groups pages under the label tree instead. The toggle above the page list is yours alone — the pond owner only sets the default. Moving a page never changes its address, so links keep working.
• Moving pages: drag a page onto another one to nest it there (drag between pages to reorder within the level, in manual sort mode), or use … → Move to… for a picker that works in any sort mode. Deleting a page that has subpages asks what should happen: move them up one level, or trash the whole subtree together.
• The graph link at the bottom of the sidebar opens the pond's knowledge graph: pages as dots, wikilinks as lines — click a dot to open the page, drag to rearrange, scroll to zoom. Dashed dots are wikilink targets that do not exist yet; clicking one creates the page. Below each page (read mode) a local graph shows its own neighborhood, switchable between one and two hops.
• The trash link sits at the very bottom of the sidebar: deleted pages can be restored from there until the retention period ends. A restored page re-attaches to its nearest surviving parent, or to the top level when the whole branch is gone.

The editor

Click the pencil icon in the top bar to switch a page between reading and editing. In edit mode a toolbar offers paragraph styles (H1–H4), bold/italic/strikethrough/inline code, bullet/numbered/task lists, quotes, code blocks, horizontal rules, images, and tables. The toolbar stays visible while you scroll.

• Everyone edits together. Other people on the page appear in the presence strip in the top bar and as named cursors in the text. There is no save button for content — every keystroke is persisted and replicated live.
• Offline? The status icon in the footer (bottom left) shows your connection. You can keep typing offline; changes sync on reconnect.
• Markdown in, Markdown out. You can paste or type Markdown; the page can always be copied or downloaded as Markdown again (… overflow menu → Copy/Download Markdown).
• Wikilinks: type [[page-slug]] or [[page-slug|shown text]]. Links to pages that do not exist yet are listed on the pond home page ("phantom pages") — one click creates the target. Following such a link works too: the page opens with a "this page does not exist yet" notice and a button that creates it right there, and every link pointing at the address starts working. The backlinks panel of a page shows every page that links to it.
• Images and attachments: paste or drag images straight into the text. Other file types (PDFs etc., as allowed by the instance) attach to the page via the paperclip icon.
• Named versions: the save icon in edit mode stores a named snapshot ("before the big rewrite"). The history icon lists all versions — automatic and named — with their contributors; you can view any version and restore it. Restoring never deletes history.

The top-bar page actions

When a page is open you find, next to the pencil: watch (bell for this page), comments (with unread count), attachments, plugin tools (table of contents, page index — when enabled), labels, history, and the … overflow menu (copy/download Markdown, export to Word/LibreOffice/PDF, move to…, delete).

Labels

Open the label icon to tag the page. You can pick existing labels or create one on the spot (creating is for pond admins). Labels organize pages and can carry access rules — a page inherits every rule of its labels.

Search

The search field in the top bar searches every page you are allowed to read, across all ponds — tolerant of accents ("Baume" finds "Bäume") and of partial words. Recent searches are remembered (and can be cleared).

Comments

The speech-bubble icon opens the comment panel: threads with one reply level, Markdown supported, edit and delete for your own comments, resolve to fold finished discussions away. Whether every reader or only editors may comment is a pond setting.

Watches, notifications, digests

• Watch a page (bell in the page actions) or a whole pond (bell in the pond settings header) to be notified about changes and comments. By default you automatically watch pages you create or comment on — both switches live under Settings → Profile.
• The bell in the top bar is your notification inbox; entries link straight to the change (comment notifications open the panel).
• E-mail digests bundle unread notifications hourly or daily — configure under Settings, unsubscribe from any digest mail directly.

Import and export

• Import a document (sidebar link): .docx, .odt, or .md becomes a new page, embedded images included.
• Export a page: overflow menu → Markdown / Word / LibreOffice / PDF. Export a pond: pond settings → ZIP of all pages you may read, as Markdown plus media.

Your settings (top-right → Settings)

Profile (display name, e-mail, language, watch defaults, digest frequency), password, active sessions, your watches, API tokens (for scripts and AI assistants — see the API guide and MCP guide), and data export: a ZIP with your profile data and the full content of your own ponds.

Public pages

If a pond admin has published a page for the public, it is readable without an account at /public/<pond>/<page> — with the pond's typography and a link to the instance's legal pages.