Twin City Home Machinists
Club
This page was last updated on
Sunday, October 25, 2020
Are you a home/hobby machinist in Minnesota or western Wisconsin?
Are you interested in operating a home foundry, welding, or other forms of
metalwork?
If so, and you
would like to get in touch with others that have similar interests, join our
group!
We meet from time to time for breakfast, coffee, shop discussion,
sharing projects, and even an occasional shop tour.
If this interests you, pay
us a visit at
https://groups.io/g/TCHM
Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, we are unable to hold in-person meetings. Like so
many others, we have been holding our meetings over Zoom every other month. If
you wish to attend one of these meetings, go to the link above and sign up.
Meeting information is sent out every month as well as just a few days before a
scheduled meeting.
If you wish to learn how to better find your way around
the TCHM website at groups.io and take advantage of some of its features, read
on below! All of the screenshots are thumbnails that you can click on to see a
larger picture.
The first step is, of course, to get to the
groups.io website. Click on this link to open it in another tab or window:
https://groups.io/
This page will open. If you do not have a log in, please
click on the "Sign up" link on the far right side.
Signing up is pretty straight forward. Enter your email
address and a password of your choice, then click on the Sign Up button.
Optionally, you can register or log in through Facebook or Google.
Once you have signed up, click on the "Log In" link in
the upper right corner and you will be taken to the login screen. Enter your
email address and password and you will be taken to the "Your Groups" screen.
Click on "TCHM" to be taken to the TCHM Messages screen.
Here you will be able to see all of the recent message topics as well as some
other areas that are available to you on the left side of the screen. Keep in
mind that your screen may look a bit different than the one in the picture here.
So, now we'll go into the list of items on the left side
of the screen.
- Home - This is the TCHM home screen. It contains a
description of our group, basic group information and group settings as well
as a list of important email addresses that you may find useful. There is
also a 'grid' of messages sorted by month and year.
- Subscription - Here you can set your email delivery
preferences, your signature, and change notification settings.
- Messages - This is where you can find all of the
recent messages listed. Click on a thread subject to open it and view the
messages related to that subject.
- Hashtags - For the most part we will not need to use
these, but you certainly can use them if you wish. Keep in mind that if you
use a hashtag in a message, you will have to define it in the Hashtag
section for it to be effective. This section is visible only to members that
are logged in.
- New Topic - Click here to start a new thread with
its own subject header or topic. Only members can start a new topic.
- New Poll - Click here to begin a new poll. All
members can create polls where the remaining members can vote. Don't be
afraid to use it, it is very straight forward to use. Once again, this is
available only to members.
- Drafts - When you create a new thread from the web
site, it is automatically saved here until you complete it and "Send" it.
Your drafts are available only to you.
- Chats - We have chatrooms available to us. For the
most part I doubt that we will make much use of them, but one never knows
for sure. This is only available to logged in members.
- Directory - This is a listing of the group members.
It is visible only to other members that are logged in.
- Calendar - Just what it says. It is available only
to members that are logged in, and all members can create new items or edit
existing ones.
- Photos - Members can save photos here. If you send
an email to the group and include photos in that email, they will be saved
here automatically. This section is visible only to members.
- Files - A place where we can store files of just
about any kind, such as plan drawings, how to documents, etc.
Available only to members.
- Databases - We can create small databases here,
available only to members. Members can create or edit. So far we have one
database which holds emergency contact information for the membership. This
information is not yet complete
- Wiki - Our wiki section is available only to
members. Not sure what a wiki is? Go there and click on the "What is a
Wiki" link for the answer.
That pretty much wraps it all up. Feel free to let me
know if there should be more on this page.
