Pathtags Community Tour

Welcome to the Pathtags Community Tour! The online Pathtags Community is a fun, expanding, and evolving online social networking community. After all - Pathtags are more than just metal disks! When someone logs your tag online, you will be able to see where they found it, where the live, and link into their profile.

This page is a mini overview and tutorial for the ever-expanding and improving online Community. We value every member's input - if you have suggestions for improvements, please email us at support@pathtags.com!

Creating an Account / Logging In

We could assume you've done, this but for the sake of completeness - let's assume instead you haven't :) Our goal is to make joining and logging found tags very easy. We have a goal that it should take under 30 seconds to log a tag. If you were not able to log a tag you found in 30 seconds - email us to tell us what happened and we will work to improve your experience.

To create an account or log in, go to the Login / Account Creation page. Here you can sign in easily if you are an existing user or quickly create an account if you are not.

To create an account, enter your screenname, email (twice for verification), and location. Your screenname is a nickname we will use to semi-anonymously identify you to other users.

Why location? Well, one of the main purposes of a Pathtag is to show you where people you have met are from. For this, we ask all new users for their location. Don't panic! Be as specific as you are comfortable with. "321 East Main St., Kalamazoo, MI" works just as well as "Africa". We do invite you to be relatively specific, though. Try using your postal code or a neighboring postal code if you rather.

Once you fill out the registration form and submit it, you will be logged in. Note that you must validate your email address within 90 days or your access may be impaired.

Managing Your Account

Once logged in, you'll want to update your profile. Click the link "Edit Your Personal Profile" to open your account profile. Here you can update some text for your account. First is your personal information you want people to know about yourself. You can change your email here too and update your screen name too. Your email and screen name have to be unique.

If you are going to trade online, setting your default trade offer and accept text will be helpful. Here you can add details like your standard offer and many users include their mailing address to facilitate trading. Warning that this data is not encrypted and is entered at your own risk and your own option. Remember the people you are trading with are strangers to you - consider if you want to share a street address with them. We suggest using a Post Office Box.

Managing Your Templates

When you log in and are at "My Page" you will see your templates shown as thumbnail buttons. You can edit features and see lots of information about your Pathtag by using the template control panel. Simply click the button for the tag you want to manage and a control panel will load giving you access to lots of options.

Click "Edit Your Profile" to assign your tag a name and fill out its profile text. Tell everyone why you chose that design. You can also set the status of your tag for trades, for being seen in our gallery, and if you want others to be able to view your map. If you are going on vacation or run out of tags - we suggest turning off the trade feature so you do not get buried in trade offers you can't accept.

Your tag's map shows you who logged your tag and where they live as well as where they found the tag. Open this view to see it all on a map.

Your Tag's Map

When you click the "View Tag Map" link for a template, you see a map and a list of all the people who logged your tag. This is done on a Google map, you can click and drag the map to move around. Use the + and - keys or your mouse scroll wheel to zoom in and you. When you click a tag icon (the asterix) it will pop up a baloon telling you who logged the tag. You can click on that link to visit the user's profile and see what they have posted. Here you can also email the person who logged your tag. This way - you can keep in touch with people you might have met at big events.

If someone found your tag in a place away from where they live, you'll see an asterix icon for where the tag was found with a red path line tracing back to a person icon, representing the user's home.

Managing Trades

When you offer someone a trade or someone offers you a trade, it will be loaded into your trades list. From your My Page you can easily view and manage all of your open trades.

Each stage of a trade is tracked for you. This helps you keep track of tags you need to send to people and tags you should expect to arrive soon. Once a trade is completed, it is removed from your default view.

Use the task buttons at the top of the trade overview to help you perform each task required to complete a trade. Easily view the tags you need to send along with the information provided by your partner. Log all your received tags on a single user interface and easily exchange emails with your partners.