The Guide
The Guide - contents The Storyus Guide

Reading

For everyone - whatever your role

Arriving Who sees what Ways to read Views & bookmarks

Admin

For owners and admins

People & roles Collective setup Housekeeping

Reading · chapter 3 of 4

Ways to read

Browse, the Magazine, story pages, journeys and timelines.

An archive isn't a feed - it deserves more than one way in. Storyus gives you several, and they suit different moods: wandering, catching up, or settling in with one story properly.

Browse - the whole archive

Browse (in the header) lays out every story your role can see. It comes in two characters: discovery, a big visual wall that rewards wandering, and a classic card grid when you want order. The filter row above the cards does the work: sort newest or oldest first, show only your bookmarked stories, narrow by story type or by author, or flick on auto-load and just scroll.

storyus.life/+demos/$browse?mode=discover
Browse in discovery mode: a large visual wall of story cards
Discovery mode - built for wandering.
storyus.life/+demos/$browse
Browse in classic mode: an ordered grid of story cards with the filter row
Classic mode - the same archive, in ranks.

The Stream - the everyday layer

Stream (also in the header) is the collective's running feed of moments: a photo and a sentence from an ordinary Tuesday. It's the closest thing here to a social feed - except it's only your people, and it never reorders itself to keep you hooked.

storyus.life/+demos/$stream
The +demos stream: a feed of small posts, each a photo and a few words
Small posts, honestly ordered. The treasures of the archive often start here.

Story pages - where you settle in

Click any card and you're on the story's own page, and each form reads differently: an essay is a long quiet read -

storyus.life/+demos/austria-essay
An essay story page: long-form writing with a full-width photograph
An essay page: words carrying the story, photographs breathing between them.

- while a journey walks you along a live map, and a timeline threads moments in order:

storyus.life/+demos/journeys
A journey story: a route drawn on a real map between numbered photo stops
A journey - the route is real, and it scrolls with you.
storyus.life/+demos/jointhedots-eurotrip
A Join the Dots timeline: moments threaded in order down the page
Join the Dots - one thread, in order.

A reflection opens as a collage of photos and words; an album gives you a whole set of photos as one story:

storyus.life/+demos/eurotrip2018-ben
A Reflection page: a collage of photos with interleaved writing
A reflection - one person's look back.
storyus.life/+demo/eurotrip100album
An album page: a wall of photographs presented as one story
An album - a hundred photos standing together.

Collections and magazines - stories gathered up

Stories that belong together - one trip, one year, one person - can be gathered into a collection, which reads as a shelf:

storyus.life/+demos/eurotrip2018
A story collection page gathering all the EuroTrip 2018 stories in one place
One summer's shelf: every telling of the trip in one place.

A magazine goes one further: it's a curated front page whose sections fill themselves by rules ("newest from the trip", "everything about Grandma"). Some collectives use a magazine as their front door - if yours does, you've already been reading one. How they're made is in the Magazines chapter.

Try it now

Wander +demos in discovery mode, open whatever catches your eye, and ride the journey to the end - it's the page that best explains why this isn't a photo app.