The Cradle Playroom: User’s Guide
The Cradle Playroom is a place where people can share, browse, comment on, and rate products, services, photos, and videos that are related to pregnancy and new parenthood.
Everyone can add posts to The Playroom and everyone can view, search, comment on, and rate these posts.
What can you post about?
Anything you want to share with others during this chapter in your life!
This can include information and reviews on:
- Doctors, nannies, day care centers, etc. that you have dealt with and would like to share with others.
- Products and stores for all those things that you want or absolutely need (or absolutely need to avoid!)
- Listings of items to buy/sell/swap
- Your personal photos and/or videos, articles of interest that you’ve found, or anything that you want to share with The Cradle community.
The Cradle Playroom is not just a great place to share resources and product finds, but also a place where you can offer up a sneak peek into your life to share with the world some of the wonderful experiences you are having. Or perhaps you found some great information from a trusted source or stumbled upon something interesting on the web. You can share all of this in The Cradle Playroom!
What Can Each Post Contain?
Each post can contain photos and videos, as well as addresses, telephone numbers, email addresses, and website links.
So feel free to upload your latest sonogram images, pictures of your newborn, or photos of your beautiful new baby nursery. And when you are done with that, go on and embed your videos from YouTube, Vimeo, or other video sharing websites. Once you have finished creating your post, share it with all of your friends and family. Then check back to see what everyone is saying about your new little addition to The Cradle Playroom.
Feel free to skip ahead to any of the following topics:
The Cradle Playroom: Menu
Viewing a Post
Adding/Updating a Post
The Cradle Playroom: Menu
Recent – This shows a list of the most recent posts
Popular – This shows a list of the most popular posts, as judged by you and the other users.
Search – This lets you search for posts on a given topic. With our “Advanced Search” you can do zip code searches to find the posts that deal with stores, services, professionals, events, etc that are close to where you live. You can also browse through all posts of a given type (i.e. show me all posts about baby boutique stores.)
Add – This takes you to the page for adding a new post.
Viewing a Post
When you click on a post to view it, you can:
See the author’s description, plus any photos and/or videos they have added, and any additional information that was listed such as addresses, maps, phone numbers, email addresses, and webpage links.
Rate the post to let the community know what you think about it.
Take part in the discussion below the post to see what others are saying about it and add your own comments.
Easily share the post with your friends and family if you think they would be interested!
If the person who created the post is a member of thecradle.com – and you are a member as well – you can click on their user name to visit their profile page.
Adding/Updating a Post
When you click on the “Add” tab you are taken to the page for adding a new post.
On this page you will enter information about whatever it is you want to share in The Playroom. Below is a list of the fields that are supported. Fields marked with a * are required and cannot be left blank.
- Post Title* – This is a short but descriptive title for your post. It can be the name of the product, service, or professional - or just a simple title that you think best represents your post.
- This Post is About* – This is a way to categorize your post to quickly identify what it is about. You must choose a topic and then one or more sub-topics, such as “A Product – Food/Nutrition” or “Something I found that I want to share – Because it’s helpful”. To choose multiple sub-topics, click and drag the mouse over several sub-topics or click whichever ones you want while holding down the "Control", "ctrl", or apple (on Macs) key.
Don't see a topic or sub-topic that applies to your post? Let us know!
- More About this Post* – This is a more detailed description of whatever your post is about. For instance, “This is why my new stroller is the best invention ever…” or “I just had to share this story about how our 2-year old was so tender and loving to our new baby Jackson when we got home from the hospital…”
- Photos (upload) – You can upload up to 3 photos to attach to your post. Please, no photos larger than 1 MB in size.
- Photos (link) – You can also link to photos from other sites on the Internet. To get the link to a photo you find on the Internet, right-click on the photo, select “Properties”, then copy the value of the “Address” or “URL” field (works in Internet Explorer). Or if that doesn’t work, right-click on the photo and select “Copy Image Location” (works in Firefox). Once you have copied the link for the photo, paste it into one of the “Link” fields.
- Videos – You can embed videos from video sharing sites such as YouTube, Vimeo, Yahoo! Video, Google Video, Blip.tv, and many more. To do this, go to the video’s page, find the embed code, copy it, and paste it into one of the “Embed” fields.
- Address – If your post has an address, enter it here so others can see where it is, i.e. a doctor’s office, store location, etc.
- Webpage, email, or phone – If there is a webpage, email address, or phone number for your post, enter those here. Remember, the more information you can provide, the more helpful your post will be to others!
- Your Name* – Enter your name or an alias that you want this posted under.
- Share your Post – When you create your post, you have the option to go ahead and email a notification about it to your family and friends. To do this you just have to enter a list of email addresses in this field. Each email address should be separated by a comma.
Once you are ready, click on the “Add” button to publish your post in The Cradle Playroom.
