Getting started

The instructions in this section explain how to create your account on Project Mushroom. Project Mushroom is not federated, which means you can only interact with people on Project Mushroom.

If you want to interact with people on Project Mushroom and people on other Mastodon instances, you need to join our other instance, “Spore”. For more information on which instance you should join, see Choose your mushroom: public or private.

Creating an account

To use an invite link to create an account:

1. Open the invite link.

2. Enter the required account details. These details all work like they do on Twitter.

Some best practices:

• Our best practice is to use the same username on Project Mushroom as you have on Twitter.

• If your user name is more than two words, capitalize the start of each word. For example: “@MyProjectMushroomName”.

• @projectmushroom.social is included automatically. You do not need to enter it as part of your user name.

3. Agree to Mastodon’s privacy policy.

4. Hit Sign Up. 

Mastodon sends you a confirmation email.

5. Confirm your email address.

Customizing your profile

To customize your profile and account settings:

1. Open your account settings by selecting your profile picture in the top-right of the page. Your picture is probably the default elephant.

2. Select Edit profile.

Note: There are image size restrictions for your profile and header image. The restrictions are listed on the profile page. If you upload an image that is too big, an error appears.

Onboarding tool

We created a tool to help you automatically follow people on Project Mushroom who you currently follow on Twitter, as well as send invite links to your friends. Here is a link to the tool: https://start.projectmushroom.com/

The tool is currently only available for the Project Mushroom instance.

Important:

• To use this tool, you must have already created your Project Mushroom account. You need to log in using this account. For help creating an account see our “Project Mushroom On-Boarding Instructions”.

• You can only follow people on Project Mushroom if they have created an account on Project Mushroom as well. You cannot follow Twitter accounts on Project Mushroom. Also, you cannot follow Mastodon users unless they are on Project Mushroom. If Project Mushroom federates, this final point might change.

• The tool can only find your Twitter friends if they list their Project Mushroom account in their bio. An account name looks like this: @user@projectmushroom.social . List your Project Mushroom account in your Twitter bio so your Twitter friends can find you.

Finding Twitter friends on Project Mushroom

To follow your Twitter followers on Project Mushroom:

1. Open the tool here: start.project mushroom.social. If necessary, log in to your Project Mushroom account.

2. Click Authorize. If necessary, log in to your Twitter account.

3. When prompted, click Authorize this app. This allows our tool to access your Twitter account and who you follow. If successful, the Build your Network page appears.

4. Click Find your following. The tool searches who you follow on Twitter and lists any users that are also on Project Mushroom.

5. Click Follow next to any user you want to follow on Project Mushroom.

Troubleshooting:

• If the tool doesn’t find any Project Mushroom accounts, it might be that you do not follow anyone who also has a Project Mushroom account or that your friends don’t list their Project Mushroom account in their bio. Follow @Ericholthaus on Twitter and try the tool again. If it finds Eric, then the tool works correctly. Try inviting some friends to Project Mushroom!

• Refresh the page.

• The tool works best on a desktop browser.

Inviting friends to Project Mushroom

To invite your friends to Project Mushroom:

1. Open the tool here: start.projectmushroom.social.

2. Click Copy Link to copy the invite code.

3. Share with your friends!

We are trying to create a safe place, so please:

• Do not share this link publicly and ask your friends to not share it publicly.

• Only invite people you trust.

Using Project Mushroom

This section provides an overview of how to use Project Mushroom on Mastodon. For more information, take a look at Mastodon’s full help info here: https://mastodon.help/

Terminology

We don’t really care what you call your tweets here on Project Mushroom, but you will see some specific terms while using the Mastodon platform. Here is a description of some key terms: 

• Toot: A post. It can be text, an image, a link, or whatever Mastodon allows you to post. It’s a lot like a tweet on Twitter. The character limit here is 500. You can also edit your posts!

• Boost: A retweet or share. You post another user’s content on your timeline. Currently there is no support for “quote retweet”. That’s a Mastodon thing.

• Instance: Mastodon is different from Twitter or Facebook in that you connect to a specific community and follow their rules and configuration. You don’t see everyone that’s using Mastodon–only those on the same instance as you.

That said, these communities can still interact through what’s called federation.

• Federation: How Mastodon instances and even other platforms interact with one another. Currently, federation is disabled for Project Mushroom, but we have a federated instance you can join called Spore. People on Spore can interact with both Project Mushroom and the wider Mastodon community. For more details on Spore, see Choose your mushroom: public or private. For more information on federation, see Mastodon’s explanation: https://mastodon.help/#Federation.

• Favourite vs Bookmark: Favourites are public and bookmarks are private. With favourites, authors and others can see who and how many people favourited a post. With bookmarks, no one can see who or how many people bookmarked a post.

Post visibility

For every post, you can choose how it is shared on Mastodon. There are four levels of visibility:

•  Public: Everyone can see your post and it appears in timelines.

•  Not listed: Anyone can see your post but it doesn’t appear in timelines. For someone to see this kind of post, you must mention them or they must read it on your profile page.

•  Followers only: Only your followers can see your post. It appears in their timeline like a public post.

•  Direct:A private post that can only be seen by people you mention in it.

Here is Mastodon’s explanation of these settings: https://mastodon.help/#TootsPrivacy 

Using Mastodon

Mastodon is a lot like Twitter, but with some differences. This section describes the different tabs on your home screen.

Note that you can use different sites or apps for Mastodon. This list only includes info on the default Mastodon site or app.

•  Home: This is your default view. It includes a timeline of content shared by people you follow.

•  Notifications: Things that have happened that might matter to you. This is the same concept as notifications on Twitter.

•  Explore: Search Project Mushroom for posts, hashtags, people, or other content. If you are on Spore, search Spore, Project Mushroom, and much of Mastodon.

•  Local: See content from all Project Mushroom users, even if you don’t follow them. If you use Spore, then you this displays posts from all Spore users.

•  Federated: If you use Project Mushroom, this will be the same view as Local. If you use Spore, see posts from people inside and outside Project Mushroom. 

•  Direct messages: Direct posts that mention you. These messages can only be seen by someone mentioned in them. These are not encrypted messages.

•  Favourites: Posts that you have favourited.

•  Bookmarks: Posts that you have bookmarked. 

See the explanation above for the difference between favourites and bookmarks.

•  Lists: You can create lists of users so that you can view timelines of content posted by those users. You can only add users to a list if you follow them. The timeline of the list also only includes content posted after the user was added to the list.

Your lists also appear in the browser side-bar.

•  Preferences: Open your Mastodon preferences. This includes profile settings like avatar and banner, as well as many other configuration options. 

•  Page settings: This option appears on several pages, such as on Home or Notifications. It allows you to customize what kinds of information you see on that page. This is especially useful on the notifications page.

Joining federated Project Mushroom: “Spore”

Choose your level of privacy

There are two versions (or instances) of Project Mushroom: projectmushroom.social and spore.social. Spore is open to the wider Mastodon community, where Project Mushroom is not. But in either instance, you will be able to interact with people on both Project Mushroom and Spore.

The following table provides advice on which instance you should join:

Creating a Spore account

If you have not previously created a Project Mushroom account, you can simply use the invite email sent from Spore to create an account. For instructions on how to create an account, see Creating an account.

Moving your Project Mushroom account to Spore

If you want to interact with both Project Mushroom and the wider Mastodon community, you can migrate your account to the Spore instance.

Caution: You can only migrate accounts about once a month.

There is no “one-click” process to migrate your account–it requires a few manual tasks. After migrating, your new account will be similar to your old account, but you will need to customize your profile again.

The following is a list of the tasks required to migrate your account:

1. Export your Project Mushroom profile data.

2. Create a Spore account.

3. Create an alias to your Project Mushroom account.

4. Migrate your Project Mushroom account to Spore.

5. Import your Project Mushroom profile data.

For more information about the process, here is a link to Mastodon’s instructions on the process: https://docs.joinmastodon.org/user/moving/#migration

Step 1: Export your Project Mushroom profile data

1. Log in to your Project Mushroom account.

2. Open the account settings:

   • On a desktop browser, click Edit profile under your avatar.

   • On a mobile browser or mobile app, tap your avatar and then Edit profile.

3. Select Import and export. On mobile, you might need to tap  to access the full list of account options.

The Data export page opens by default. If not, select it.

4. For all data you want to import to you new account, select the . Save these files to your device.

You can export the following data:

• Follows (who you follow)

• Lists

• Who you block

• Who you muted

• Domains you blocked

• Bookmarks

You cannot export the following:

• Followers. However, they are migrated as part of the account migration process.

• Your posts. However, they continue to exist under your old account.

Step 2: Create a Spore account

Open spore.social and create a new account. You can use the same email address and username as your Project Mushroom account. For instructions on creating a new account, see Creating an account.

Step 3: Create an alias to your Project Mushroom account

1. If necessary, log in to your Spore account.

2. Open the account settings:

• On a desktop browser, click Edit profile under your avatar.

• On a mobile browser or mobile app, tap your avatar and then Edit profile.

3. Scroll to the bottom of the page and under Moving from a different account select create an account alias.

4. Enter the account name you want to migrate to Spore. The account name includes the username and instance name. For example: @old_account@projectmushroom.social

5. Select Create Alias.

Your old Project Mushroom account is now linked to your new Spore account. You can see your old account listed under Handle of the old account. 

Step 4: Migrate your Project Mushroom account to Spore

1. If necessary, log in to your Project Mushroom account.

2. Open the account settings:

   • On a desktop browser, click Edit profile under your avatar.

   • On a mobile browser or mobile app, tap your avatar and then Edit profile.

3. Under Move to a different account, select configure it here.

4. Under Handle of the new account enter your Spore account. For example, @new_account@spore.social

5. Under Current password, enter the password for your Project Mushroom account.

6. Select Move Followers.

Your Project Mushroom followers are migrated to your Spore account and a reference to your new account is added to your old account. You can now log in to your Spore account.

Step 5: Import your Project Mushroom profile data

1. If necessary, log in to your Spore account.

2. Open the account settings:

   • On a desktop browser, click Edit profile under your avatar.

   • On a mobile browser or mobile app, tap your avatar and then Edit profile.

3. Select Import and export, and then Import.

4. Import all of your data:

5. Select the data type from the Import type list.

6. Select Choose File and then find the corresponding .csv data file on your device. The filename describes the data type.

7. Choose to Merge or Overwrite your existing data with the new data. If you merge, the imported data is added to your existing data. If you overwrite, you will delete your existing data and replace it with the imported data.

If you just created your Spore account, you don’t have anything to overwrite, so either option is fine.

4. Select Upload.

Once you have uploaded your data, your account migration is complete. Remember to customize your new Spore profile!