A list of my favorite steemit tools, do you have any to add?
My avatar is almost a dolphin and I'm still learning about tools that we can use to make this experience better. In an effort to help new users and the Stewards of Terra Mater, I'm going to list the tools I use and invite everyone else to list their tools and I hope this will help people manage their experience in a more positive and easier way.
Background on the basics
The steemit blockchain is the backbone that most of these tools connect to and present the information within the blockchain in a way that is meaningful to the user. The blockchain is hosted by servers and administrators that are called 'Witnesses'. I was confused with the terminology when I first started. Essentially a witness is a database administrator that sets up a server somewhere in the world, installs the software that runs the blockchain and administers that server for the benifit of the blockchain. Witnesses are paid for this service by the steem generated by the blockchain. That is why it is free to use and why cryptocurrency transactions are also free. There are currently 14, 668 witnesses (database servers) in the world. Users like you and I vote on who we want to be the top witnesses (servers). Witnesses compete for votes to become the top servers. That is why we find lots of posts asking people to vote for them. If you click on the top right menu icon (three horizontal bars beside your profile picture), you will find the menu item to vote on the witnesses you want.
Why the background?
Well, it is important to realize that this whole project is open source. That means the blockchain is owned by nobody, is distributed all around the world and hosted by tens of thousands of servers. That means that people can develop their own applications to use the blockchain. Because of that, it makes it appear like we are in the wild west and to some degree we are.
Most of us were introduced to the blockchain through a website called Steemit.com. Steemit.com is a web interface to the blockchain which provides a service that allows people to post and upvote content in a social media type interface. There are other applications coming on line that will provide other types of services that also connect to the blockchain as well. So expect things to get even more confusion or complicated. I hope this little tutorial will help clarify how this is unfolding. For example, a service was launched that allows people to purchase gift and visa cards using their steem or steem dollars. It accesses the blockchain but does not participate with the social media components that we are familiar with here on the steemit.com website. You can learn more about it here through an excellent article written by @taskmaster4450.
Tools I use
https://steemnow.com/
I like this tool as it gives me information on my voting power, how much my votes are currently worth, who is voting on my posts, payouts for the content I've voted on and even how much my posts are worth up to payout time. It is a good overall tool to know what is going on with my curating and writing. Just make sure you enter in your own userid in the top right corner and click on 'save'. Thank you to @penguinpablo for writing this app to report on the blockchain.
https://steemd.com/@wwf
I've been using this tool to keep track of my vests as I venture towards being a dolphin. But it also has all the transactions on the blockchain and is essentially the blockchain for my account. So if you want to see what information is being stored on the blockchain, you can look through the list on the right as every entry into the blockchain for your account is listed there. Because the blockchain is essentially data records recorded one after another, it makes it difficult to do reporting. So some people export the blockchain into relational SQL databases for doing more detailed analysis. Many other tools access these SQL databases instead of the blockchain directly. https://steemwhales.com/ is one such site that does this, but their database is almost two months old, so when you use tools like this, you need to confirm if the database is up to date or if they are accessing the blockchain directly. I know, confusing right.
https://steemworld.org/@wwf
This tool presents the data in a nice interface and even allows me to see all the people I've delegated steem towards. I found the Delegations (in) does not work, but there is another tool that I can use to check out who has delegated steem to me.
https://helloacm.com/tools/steemit/delegators/
When I put my user name in the 'Steem ID' field, the app searches the blockchain and found who delegated steem to me, how much and when the last transaction happened. So if you find that your votes take a sudden leap forward and you have a whole bunch of steem in your wallet (in brackets), this is how you can find out who gave it to you.
http://steemitboard.com/board.html?user=wwf
Most people should be familiar with this tool as the author created a bot to give new users notice whenever they achieved milestones on the blockchain. I still like coming here to see some of the statistics with my blog, how many posts I've made, upvotes, comments, replies, etc. Nice tool to see how well I am doing. Thank you @arcange for the tools and reports you provide on your blog https://steemit.com/@arcange. If you want to know any statistics on how many users, votes, breakdown between minnows, dolphins, whales, etc, this blog has daily updates!
Storing images to link inside a post
I started my blog using www.imgsafe.org, but it went down a few days ago. So I just went back to my old facebook account. I upload pictures into my profile, but I set the privacy so that only I can see them. When I click on the image, I can then right click on it to copy the image location. That allows me to then provide the links to my post through the editor here on steemit.org. It is working well, so I gave up on imgsafe.org coming back on line.
Private chat
I setup an account on steemit.chat so that I can have private conversations with people as everything on the blockchain is public. My user id is @wwf and if you want to chat with me there, you are welcome to find me. I was then introduced to another tool which I will talk about next, but it required a discord account. www.discordapp.com. So you can find me on discord as well at WWF#2870. Discord also has an app that you can download and install on your computer so that it can run in the background without having a tab open on your browser.
Receiving notifications
Because many of these tools are still in beta, some services are lacking. So a bot was created to notify us through discord, whenever specific triggers are hit. For example, if somebody tags me in a post or says a specific word or phrase, this bot will send me a message in discord so that I can follow up with the post. Very cool and needed in my view. I found the instructions for setting up this bot was simple and quick. But it requires that you have a discord account and that it is up and running in order for you to receive the notifications. I want to thank @goldendawne for giving me this lead. It is proving to be most helpful.
https://steemit.com/introduceyourself/@ginabot/hi-i-am-gina-i-m-here-to-help
Keeping track of cryptocurrency prices
There is the little matter of the cyrptocurrency itself. I use https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/steem/ to keep track of steem and https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/steem-dollars/ for keeping track of the price of SBD.
Those are the tools I use. If you have any different tools or different ways of using the tools, share so that others can learn in order to enrich this experience. I hope this has been helpful.
Thanks, @wwf. And thank you for your one-on-one time yesterday. This post is a great review of what you taught me yesterday. Keep up the good work. You are a Dolphin in the making. Peace and Love.
You are very welcome. If you ever have questions, please do not hesitate to call.
Hello @wwf.
A very nice collection you are presenting here. As I am atill new on steemit I have been around many of these pages, yet I use SteemWorld the most to see all incoming and outgoing things. GINAbot is a great help to me triggering notifications on certain words that are typed in comments or posts, without them being actual tags.
I have two questions:
1: Can you find an easy way to describe what VESTS are? I still have absolutely no clue about this.
2: Are you using autovoters to support your favourite steemians? If so, which ones can you advice?
All the best and thanks again for this tool collection.
Moritz
Vests are a short term for inVESTment. Essentially when you take your steem and 'power up', you are committing your steem to the system and that is represented by the number of vests that you have. Right now, you get about 487 vests for ever steem you power up with. Think of it like voting shares in a corporation. With that voting power, it then increases how much your 'vote' is worth. That is why when you power up your voting power increases. It is the vests that determine whether you are a red-fish (less than 1 million vests / 1MVest), a minnow (between 1MVest and 10MVest), or a dolphin (10 - 100 MVests), Orca (100MVest - 1000MVests) or a whale (over 1000MVests). Does that help?
No, I don't use autovoters as I prefer to upvote people who comment on my work as I am an author and not a curator. Curators tend to use voting bots to support the new talent that they find. Makes their job easier. But I would rather interact with the people that choose to spend time with me. More personal that way and it build stronger, longer lasting relationships as well. If you have any more questions, please don't hesitate to ask.
Hi again.
Thank you for the insights @wwf! I now do understand VESTS. Highly appreciated.
Since two days I am experimenting with autovoters to gain SteemPower as my posts don't get rewarded very highly. I am excited to report on that experience in 14 days, after the first 7 days pay out rolled in. In my mind this will be a good way to grow SteemPower in an automated way, while spending most of the time interacting, learning and posting. I am testing a system of 20 micro-auto-votes after 15-20 min towards people whos content I value and that are highly traded at the same time. Let's see how this works out.
At last I want to add a new site to your collection if your interested:
https://steemblockexplorer.com
I just found that link on top of the steemnow page, where @penguinpablo announced yesterday what he was developing over the last weeks.
All the best.
Moritz
You are very welcome. <3 If I may suggest, one way of getting people to notice your blog is to get out and comment on other peoples blogs. By having meaningful and insightful conversations with people, you will make an impression. As a result, they will voluntarily reach out and check out your blog. Here on steemit, it is important to build those relationships and that will then equate to more followers and more votes on your blog posts. Also remember that you can make a lot of steem by commenting as people do upvote comments too! Just as I have with your comments. I work really hard to reward people who engage with me as that is a positive re-enforcement and people tend to come back because I do reward high level engagements. So there are many ways of making steem here other than just blogging. I hope that helps.
p.s. Thanks for the link. I checked it out. Thank you.
Dear @wwf.
I shurely am aware of the interaction part of steemit. And thats where my heart is at. I love to help and advice in my field of Permaculture and I also love the help and advice that comes towards me with every post I do.
Also after my first week on steemit I realized the financial power that the very interaction has with showing 80% of my SteeSupply was through comments.
And also here, right now with you and me it shows again, that truthful conversation with time and sence gets rewarded richly. Thank you very much wwf. I have to say though that often (and that is the case in this conversation as well) I feel really strange and poor to be rewarded for asking questions and being helped while on the flip side a 100% upvote of mine is worth 0.003...
I cant wait for the time, that I can support other peoples content and comments in a meaningful manner.
I think you will find that most people have a lot patience with newer users as most of us were there at one point. I cannot speak for those who invested actually currency to give them a head start. But for the most part, a vote from you, no matter the amount, has meaning as you give what you can. That for me is a symbol of your appreciation. But the real value is in the exchange and time spent with one another. But I'm here for social and spiritual reasons, the steem is a byproduct of that exchange. I've delegated it all away to help others. So I value the exchange and I am more than willing to help you as the time and energy we just spent with one another has value!
Namaste <3.
I checked out your blog. You just started a few weeks ago. To manage expectations, it takes months and months of work to get traction here on steemit. So be patient. It will come. I like what you are doing. <3 Peace to you. I'm also going to introduce you to @goldendawne as she is a powerful curator here and a fellow Steward of Gondor. She can help bring some awareness to your work too.
thank you for this big lesson of life. I use the most part of those tools and you show me a new one I will use helloacm/tools. But the lesson was how important is to you helping the others. For me the spiryt of Steemit is to give first (knowledge, thoughts, art, love, feelings) and after we recieve back.
Welcome to steemit @pataty69. I'm glad that you are onto most of these tools already. You did well finding them this quickly. As for the spirit of giving, you are absolutely correct. The rewards come afterwards, not before. This platform proved that over and over again. So now we really can change the world. Peace to you. Thank you for taking the time to comment and may you be blessed with peace, freedom, prosperity, joy and love.
Peace to you and thanks for replie I comment today to share a tool I use daily https://steemstats.com/#!/ by @jesta
Thanks for this keep em coming!
Thank you. I'm working hard to get to dolphin status. Trust me! Seems slow slogging right now with the change in price of steem/SBD and the loss of a supporter. But I will get there! looks like a few more days and I'll have it.
Out of curiosity, what defines dolphin status?
I need 10 million vests to reach dolphin status. Reputation score has no bearing on whether I am a dolphin or not. Reputation scores are logarithmic. Which means that you need much more reputation to reach the next level than it took to reach your current level. You think 53 to 54 seems so slow, try 64 to 65! That is where I am at now.
My reputation number is 21,942,619,340,171 - which converts to 64.071.
Your reputation number is 1,411,531,955,762 - which converts to 53.345.
You would need to acquire almost 20 times more reputation to reach a score of 64 than you have already achieved. People with high reputation scores can boost you quicker than people with low reputation scores. So hang around high reputation people and that will help you.
I appreciate this!
We are about 12 days into Steemit and learning every day. We love all these tools other Steemians are creating to help the Steemit community as a whole. The new tool for us is steemitboard.com, so thank you for that. :)
You are very welcome. Welcome to steemit. I hope it all goes well for you and thank you for taking the time to participate with this post. That is a wonderful way to get your name out there so that others see your commitment to building relationships. That will do well for your blog. Keep up the great work.
Nice list of websites to use to check your account stats. I dont know if you are also interested in Tools (apps) for your phone? Because then I would advice you to download the app "steemify". It notifies you everytime there happens sometimes with your account. (= if someone upvotes you, comment, reply, or if someone starts following you)
Thank you. Yes, somebody also commented about steemify. But it is great to hear more people praising the tool. Thank you for your comments. I hope it serves others as well. Peace to you.
I also started using steemify on my iPad for notifications. It's an excellent way to get notifications for all kinds of stuff. Not only to track when people vote on your posts, mention you, reply, etc, but you can set up to get notifications for anybody else as well. It's good for if you want to know when a specific person posts something new.
It's only on the apple store right now, but they say they'll get to the other platforms in time. It's only been out a little over a month I think.
So it sounds like that is similar to the ginabot then. Is that correct? Sounds like the tools are now starting to come out. That is good news. It will really add to the experience here on this platform. Thank you for sharing.
The one I like and frequently checking is this one: http://steem.supply/@wwf
(I already inserted your user name).
Look at the bottom, where you have tabs that shows how much income ;-) it is coming toward you separated by days, by posts, by comments and some more statistical info. I love it. I also gave it's author witness vote :-)
Plus it give you other info like some other tools does
Thank you. I've used that one in the past, but I found that the web interface does not update or present well for me. I appreciate you sharing it though. It may work better for other people. I abandoned that one myself.
Thanks for the useful information here, I didnt realize there were other tools to help with this, much appreciated!
Gina bot is amazing! It makes it easier to curate mythology because she tells me when someone posts there.
Also Steem.supply shows you your payouts and is helpful in showing you how much you engage your followers and what tags do the best ect
I just started using canva to make banners, headings, anything really. You can do a lot of things on there for free though you can pay to get more images. Since you can upload your own images I am pretty pleased with it. Its fun and makes my blogs look nice!
So you knew about Ginabot and did not say anything? lol Just teasing. I just found out about the service yesterday. I agree. It is very helpful. I have troubles with steem.supply. The website does not display properly for me about 80% of the time. So I quit using it. I did not hear of Canva. Thanks for sharing. I will check it out.
yeah steem.supply has been wonky lately. Usually I just refresh and it works again though.
I learnt about Ginabot recently myself, SO helpful. I love it.
Canva is great for making images, and I am making a steemit poster to bring with me to events!
For those reading this thread, 'wonky' is a technical term. lol