Transitioning to the New OPC

This short guide is for existing One Photo Club members who are transitioning from the original version of OPC that was hosted on the Mighty platform at BetterAdventures.Club.

What’s the same

Generally speaking, the basic concept is remaining intact. It’s still focused on travel and outdoor adventures, and we’ll still use prompts like Weekly Themes and On This Day. You’ll still be able to see everyone’s OPC posts without having to follow them individually.

And of course:

  • no ads, no reels, no algorithm
  • still free for users, and still not enriching our billionaire tech overlords
  • still community-centered, human-scale, and mediocrely hosted

What’s new + improved

There are three primary changes:

  • we’re using a new platform
  • you can post a lot more
  • you can interact with people outside OPC

Goodbye Mighty, and Hello Mastodon

The primary change here is that we won’t be using the Mighty Networks platform. You won’t access OPC via the Mighty app (whew, that thing has gotten rough this year!) or via the BetterAdventures.Club website.

Instead, we’re using an open source platform called Mastodon1, which is sorta like a distributed version of Twitter—but without all the bad stuff.

You’ll access the site via https://OnePhoto.Club or by using a third party app.

You probably first heard about Mastodon when Elon took over Twitter. The “knock” against it is that you start out with a blank feed—you have to invite content into your own feed, as opposed to having it force fed to you. And because it’s decentralized, it feels harder to find people to follow than one of the big centralized, profit-driven services.

Don’t worry, I’ve solved these two problems for you! When you join, you’ll immediately be able to see every (future) OPC post via the local server feed, and you’ll already know other OPC members.

I’ve even tried hard to curate a separate travel/outdoors feed of non-OPC accounts that you can browse through using the “federated” feed (I’ll need your help in keeping this useful though).

More flexibility in posting

The other big change is that you won’t be limited to one photo a day, as we were in the old version.

You can now post as much as you’d like—including up to four photos in each post—as long as it’s related to travel or outdoor recreation.

We’re keeping OPC traditions like #opcOnThisDay and #opcWeeklyTheme. I’m adding a new one too: #opcSpecialTheme, which is an occasional today-only theme that’s sorta OPC’s take on the “National [blank] Day.”

Unlike before when we had a bunch of separated spaces (eg, Weekly Themes, Conversations, #WildByNature), there’s now just one spot to post everything. And you can now participate in other popular hashtag themes too, like #MountainMonday or #WaterfallWednesday.

More interactions

Before, only OPC members could see or interact with our posts.

That’s not the case with the new OPC—others on the social web can see, comment, and boost your OPC post. That means more comments and more new friends to make. And soon, your friends on Threads and Bluesky can follow your posts too.

All together, I thinks this makes OPC much better. There are more ways to participate, and more posts to see, and more people to interact with.

Starting an account

  1. Go to OnePhoto.Club on your phone’s web browser and click “create account”
  2. You’ll see a list of rules—they’re essentially the same as before. Click accept.
  3. Enter a username, email, and password and click the checkbox. You’ll need to check your email to verify your account.
  4. BOOM, YOU’RE IN!!
  5. Add the website as a web app on your phone.

    On iOS, click the share button, then the Add to Home Screen button. On Android, hit the meatball menu (three dots) and click Install App, then confirm by clicking install.

    You now have an app icon on your Home Screen that you can use!

    This is the simplest way to use the site, but you can also install third-party apps if you’d like.

Getting acquainted

Click the top right for your profile, where you can add a photo and bio. Click the gear icon near the bottom of the toolbar on the right to change your preferences.

Beyond that, you’ll primarily use three screens for OPC.

The primary feed for OPC can be found by clicking on the globe icon (aka Live Feeds) on the toolbar on the right. You’ll see that it is showing posts from “This Server” – that’s the main one you’ll be using.

As it says, this local server feed shows you all the posts from OPC members. It’s like the “My Global Feed” in Mighty—you don’t need to follow OPC members to see their posts. You can like and comment on everyone’s posts using this feed.

You’ll also use notifications, which is the bell icon near the top on the right toolbar. As you guessed, this is where you’ll see likes and comments on your own posts. You’ll get interactions from outside of our club, especially if you use other hashtags.

And, of course, you’ll also use the New Post button at the top. This brings up a simple text box where you can post and attach photos.

If you want to follow non-OPC accounts or hashtags, you’ll see those in your home feed.

Let’s only follow accounts and hashtags that are primarily focused on travel and outdoor adventures so we can maintain a relevant federated feed (or use a secondary account instead).

Posting

Even though we’re keeping the OPC name, the main change here is removing the “one photo” per space per day limit of the old OPC.

You can now post as often as you’d like, and you can post up to 4 photos at a time. Or you can stick with just one photo per post if you prefer.

And, you’re not restricted to just photo posts—feel free to add text-only ones as well, or use the poll feature. We’ll just keep everything focused on travel or outdoor adventures. So, have at it!

In the old OPC on Mighty, we had separate spaces for each type of post (On This Day, Weekly Theme, #OptOutside, etc). Well on the new OPC, we’re simplifying that down to just one.

Instead of categorizing posts using the different spaces, we’ll use some recurring hashtags instead:

#opcOnThisDay – just like before, this is a great way to look back on prior trips. Just look through your photos for trip photos that happened on this day in prior years. Use the #opcOnThisDay hashtag in your post, along with the year.

#opcWeeklyTheme – As before, I’ll announce a weekly theme prompt on Wednesday that will continue for the rest of the week. Just add the announced theme hashtag along with #OPCWeeklyTheme to these posts.

#opcSpecialTheme – Another new OPC addition are special themes. These are one-day-only themes tied to a particular occasion—sort of OPC’s take on the whole “National [insert topic] Day.” Use the day’s special theme as a hashtag along with #opcSpecialTheme.

Other themes – We can now participate in other popular themes, like #WaterfallWednesday and #SunsetSunday. If there’s one that you feel like joining in on, just make your own post and use the appropriate hashtag.

I recommend creating some text replacement shortcuts on your phone for these often-used hashtags to make things easier. (For instance, I set it so that anytime I type “opcw” it automagically turns into “#opcWeeklyTheme”.)

Of course, these are all just optional prompts. If you’d prefer to skip them and just post photos on your own, please feel free.

Hashtags help non-OPC folks see your posts, so add some additional descriptive ones to your posts if you’d like. If you’re not sure what hashtags to use, I generally like adding a location, type, and/or activity (#Iceland #Waterfall #Hiking).

You can boost fellow OPC posts if you’d like, which will show them to your followers without cluttering the local (your server) feed.

The big message here is that, as long as you keep it travel/outdoors focused, you have A LOT more freedom and flexibility in how you post in the new OPC.

So that’s how to get started in the basics. Pretty simple, really!

Follow @themes for theme announcements

Both the #opcWeeklyTheme and the occasional #opcSpecialTheme are announced via the @themes account, so you’ll want to follow it and turn on notifications.

To do that, go to the @themes profile, click follow, and then click the bell icon next to it.

Subscribe to the OPC Themes Calendar

If you’d prefer, you can subscribe to the public calendar feed in your calendar app of choice using this ics link:

https://calendar.google.com/calendar/ical/bcc95f4d7fd5fb8973b6205cf98da173810c0228cd86bc5b6ad33ee6bc06dd9e%40group.calendar.google.com/public/basic.ics

This allows you to see what’s scheduled in the future and can also serve as a simple reminder. The title of each event contains the hashtags to use in your post, which makes it easy to copy and paste into a new post.

Adjust notifications

To change your notifications, tap the bell icon on the right toolbar, then tap the slider icon below the new post button near the top. You can toggle notifications in the web app by using the “desktop notifications” toggles (yeah, it’s a bit confusing and should be called “webpage notifications instead).

If you’re not sure what to use for the settings, here are my recommendations:

  • turn off “play sound” for each
  • keep “show in column” on for each
  • turn on desktop notifications for mentions only2

What about #OnePostcard?

#OnePostcard is living on! We’ll be organizing it via email, which means our non-OPC friends can join in, too.

Check out the new #OnePostcard home for more information on how to join a future cohort.

What happens to my old account?

For now, I’ll keep the old site accessible until we complete the transition and make sure everything is working at scale. But there’s no reason to post there anymore.

In a nod to spring cleaning, in early March I’ll cancel the old Mighty service (it’s expensive!3), which will delete all of our data.

So, if you’re interesting in keeping anything from the platform (like, say, travel advice you got in the comments), you’ll want to do it soon.

Questions?

Just ask me.

I’ve also started putting together a more in-depth user guide, but it’s a work-in-process.

I can’t wait for you to join me!

I hope you’re as excited as I am for this new era of One Photo Club!

I’ve been using and testing it for a number of weeks so far and have been enjoying it tremendously. I’m really looking forward to you jumping right into this greatly improved version of One Photo Club.

  1. I was originally hoping to use PixelFed—sorta the open source version of instagram—but there are some issues with that right now. Mastodon is a much more stable and popular platform that should work better for us. Hosting it is about half the cost, too. ↩︎
  2. This basically means you’ll only get pinged when someone comments, but you’ll still see the other notifications listed when you open the app. ↩︎
  3. When I first started the Mighty account for the original #GoQuesting Community I beta-launched the week before my dad had his health crisis in 2020, the cost of the “business” plan rate was $49/month. Welp, they just raised their rate again and it’s now up to $219/month(!)—probably still reasonable for charging high-end course fees, but it’s obviously waaay above our price range for providing a free service for friends. ↩︎