A tour of Present Mode
Build Mode is where the family works; Present Mode is the archive opened for someone. Audiences change what leads.
DearestEllie has two faces. Build Mode is the workshop — where you and your family add, review, and organize. Present Mode is the archive opened for someone: a clean, quiet page that answers the question "just who is this person?" with the best of what your family has kept.
Opening the archive for someone
Every archive has a Life Page it can share — on a dearestellie.org link, or on your family's own domain (a free feature; see custom domains). What appears there is governed entirely by visibility: public items in public chapters, nothing else, ever.
When you share it, you choose an audience — who is standing in front of the archive. A grandchild, a spouse, a sibling, the whole community, or a memorial gathering. The audience doesn't change what's visible; it changes what leads. A grandchild meets the playful stories and the voice recordings first. A memorial audience is received gently, with remembrance framing and no chirpy interface anywhere.
Before you share widely
- Skim the Life Page yourself first, as a stranger would see it.
- Check the chapter privacy on anything tender.
- Ask the question that settles every judgment call: would they be comfortable with this being seen by these people?
Present Mode is also lovely with an audience of one. Opening the archive for your mother — audience: 'self' — and watching her meet her own life is one of the best things this software does.
Still stuck? [email protected] — a person reads every message.