Frequently Asked Questions

1. About transLucidonline
2. Signing up for transLucidonline
3. Domain Names (www.yourdomain.com)
4. transLucidonline and transLucid - the open-source project
5. Importing documents into transLucidonline
6. Exporting from transLucidonline
7. Editing your transLucidonline site
8. Safety and Security

About transLucidonline

• What is transLucidonline?

transLucidonline is the simple website publishing system with which anyone can create and maintain web content for a personal or business website, a blog, a team project space or even a book.

• Who can benefit from signing up for transLucidonline?

transLucidonline is for anyone looking for a simple yet powerful website publishing system without the hassles of downloading and installing software, engaging IT resources, learning HTML and so many other hurdles that are still often involved for most people who simply want to get something published on the web.
Our services can be beneficial for a range of users, including small and medium businesses, sole practitioners, freelancers, bloggers, hobbyists; really anyone who needs an affordable and easy-to-use website solution.

We are currently working hard to enable our users to publish their content from the desktop to the web by using existing, widely used desktop applications.

• What makes transLucidonline so wonderful and easy?

There are many, very powerful content management systems (CMS) available on the market today. The team behind transLucidonline – after having worked with some of those CMS and seen users interact with them – saw that only a minority of the available features were ever utilized. In addition, the sheer number of available features and options made these CMS difficult to work with.
transLucidonline instead provides users with only what they really require to publish content on the web in a user-friendly and easy-to-learn way.

• Is it not really a content management system?

We like to call transLucidonline a website publishing system because our focus is on increasing people’s ability to publish any type of content and data to the web as fast and easily as possible instead of forcing them into managing their content and data.
If anyone would like to call transLucidonline a lightweight content management system we certainly would not mind.

• Why are you "not in beta"?
  

We may from time to time invite users to special previews of up-and-coming features that are under development. Anything else is "not in beta" which means that the applications we provide will work as advertised. If anything does go wrong, we will do our utmost to remedy the situation as fast as possible. We take responsibility for what we do.

Signing up for transLucidonline

• How do I create a transLucidonline site?

Creating a transLucidonline site is done by signing up here and should not take more than 10 minutes. We only ask you for the most basic information and will never share your details. If you are not yet convinced that transLucidonline might be something for you, there is also the possibility to try it out without creating a user account.

• What service plans do you offer on transLucidonline?

There are two plans that come with a monthly or yearly subscription fee. The silver plan is a good way to get started with publishing your content using transLucidonline. If you want to host your own domain name, have more ready-made templates to choose from and more space to store your data, the business plan will be your best choice.
We also have a free plan that allows trying out all features and is ad-supported.

• How do I upgrade my current plan for transLucidonline?

Go to 'Your account', log in with your username and password and then click on 'Change plan' in the left navigation bar of that page. You can then select your new service plan. If you used the free plan before, you will need to provide us with your payment information.

• What payment types do you offer?

We are using PayPal as our payment system. You may either use your credit card (Visa, Mastercard, American Express, Discover credit/debit cards) or PayPal account to pay for your subscription plan on transLucidonline.
If you are not familiar with PayPal, it is one of the safest, most widely accepted ways to pay for purchases on the Internet. PayPal handles online payment transactions for auction websites such as eBay and many e-commerce sites and is used by millions of people worldwide.

• How do I downgrade my plan for transLucidonline?

Go to 'Your account', log in with your username and password and then click on 'Change plan' in the left navigation bar of that page. You may now choose a lower plan than the one you are subscribed to currently.
If you decide to switch to the free plan, you will have to:
1. Log into PayPal.
2. Click ‘History’.
3. Select ‘Subscriptions’ from the ‘Show:’ drop-down box (you may need to select a longer time frame from the ‘For:’ drop-down box if you have had your account longer than a month. Try selecting ‘Past Year’).
4. Press ‘submit’.
5. You should see an entry called ‘Subscription Creation’ with ‘transLucidonline’ in the ‘Name/Email’ column. There will be a link in the ‘Status’ column that tells you the status of the subscription. If it says ‘Active’, click it.
6. Click the button that says ‘Cancel Subscription’ and follow the remainder of the steps.

Domain names

• Can I use my existing domain name with transLucidonline?

As a subscriber of our business service plan you can. If you haven't done so already, please send us your transLucidonline username alongside the domain name you want your transLucidonine site to be reachable under to team@translucidonline.com .
We will then set up your domain name on transLucidonline and send you further instructions by e-mail on how to finalise the process (note for advanced users: the name servers your domain needs to point to are ns1.eapps.com and ns2.eapps.com).

• Can I register a domain name through transLucidonline?

At this point in time you cannot register a domain name directly on transLucidonline, although we might incorporate such abilities in the future.

transLucidonline and transLucid – the open-source project

• How is transLucidonline related to the open-source project transLucid?

transLucid provides the core functionality for the services provided by Pantha Software Ltd. on transLucidonline. The open-source project was started in early 2005 and built on an earlier wiki-like system, which has since been fully redeveloped.
The services provided on transLucidonine are by Pantha Software Ltd.

What are the differences between transLucidonline and the open-source project?
We provide full user support for all transLucidonline sites. Sign-up and creation of a transLucidonline site is fast and easy. All sites on transLucidonline automatically receive all new features and functionality. Certain functionality might be exclusive to transLucidonline in the future.

• Why do you keep transLucid open-source?

Keeping all codes of transLucidonline's core functionality available to users and developers means that transLucidonline's architecture, security and general coding standards have to stand the comparison with other similar systems, some of which have thousands of developers working on them. It ensures that potential weaknesses can be exposed publicly by the open-source community and will have to be dealt with in an open and professional way by Pantha Software Ltd., the company behind transLucidonline and transLucid.
Maintaining the open-source project transLucid ensures that transLucidonline's core functionality will have to remain comparable to the world’s largest open-source content management system projects and is at the same time a wonderful way to communicate the additional services and features provided through transLucidonline.

• Where can I download the open-source version?

The open-source version of transLucid is hosted by Sourceforge and can be downloaded from http://sourceforge.net/projects/lucid .

• How can I contribute to and support the project?

The easiest way to start is by downloading the source code from Sourceforge.net. Please then get in touch by writing to info@pantha.net to discuss features you would like to add/integrate and how to set up as a developer on Sourceforge.
You may also donate to our open-source project by clicking here.

Importing documents into transLucidonline

• Which file types can I import into my transLucidonline site?

You can currently import PersonalBrain3 XML data files that were created using PersonalBrainExporter or BrainUtil. For a detailed description, see the online documentation of transLucid.
More file types will be added in the future, including support for MindManager and PersonalBrain4.

Exporting from transLucidonline

• How do I export to PersonalBrain3?

You can select the export format via the drop-down provided in the Admin area of your transLucidonline site under the 'Export' tab.

Manual back-up of your transLucidonline site

• Why would I want to back-up my transLucidonline site?

Maybe you need that extra peace of mind to have your own, personal back-up of all your transLucidonline site data on your computer. We guarantee regular back-ups only to subscribers of our business plan.

• How can I back-up my transLucidonline site?

Go to the Admin area of your transLucidonline site. Log in with your transLucidonline username and password. Click on the 'Export' tab and select 'Translucid' in the drop-down provided, then hit 'Go'. A compressed file with the suffix .zip will be generated which you can download to your personal computer.

• How do I upload a back-up to my transLucidonline site?

Go to the Admin area of your transLucidonline site. Log in with your transLucidonline username and password. Click on the 'Import' tab and 'Browse'. Locate your back-up file (ending with .zip) on your computer’s hard-drive and hit 'Upload' to commence the importing process. You will be guided through the import wizard and your back-up data will replace your current transLucidonline site content.

Editing your transLucidonline site

• How do I edit the content of my transLucidonline site?

Clicking on the 'Edit' button will bring you into transLucidonline's edit mode, where you can change the content and structure of your site. Changing content in the editor should be a familiar experience to most people, which behaves much like Microsoft Word.
Clicking 'Save' will store the changes you applied to the page.

Note to advanced users: You may edit the HTML code of your content by clicking the HTML button in the editor toolbar.

• How do I add my own images to the content of my transLucidonline site?

You will first have to upload your image to transLucidonline. For this, click on the tree thumbnail icon in the editor toolbar and then on the icon (entitled 'Browse') next to the 'Image URL' field in the window that will open. Next 'Browse' for your image, then hit 'Upload'. You can now select the image you uploaded by clicking on it.
You can optionally add an image description for the image. Clicking on 'Insert' will insert your image into the editor.

• How do I add and remove pages on my transLucidonline site?

The left side of the edit mode of transLucidonline is reserved for the navigation and editing of your site’s structure. The page you are editing currently is labelled 'Current page'. You will see its title right below this label. You may add a page by simply typing in the name you would like to give it into one of the fields next to 'Add'. You can connect your current page to an existing page by typing its name and selecting it from the appearing list.

Pages always have a 'relation' and are connected with other pages (unless they are 'disconnected'). These relations can be of the following kinds: parent, child or related.

• How do I add attachments to a page?

Click 'Browse' and select the file you would like to upload. Then hit 'Attach file'. This will attach the file to the current page as additional information. It can then be downloaded by people visiting your transLucidonline site.

• How do I add a URL to a page?

Type in the full link to the page you would like to attach as information to the current page. Example: http://www.translucidonline.com , not www.translucidonline.com . Then hit 'Add url'.

Which WYSIWYG (What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get) editors does transLucidonline support?
Our default editor is a very popular WYSIWYG editor called TinyMCE. We also support FCKEditor, which is another open-source editor.

• How do I change my WYSIWYG default editor?

You may switch to your favourite editor in the Admin area of your transLucidonline site under the tab 'Themes' by selecting your editor of choice in the drop-down 'Text editor name' and hitting 'Save'.

Safety and security

• Is my content and data backed up by transLucidonline?

We guarantee regular backups on a daily basis to subscribers of our business plan.

Subscribers to the silver and free plan are advised to keep personal back-ups of their data as we do not guarantee the restoration of backed up data we do as part of regular system maintenance.

• Where is transLucidonline hosted and who provides the hosting services?

Pantha Software administrates the transLucidonline servers on a day-to-day basis. We use eApps, known in the industry for superior performance and high reliability with a Tier 1 data centre, to host those servers in their United States location.