Getting Started on Permanent from TightKnit
Welcome, TightKnit family, to Permanent! We are excited to have you join the Permanent.org community.
We know that discovering, documenting, and sharing your family stories are important to you. As a nonprofit focused on helping you preserve your cherished legacy for the next generation, we share some of the same goals and values as you. We hope to make your transition to using Permanent as seamless as possible to ensure that your family’s stories are preserved and available for the next generation of family members to discover.
This article will walk you through how to get started on Permanent.org by framing Permanent with features and terms you’re familiar with from TightKnit. We’ll link to other articles in our Knowledge Base, too, so you can explore further. If you have any questions, please feel free to reach out to us at support@permanent.org and we’d be happy to assist.
About Permanent.org
If you’re brand new to Permanent, we’d like to take a moment to point you to our blog post about TightKnit’s in-kind donation to Permanent so you can understand how our two communities came together.
We also wanted to share where you can find more information about who we are and what makes us unique, like our mission, our storage fees, and our endowment model.
You can always learn more about Permanent on our website, permanent.org, and in the Knowledge Base here.
Getting Started on Permanent
In many ways, TightKnit and Permanent are similar platforms, which is one reason why we believe this collaboration will be successful. Like TightKnit, Permanent is a platform where you can create and organize your family’s stories and memories to share with others. On Permanent, we call these collections of stories “archives.”
With your Permanent account, you can create as many archives as you’d like and share them with as many people as you want.
Create Your Account and Archive
You can get started on Permanent by creating a free account here. There are no fees or subscriptions for using Permanent.
Once you’ve created your account, you can create your first archive. An archive is very similar to a TightKnit album. It’s a place where you can collect files (photos, documents, videos — we take all file types!) about an individual, a family, or an organization.
To create your first archive, you’ll need to choose the type of archive. You can learn more about Archive Types here. We recommend selecting the “group” type — it’s the one you can select if you’re making an archive about your family.
You’ll also need to name your archive. On Permanent, all archive names follow the format of “The [Archive Name] Archive” (i.e. “The Sullivan Archive” or “The Sullivan Family Archive”). You can name your archive whatever you’d like. Most people use their family name, and they might add “Family” to the end of their name to indicate that it’s a family archive.
Next, you’ll answer a few questions about yourself. This helps us better understand your goals for using Permanent so we can assist you better.
Congratulations on creating your first archive! If you’d like to create more archives, you can learn more in this article. If you have any issues with these first steps, take a look at this article for more information.
Uploading Files
Welcome to your first archive! If you’d like a tour of your archive, you can learn more in this article. The next step is to start adding files to your archive.
Uploading files on Permanent is very similar to uploading files on TightKnit. You can click the Upload button in the top right corner of your workspace and select files to upload. Alternatively, you can drag and drop files from your computer to your workspace to begin uploading (learn more about how to upload here).
You may want to note that there is not a way to edit photo files once you’ve uploaded them to Permanent. This is different from TightKnit, where you can rotate photos to the correct orientation before uploading. Make sure your photos are rotated on your computer before uploading them to Permanent!
Another difference you may notice is that Permanent does not provide you with a place to edit information about your files during upload. That’s okay! You can edit your metadata once it has been uploaded to Permanent.
Adding Metadata to Files
Once you’ve uploaded a few files, click on a file once to view the Info tab on the right side of your screen. Here, you’ll see the different information fields, or metadata, for your file. This is similar to the TightKnit “Facts” section. Permanent tries to harvest this information from the file itself, so some fields may already be filled out. You can learn more about how Permanent reads metadata here.
If you need to change any information in the Info tab, click into the field. You’ll note that there are some fields that TightKnit had for photos (such as “Location” and “Date,” which correspond to the TightKnit “Occurred Where?” and “Occurred When?” Fields), plus some extra. You can learn more about Permanent metadata fields here.
Collaborate and Share with Family
Now that you’ve begun building your archive, you may want to add family members to your archive so they can view it and add additional information. On Permanent, this is called adding someone as an Archive Member. An Archive Member has full access to all files in your archive, and can make changes based on their role or permission level. The person you invite will need to make a Permanent account in order to join the archive (but creating an archive is free!).
You can learn how to add Archive Members to your archive in this article, and you can learn more about the different roles or permission levels in this article. If you’re unsure which role to assign someone to, we suggest starting out with the Editor role. That way, the person has the ability to add metadata, but not make permanent changes such as publishing or deleting content.
There are also other ways to share materials on Permanent. You can learn more about ways to collaborate and share on Permanent in this article.
Unfortunately, at this time, Permanent does not support archive members leaving comments on files. However, assigning someone as an archive member with at least an Editor role will allow them to edit metadata and add additional stories to the file. Permanent is investigating adding commenting as a feature on archives. To learn more about our progress, check out our Product Roadmap here.
Next Steps
There are many features that are unique to Permanent that you may want to explore once you’ve gotten your archive set up, added some files, and invited family members to collaborate. Below are some suggestions for next steps:
- Fill out your Archive Profile: Your Archive Profile is like a summary of what people can expect to find in your archive
- Redeem your free storage: When you first signed up for PErmanent, you should have received an email with a code to redeem for your first gigabyte of storage, on us. Make sure to claim your free gift!
- Set up your Legacy Plan: On Permanent, your Legacy Plan is a plan for what should happen to your account and archives when you’ve passed away.
- Publish files to your Public Archive: If you’re comfortable, share your family’s stories with the world by publishing files to your Public Archive
- Get inspiration in our Public Gallery: The Permanent Public Gallery is the collection of all our members’ Public Archives
We’re excited for you to join the Permanent.org community. Please feel free to reach out to us at support@permanent.org if you have any questions or need any assistance.
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