So, you're a member of this homeserver now. Congrats! Or maybe you're a member of another homeserver and are just looking for resources. That's cool too! Either way, here's some knowledge and resources that hopefully will get you going.
Keep in mind: I, Kit Lotor, am still learning myself. Feel free to ask me questions or to add things here and I will!
What did I just sign up for?
You've signed up for a Matrix homeserver. To describe this better; this is a server that runs Matrix, and can talk to other servers and people that run Matrix, too. It's a little bit like E-mail meets Discord, but written and hosted by a bunch of techies.Your ID looks something like this: @username:furries.chat
The first part is your username, the second is your homeserver. You can talk to anyone with a Matrix account, including folks on a different homeserver. So if your friend is on, say, matrix.org, you're fully welcome to open up a group chat with them, or even find group chats on other homeservers, too.
Okay. How do I use it?
You've got options! What I'd say depends on how you want to use it.Right now, if you want video calls and screenshare, you're going to want to use Element. If you don't care about those, go with Cinny. I say this because Cinny has some neat features that are very much so desirable - custom emojis and the ability to censor photos, among others - but the one thing it's lacking right now is Matrix RTC support, which is what makes video calls and screenshare work right now.
If you want to use it in your browser, Furries Chat just so happens to have versions spun up for use! We even have Element Call (the voice/video calling and screenshare app Element uses) as a standalone website you can access.
Element | Element Call | Cinny
There are also desktop verisons of Element and Cinny you can download as well. Right now, we don't host any versions of these ourselves (a custom build of Element Desktop is coming soon, however!), but you can find them on Element's website and Cinny's Github, respectively.
I'm having issues logging in!
I won't be able to cover every situation here, but I'll cover a few that might trip you up in particular. I'll add more if I notice any weird gotchas with login.If you're trying to use a desktop or mobile chat app, keep in mind it's probably defaulting to a different homeserver. You'll need to change this so you're using furries.chat instead.
Also, check your system clock. The login process is sensitive to poorly calibrated time, and may reject your login if you're too far out of sync.
Verification? Recovery keys? What's all of this nonsense?
Matrix allows you to use something called end to end encryption. This is a system which allows you to scramble your messages in such a way that only you and anyone you want to see your messages can see and vice versa. Even I, the critter running this homeserver, can't see your messages if you don't want me to. This is cool in terms of privacy, but there are a few things you have to maintain in order for this system to work.First, you'll want to get a copy of your recovery key. If you ever want to log into another client, you'll be expected to either have access to another client or your recovery key. If you don't have either one of these, your new client won't be able to un-scramble your past messages, so maybe see if you can find a logged-in client somewhere you can get the recovery key or verify your session from. Note that, by design, I don't have access to your encryption keys and can't recover them for you.
If you've completely lost all access to all logged in/verified clients and don't have a recovery key, you'll want to reset your identity. This will set up encryption for you again, and you'll lose access to all the past end-to-end encrypted messages you've sent and received.