The Nexus

The Nexus is Glob Social's shared public canvas, linked from the front page. Visitors can explore it before signing in. Members can go there from home, browse subjects and bring useful places back as pins.

The catalogue and a subject's working canvas behave differently. The catalogue is a set of fixed doors. A subject's canvas is a place where members can arrange nodes under its rules.

Arrive and return home#

Open the Nexus to explore. If you are signed out, you get the visitor view. Writing actions ask you to sign in; reading does not require you to make a change.

When you are signed in, your usual starting place is your own home. At home, hover or focus the upper-left Glob logo and choose Go to the Nexus from the dashed ring. On a touch screen, first tap the logo to reveal its rings, then choose the Nexus ring.

Use the logo to return along your home route. Zooming out from home or from the Nexus root does not cross between them. See Home and your root node.

Browse Topics#

Choose Topics in the Nexus to open the topic catalogue. Its main subjects are:

Choose a subject to see its subtopics. For example, Technology & Computing leads to more specific areas within that subject. Choose a subtopic to reach its canvas.

On catalogue pages, the doors sit around a large centre node with spokes. Click or tap a door to enter. Those pages hold still: dragging the background or scrolling does not pan or zoom them like your home canvas. A node you can open there is a door, rather than a handle to rearrange.

Inside a Nexus place, clicking or tapping the large centre node goes back one level. The logo's depth rings also show your route and let you return to an earlier level. At the Nexus root there is no further outward level.

Explore the World map#

Choose Map, the globe-faced node on the Nexus root, to open the world picture. Guests can browse it too. Pan and zoom across its Pixl tiles, read the city dots and labels, and enter a city node at the closest map zoom.

The World map guide explains navigation and the difference between browsing and tile editing. Signing in alone does not grant permission to edit the tiles.

Work inside a subtopic#

At a subtopic's working canvas, the ordinary gestures return. Click a node to select it, zoom into it to enter, pan the background and zoom the view. If you can add there, double-click or double-tap empty ground to create a node.

The catalogue's own nodes on this canvas are shown connected to its subject at the centre. These centre spokes express the subject's layout; they are not ordinary links to cut. A node you create here stands free, like a node on any public canvas: it is not tied to the centre. A link to one of the subject's connected nodes rests half as long again as an ordinary link, so the area round the centre does not crowd. Links you draw between your own nodes use the normal link tools.

The ability to read a subject does not grant control over everything in it. You can edit, move and delete the nodes you created. The Topics, subject and catalogue pages above a subtopic are changed only by Nexus administrators. Other people's nodes and the catalogue have their own permissions. If an action is refused, read the message in the search and message bar and follow the node's access rules.

Keep a route to a place#

You do not need to move somebody else's node to keep a route to it. A pin is another placement that leads to the same node.

To pin from the public search dropdown, return to the canvas where you want the pin, type a subject or title in the search bar, and choose the result's Pin here icon. You can also drag a result onto the canvas. Another route is Copy node on the node's menu followed by paste on the destination canvas. Pins explains the distinction between a linked placement and an independent duplicate.

Pins to Nexus nodes have a small Glob-style mark, three tiny dots round the node, wherever they are placed outside the Nexus: at home, or on another node's canvas. This helps you recognise a catalogue or Nexus destination among the places you keep. Inside the Nexus itself no node wears the mark.

Browse domain shelves#

The separate Domain shelves page offers a weekly set of doors for each available domain. Open Settings, choose Nexus, then Domain shelves. You can also open Domain shelves directly.

Choose a domain from the list. Its page is headed This week’s shelf, followed by Week of and the shelf's date. Door labels explain the selection:

• New is the shelf's place for a new door.
• Curated marks a choice for that week.
• Rotated marks a choice brought back from earlier curation.

Choose a titled Open door link to open that node's page. The shelf is a list of destinations; opening a door does not itself place a pin at home. Use the pinning methods above when you want to keep a route to it on your canvas.

The available domains and doors can differ from the Topics canvas. If the list says No domains are available yet., it currently has no domains to offer. A shelf can say There are no readable doors on this shelf yet., and its New place can say No new door this week. These are empty states, not a failed pin.

If This domain shelf is unavailable. Try again. appears, use Try again on the page. Wait for the loading message to clear before choosing a door.

Explore as a visitor#

The visitor canvas supports reading and navigation. It does not give you the signed-in tools for creating music, using the Freemarket or chatting. Sign in to build your own home and use member tools.

If a link no longer opens, go back through your route or return to the Nexus root. A pin or saved address cannot make a withdrawn or unavailable node readable. For a lasting problem, use Troubleshooting.