Journal Admin

The control room for journals you own. Edit details, manage members and groups, set audiences in bulk, run backups, and transfer or delete a journal — all in one place.

Who sees this page

Only Owners and Admins of a journal. Plain Co-Authors and Readers are filtered out at the server — they get an empty journal list when they try to load this page. If a journal you expect to manage is missing from the selector, your role on it is probably Reader or Co-Author rather than Admin.

How the page is laid out

• Top header bar — global navigation (LifeWyns logo, your profile avatar, version pill).
• Journal selector strip — pick which journal you're working on, or stay on the All Journals overview.
• Tabs row — Overview, Members, Groups, Audiences, Backup & Export, plus Settings / Stats / Maintenance placeholders for future features.
• Panel body — content for whichever tab you've chosen.

Quick map

Need to change a journal's name or photo? Overview tab. Add a member? Members tab. Bulk-update which audience sees which stories? Audiences tab. Download a backup? Backup & Export tab.

Top header bar

Brand, version, and the cross-app navigation links.

Left edge

• LifeWyns logo — click to return to the home page, which gives you an enlarged view of all of your journals.
• Wordmark + version — the small vX.YYY next to "LIFEWYNS" is the build of Journal Admin you're using right now. Useful when filing a bug.

Right edge

• 📖 Story Time — back to the main app at the journal you were last reading.
• 👤 Profile avatar — your photo (or initial). Click to open Profile & Sessions.
• ? Help — opens this help, in a slide-in drawer or as the full page in a new tab.

Journal selector

The strip just below the header where you pick a journal to manage, switch to a different one, or jump back to the All Journals overview.

The closed selector

When closed, the selector shows the currently-selected journal's tile photo, name, role pill (Owner / Admin), and an Open Journal → button that takes you to that journal in Story Time. Click anywhere on the strip to expand the dropdown.

The dropdown

Open, you'll see:

• All Journals — a top entry that switches the panel to the All Journals account-level overview.
• Each of your journals — tile, name, tagline, role, and (if it's the current one) a checkmark.
• + Add Journal — at the bottom. Spins up a new journal under your account. (Subject to your plan's limit; the button greys out when you're at it.)

The "Add Journal" pulse

If your account has zero journals, the + Add Journal button at the top-right pulses gently and a welcome card invites you to create your first one. Both fade away the instant the first journal exists.

Members link

The blue Members link in the top-right corner of the selector strip opens the global Member Management modal — all members across all your journals in one searchable list. Use it when you want to bulk-add someone to several journals at once or audit who has access to what.

All Journals view

The account-level overview when you select All Journals from the dropdown. It's where you survey the whole estate.

Account totals

The top of the panel summarizes your account: total stories, total photos, total members across all journals you own. Useful as a quick "how big is my LifeWyns footprint" check.

User & member-since line

Just below the heading, your name + email + the year you joined LifeWyns ("member since 2025"). If your name isn't filled in, it falls back to the email.

Journal grid

Every journal you own as a card. Click a card to switch the selector to that journal and load its Overview tab.

Marketing card (no-journals state)

If you have no journals yet, a Start your own journal card appears at the top of the Profile column with a button that lands on Journal Admin's All Journals view, where you can use + Add Journal to begin.

Plan info

If your account has a plan-level cap (free tier: usually one journal, paid: more), it's shown here. Click Add Journal until you hit the cap, then upgrade if you need more.

Overview tab

Per-journal details — name, slug, tagline, photos, owner display preferences, and the danger-zone actions.

Tile photo & logo

Two distinct images:

• Tile photo — small thumbnail used everywhere a journal is listed (selector, dropdown, Followed Journals, member's profile). Square works best.
• Logo — masthead artwork shown across the Newspaper view's banner. Wider/horizontal works better here. The logo position dropdown controls where on the masthead it sits.

Both are uploaded the same way: drop or click to pick a file. Each can be removed individually.

Name, tagline, slug

Standard auto-saving fields. The slug becomes the URL ("yourjournal.lifewyns.com/?j=my-slug"). Heads up: changing the slug breaks any links you've already shared. The slug copy-link button next to the field lets you grab the live URL for sharing.

Show owner on Newspaper

A toggle that adds your profile avatar to the right side of the Newspaper masthead. Hover reveals your bio (the one you set in Profile). Useful when you want readers to see who's behind the journal.

Role & Created

Your role on this journal (Owner / Admin) and the date the journal was first created. Read-only.

Journal ID

The raw internal ID of the journal — useful when filing a support ticket or running ops queries. Click the 📋 button to copy it to your clipboard.

Action row

• Open Journal → — opens this journal in Story Time.
• Transfer Ownership (account owner only) — hands the journal to another LifeWyns user. They become the new owner; you stay on as Admin.
• Delete Journal (account owner only) — soft-deletes the journal. Stories, photos, and members are preserved on the server but the journal stops appearing anywhere. Contact support to undelete.

Members tab

Everyone who has access to this journal, with their role, visit count, and email-alert state.

The list

Members are sorted by role priority (Admins first, then Co-Authors, then Readers; pending invites last) and then by name. Each row shows:

• Avatar & name — hover the avatar for the member's bio.
• Email + role label — Admin / Co-Author / Reader.
• ✉ icon — appears when this member has new-story alerts on. JOs use this at a glance to see who'll be emailed when they hit Alert Audience on a story. The toggle itself lives on the member's side (Profile → Followed Journals or in-journal Options menu).
• Visits — total visits + when they last loaded the journal.
• Pending pill — appears for invited members who haven't signed up yet.
• Edit Access / Remove — two action buttons (hidden on the journal owner row and your own row, since neither can be edited from here).

Adding a member

Click + Add Member. Enter their email, optional display name, and pick a role (Admin / Co-Author / Reader). If the email is unknown to LifeWyns, a stub user is created on the spot — they'll see the journal once they finish the sign-up flow you can email them. Existing LifeWyns users are added immediately.

Edit Access

Opens a small modal where you can change the role for this member on this journal, or unhide them if they'd hidden the journal from their Profile.

Remove

Yanks the member from this journal. Their journal_members row is deleted; group memberships in this journal are cleared. They lose access immediately. The user record itself is untouched — they can still belong to other journals.

Search

The search box filters the visible list by name, email, or bio text. Useful in journals with many members.

Groups tab

Groups bundle members together so you can address several people at once when setting an audience on a story.

The Everyone group

Every journal has a built-in Everyone group. It's automatic — every current and future member is in it, with no manual group_members rows. You can't rename or delete it. It's the simplest way to address "everyone with access to this journal."

Custom groups

Create your own groups for sub-sets of your audience: Family, Close Friends, Just the kids, My book club. Each group has a name and a member list.

Adding members to a group

Open a group and pick from the list of journal members. Members can be in multiple groups — adding them to Family doesn't take them out of Close Friends.

Auto-add for new members

When a new member is added with the role of Reader or Co-Author, they're automatically added to the Everyone group's implicit membership (no row added — Everyone is implicit). For custom groups, you add them manually, when you want to.

Audiences tab

Bulk-edit which audience can see which stories. Useful when you create a new group and want to retro-share existing stories with it.

What you see

A list of every story in the journal, each row showing the story's date, title, author, and current audience as chips. The audience chips are color-coded: groups in one shade, specific users in another.

Bulk edit

Select multiple stories with the checkbox, then use the Apply audience picker at the top to replace their audiences in one operation. Empty audience = nobody can see (drafts).

Co-author chips

If a story has a co-author (a member with edit permission on that specific story), they show as a distinct chip type. You can add or remove co-authors here as part of the audience edit.

Search

The search box filters by title text. Combine with the date sort to find clusters of stories you want to re-audience together.

Stories tab

Per-story engagement — reads, comments, alerts, shares, and a growth chart for each story.

Summary at the top

The first thing you see is a five-line summary across all stories in this journal:

• Total reads + unique readers — total counts every read event (re-reads too); unique counts each reader once.
• Total comments across all stories.
• Alerts fired — how many times you've hit Alert Audience.
• Share copies / views — copies = times you clicked Share; views = times a recipient opened the link.
• Photos — total story photos (Info Box photos aren't counted here).

The story list

Each row shows date, title, author, plus the same metrics broken out per story. Sorted newest-first by story date. Click any row to expand it.

Expanded story view

Click a row to reveal:

• Story ID — the raw entry id, useful for support tickets.
• Last alerted / shared / updated — full timestamps for those events.
• Growth chart — bars showing new unique readers per day (or per week, if the range is > 30 days). Each bar's tooltip shows the date and the count. The subtitle line shows total unique readers and the bucket count.

Reading the chart

A "new unique reader" is the first time a given person opens the story. Subsequent re-reads by the same person don't make the bars taller — the chart shows reach, not engagement intensity. (For raw read counts, look at the "Reads" column in the table — that's unique / total, where total includes re-reads.)

What's next

Likes and ratings are in the roadmap (Phase 2). When they ship, this page will gain Like and Rating columns alongside the existing Comments column. The growth chart will optionally overlay reads vs. likes.

Backup & Export tab

All the take-your-data-with-you tools. Exports run in your browser — your stories and photos are downloaded directly, never staged on a third-party service.

Export Stories

Downloads a single .lwst file with every story and Info Box in this journal. Text only, no photos. The file is named <journal>-stories-YYYYMMDD.lwst. Small, fast, perfect for archiving the words.

Full Backup

Downloads stories plus every photo as a single archive. Best safety net before big edits.

• ≤ 100 photos — quick confirm and go.
• 101–250 photos — confirms with an estimated file size and a desktop-only nudge ("don't run from a phone").
• > 250 photos — refuses with guidance to use Export Stories + Export Photos separately. Single-file backups beyond that get unwieldy and brittle.

Import Backup

Restores from a .lwst file. New entries and photos are added; entries that match existing IDs (or look like duplicates by date+title+author) are skipped automatically. Dedup is conservative — re-importing the same backup twice should be a no-op.

Export Photos

Bulk-downloads every photo as individual files into a folder you pick. Optionally filter by Event so you only export, say, "Italy 2024." Desktop-only — phones can't pick a folder. On Chrome / Edge it uses one folder picker; on Firefox / Safari it falls back to one save dialog per photo (still works, just slower).

Clean up orphaned photos

Photos that aren't attached to any story still take up storage and credits. Click Scan to find them, then Delete to remove them and reclaim the credits.

Coming-soon tabs

Three tabs are placeholders today, with previews of what'll land there in upcoming releases.

Settings

Per-journal display preferences — Old Ads, default photo size, Newspaper layout flavor, etc. Today these live in the main app's HBM Options panel; they'll move here so they sit alongside the journal they configure.

Stats

Engagement tracking — story reads (total + per-member), comment counts, like counts (when likes ship), photo credits used per journal, an activity timeline. The Account Overview will roll these up across all your journals.

Maintenance

Lifecycle & access controls — temporarily lock the journal so only Admins can view, set a custom downtime message, write a welcome message and Terms & Conditions for new invitees, switch between invite-only and link-with-approval signup modes.