The portal is open to read. Without signing in you can browse every publication under Discover, open any creator's profile, explore the world map of finished solarigraphs, read the news and look through the calendar archive.

• An account is needed only to publish your own work, to like and to comment.
• SolarChat and the panel with your own cans also require signing in.
• On the map a guest sees the finished results layer only — the other layers show cans, and those are private.

Sign up from the Sign in tab — with an email and password, or with one click through Google. You choose a username at that point: it forms the address of your profile and it is what other people see. The same account works in the SolarMap app, so if you already use it, just sign in.

After signing up with an email we send a message with a confirmation link, and a reminder bar appears at the top of the portal. The account works normally without confirming — but without it you cannot recover a forgotten password. If the message did not arrive, check your spam folder and use the “Send the message” button on that bar. This does not apply to accounts created through Google.

Click your avatar in the top right corner and choose Profile settings. You can set a profile picture, a display name, a short description, a country and links to your own pages and social media. All of it appears on your public profile, at the address built from your username.

The Publish solarigraphy button in the top bar leads to a choice screen. There are two equal routes and both end in the same form.

• A project from SolarMap — if you track cans in the app, the portal shows those waiting for a result. You pick the can, and the dates and exposure parameters fill themselves in.
• Your own photo — drag a file in or pick it from your computer and fill in the details by hand. A SolarMap account is not needed for this.

In the form you give the title, the mount and removal dates, and the exposure parameters: direction, can shape, pinhole size and paper type. You can add a description in your own words — we translate the interface, not the content, so it stays in your language. The number of exposure days is calculated from the dates.

The place is shown only if you agree to it, and never to the metre: coordinates are rounded to two decimal places, roughly a kilometre, and the map draws a circle instead of a pin. The exact position is known to the owner of the can alone.

The panel is your part of the portal. Overview opens first and shows four figures (active, exposure days, finished, photos), a chart of mounts over time, your records and how many days remain until the next solstice.

Three tabs of the panel match the three states of a can: hanging and exposing, taken down with a result, or gone. A lost can is not deleted — it stays in your statistics with its mount date, because that is part of the story too. The state changes when you harvest the can.

The bell in the top bar shows what happened around your work: likes, comments, new followers. The Alerts tab in the panel gathers reminders about your cans together with solstice and equinox dates.

The calendar lays your dates out across the months: mounts, planned removals, reminders and solstices. It helps when planning an exposure that runs “from solstice to solstice”.

The menu under your avatar contains Export data. The portal prepares a CSV file with all your cans — name, status, dates, exposure days, location and parameters — ready to open in a spreadsheet. The file is written in the language you have set in the portal.

The Discover tab gathers the work of the whole community. You can order it (newest, most popular, longest exposures) and narrow it with six filters: country, year of completion, paper, can shape, pinhole and direction. The number in brackets next to each option says how many results that choice returns — the lists contain only what the publications actually hold.

• Once signed in, a “following” switch appears, narrowing the view to the people you follow.
• The chosen filters live in the page address, so you can send the result to someone as a link.

The map shows solarigraphs and cans in five layers, switched with the buttons above it.

• Results — finished publications from the whole community, visible without signing in.
• Active, Finished, Lost — your own cans, each in its state.
• Public — other people's cans, shown because their owners chose to.
• The circle instead of a pin on results marks the area the photo really comes from — accurate to about a kilometre.

The Users tab lists the whole community. Order it by published work or alphabetically, narrow it to a country or to people with publications, and use the “Find someone” box to search by name — it works without Polish diacritics too. The button at the bottom loads more cards.

Clicking the name or avatar next to any publication opens the author's profile: their work, exposure statistics, description and links. This is also where you follow someone — their new publications then appear in your “following” view under Discover.

Every publication can be liked and commented on — both need an account. The Save button puts someone else's work on the Saved tab in your panel; it is a private shelf that nobody else sees.

SolarChat is where the community talks: start a thread or reply in someone else's. Available only after signing in — the same place appears inside the SolarMap app.

Publications and comments carry a report button. A report goes to moderation, which can hide the content. Reporting deletes nothing automatically and is not visible to the author.

News carries texts about solarigraphy, about projects and about the portal itself. ANYONE SIGNED IN can write an article — no role and no invitation needed. You write it in the panel, under News: a title, a short lead, the body with simple formatting, a cover photo and photos inside the text. A text never goes onto the site straight away — moderation decides, and the route looks like this:

• Draft — visible to you alone. Edit and delete it freely.
• Sent for review — it joins the moderation queue and waits for a decision.
• Published — visible to everyone under News.
• Rejected — it comes back to you with the reason, so you know what to fix before sending it again.
• Editing an already published text takes it off the site and returns it to the queue. That is deliberate: otherwise an innocent text could pass moderation and be swapped for something else afterwards.

The calendar is a yearly collection of the community's photographs. The Calendars tab shows the current edition and the archive of earlier years. When a call for photos or a sale is open, the matching button appears on the page — outside those windows the forms are closed. The rules of ordering are in the Sales terms in the footer.

The menu under your avatar gathers account matters: going to the panel and your profile, profile settings, the language switch (Polish and English), the support page, data export and signing out. Deleting your account is there too — it erases your data immediately and irreversibly, together with cans, photos, publications and comments.

Look at the FAQ next door first — it answers the most common questions about the portal and about the technique itself. If that does not help, use the Report a bug tab: describe what happened and attach a screenshot if you can. The report can be sent without signing in, so a problem with signing in can be reported too.