For travel buddies

Somebody has put you on one of their trips. That means you can write days into it — not just read it. This page explains what you can do, and what stays with the person whose journal it is.

What being on a trip means

You are on the trip if the owner listed you on it, or issued you a buddy link and approved you. Either way:

• You can read that trip, whatever its visibility — including a private one, which even approved guests of the journal cannot see.
• You can write days into it, through an agent, exactly as the owner does.
• You are credited on the trip if the owner wrote you into it by hand.

Your access is to that trip and nothing else. Other trips in the same journal are not yours to write to, and a token issued to you cannot reach them.

Getting a writing token

The same way the owner does, with one difference: yours is scoped to your trip.

1. Ask your agent to sign in to the journal for you, naming the trip.
2. It asks for your email address — the one you were invited with.
3. A six-digit code arrives. Give it to the agent.
4. It can then write for seven days, into that trip only.

The trip is decided when the code is issued, not when it is used, so there is nothing to get wrong at the last step.

Writing a day

Tell your agent what happened, and give it your photographs. It writes the day into the trip.

What you write arrives as a draft. It is not on the site yet. That is not a restriction aimed at you — it is the same for the owner, and it exists so a person can read a day back before anybody else sees it.

What you cannot do

You cannot publish. Putting a day on the site is the owner's decision, and only theirs. Being on the bus is not the same as deciding what the journal says about the journey.

That is worth knowing before you write a week of days and wonder why nobody can see them: they are waiting for the owner. Tell them the days are ready.

You also cannot invite anybody, change the trip's settings, or see the journal's guest list. Those all belong to the owner.

Reading, and being told about new days

You read the trip like anybody else — sign in with your email address and it appears in your list on the front page, marked as one you travelled.

Notifications are worth one honest warning: on a private trip, nobody is notified at all, including you. A notification is a title and a link on a lock screen and it cannot be taken back, so a private trip never sends one. On a public or shared trip you can turn notifications on like any other reader.

If something does not work

• Your agent is told the journal is not yours to write to. It probably asked for a journal-wide token. Ask it to name the trip you are on.
• You can read the trip but your agent cannot write. Check the token was issued for that trip, and that you are still on it — the owner can remove somebody, and a token stops working the moment they do.
• Your days are not on the site. They are drafts, waiting for the owner.