This website has two main menus for navigating:

• The top menu bar
• The left navigation menu

There are also two blocks of content that may appear to the left:

• The login form (appears when you're not logged in)
• Active discussion list (shows what topics are active on the boards)

You should be able to get to all the parts of the website through the two menus. Here is a summary of the features linked from the menus:

 

Create Content

These are your shortcuts to adding content on the website. From here you can add a new discussion topic (see Discussion Boards below) or a new page (see View and Add Resources below).

 

My account

This is where you can administer your account (e.g. change your password) and edit your personal data. You can also upload files to a private folder here. We ask that you provide us with a few pieces of information that will be shared with other participants on this website:

• name
• institutional affiliation (what do you do and where do you do it)
• mentor
• website address if you have a personal website, blog, or journal
• location info (so we can map you and encourage a diverse population of participants!)
• picture of yourself (optional)

To edit any of this data, just click "Edit". There are three links across the top: Account settings, Personal Information and Location Map. Click through the first two and fill out the forms.

 

To add yourself to the location map: Click on the Location Map link in your My Account:Edit settings. You will be presented with a giant world map. Click near your location. This will place a marker on the map and zoom in. Repeat this process until you're satisfied. Click submit when you're done.

 

Under the Personal Files link you can upload files to the wacethics server. This may be useful if you're accessing the website on a public terminal and can't save a file to a disk. This is also where you'd add any picture files you'd want to post in a page content (see View and Add Resources below).

 

About the WAC Ethics Forum

This menu item is called "About" on the top menu bar. Following this link takes you to a page that describes the WAC Ethics Forum in its entirity.

 

Discussion Boards

This menu item is called "Discuss" on the top menu bar. Clicking here brings you to the discussion boards of the website. This is where we can have threaded conversations. There are two main discussion boards, but more may be added: "General WAC-6 Forum Discussions" and "Personal Introductions and Discussions". Within each board there are topics. And each topic can have a comment (or reply). Thus, conversations can take place within posts and comments.

Let's say you wanted to add a post introducing yourself:

1. Click "Discuss" in the top menu OR "Discussion Boards" in the left navigation menu.
2. Choose the "Personal Introductions and Discussions" board.
3. Click the link, "Post new discussion board topic."
4. Fill out the form using the editor. Note, you have many options at the bottom of the screen. Many of these you won't need, but one might be useful - the File Attachment menu. Click on it and you will be able to Browse your computer for a file to Attach to your post.

Meet the Participants

This menu option is also called "Help" in the top menu bar. This gives you two options:

• See a list of all participants who are registered on this site.
• View a map of all the participants.

If your information is not correct - go to the "My account" section to edit.

View and Add Resources

This is a centralized area where we can swap files. Currently there are 4 main categories of resources, but we can change these if they don't work. To view the files in any of these categories, just click on the link.

To add a file to any of these pages:

1. Click the left menu option "Create Content: Page". You will be presented with a form for adding a new page.
2. Give your page a title, and then choose one of the categories of resources.
3. Then use the text editor to copy and paste in (or type) the text you'd like to share. It's up to you whether you simply copy and paste text in from elsewhere, write your own page content, or do a combination. The text editor should look and work just like a word processor program (e.g. Microsoft Office, iWorks, OpenOffice, Word perfect, etc.). There are a few "special" features though:
   1. If you want to add a url link in your text: highlight the text you'd like to make into a link. Then, click the link button (it looks like 3 links in a chain on the top row of the menu). You can then copy and paste in the entire url (beginning with http://). If you want to remove a link, highlight the text and click the broken link icon.
   2. If you want to add a picture to your text: click on the picture icon below the Bold button. A popup window will appear after a moment or two (make sure your browser doesn't have popups blocked for this site). If you want to link to an image somewhere on the web, you can just copy and paste the url of the image into the Image URL form field. If you want to add an image from your own computer, click the icon next to the Image URL form field (looks like a very tiny windows file folder view). This will open up your personal file directory on the server. Choose "Browse" at the bottom to find the file on your computer. Then choose "Upload file." Click on the filename to add it to the url field on the first popup. Then click Insert.
4. If you want to add a file attachment, you can do so by scrolling below the text box and clicking on the "File Attachment" link. Then you can Browse and Attach a file directly from your own computer.