First Step: Joining the Community of this Web Portal

The first step to work actively with this portal is to join its community, of course.

To do this you have to click on the "Join" link in the blue strip above on the right. Alternatively, click here.

You will see a form to fill in with the following fields:

• full name = this has to be your real name, like e.g "John Doe"
• user name = this is the name you will have to use while using the web-site actively. It should not be a funny nick-name but rather a name that lets others identify you, i.e.: If your name should really be "John Doe", then a user name like "doe", better: "jdoe" or "johndoe" would be appropriate.
• e-mail = your e-mail address: This should be a real address that you use for your professional communication, for instance. It will allow other members of the portal to contact you.
  
• "Password" and "Confirm password" = Please chose a password you, but not a too simple one, so bad people may not be able to guess it and then misuse your account to publish information in your name.
• You do not have to check-box: "Send a mail with the password" - because at the moment there is no mail-server installed here that will be able to send you anything. - The mailing list is separated from this portal and maintained independently.

Second Step: Log In ...

When you have joined following the procedure above you will immediately be logged-in. When you come back next time, you have to click on the "Log in" link above right - or here.

This will lead you to a form where you have to enter the "user name" you chose during the join-procedure and your password.

Third Step: ... and contributing

There are many different ways how you can contribute to the community.

The two main ways are:

• commenting
• creating and editing new documents

Commenting

Many documents on the site are open to discussion.
When you're logged-in you can click on the "comment"-button on the bottom of a page to open a window where you can add your comments on the document or on the comments of others. So, in this way we can discuss topics and collect the opinions for the future.

Creating and Editing New Documents

Once you are logged in you are allowed to add new items.
You will notice that the layout of the web-site changed after you logged in: Now, there is a green frame in the middle with some additional tabs on top: When you move on to "your folder" you will see many of them.
Among them, on the right, there is a drop down meny "Add item". When you click on this it will present you a list of items you can add, for instance:

• Event = If you want to inform other members about up-coming events, chose this one. Events will be reachabel through the calendar on the right: Dates with events will have a slightly blue background, and clicking on them will lead the user to the information given by the author.
  
• File = If you want to add a file that other members can down-load, chose this.
  
• Folder = A folder allows you to collect other new items inside, like Events, Files, Images, Pages, (Sub-) Folders...
  
• Image = You can load up an image to the web-site and add some information about it.
  
• Link = You can create a Hyper-Link to other web-sites and give a short comment on them.
  
• News Item = Allows you to give a short information that will be visible to others in the "news"-box
  
• Page = This is surely the most useful kind of item: It will open a window inside the green box in the center of the web-site as you see it in your browser with some boxes, among them an editing field where you can add as much text as you want.

More about editing the "Page" item

After giving a title and a short description of the document you want to add, there is a box with some editing buttons like those you may already know from your text editing program. (Unfortunately, at the moment this feature is only supported by Web browsers like Microsoft Internet Explorer, Mozilla or Firefox. Browsers like Opera or Safari still do not implement the necessary elements, but you will at least be able to add plain text through them.) In fact, what you are doing with it is editing a standard-conform HTML page.
Instead of editing the page "through the weg" (= staying connected to the web all the time) you can prepaire a web-site with your text program or, for instance, with the Composer (part of Netscape and Mozilla). When you saved the document as an HTML page, you will be able to upload it from your computer directly to this web-site.

Publishing your new item

To avoid vandalism by bad people over the internet, there is a controlling instance before your new document (the item you chose from the add-list to be created) will be visible to others: On the top right of the green box there is a drop-down menu that informs you about the (publishing) "state" of your item. Here, you have to chose "Submit" to send an information about your new document to one of the reviewers. These are special members of the community who are allowed to publish documents, so they finally can be read by everybody else on the web. As long as no reviewer has published your document, it has the status of "pending".

I will extend this information as far as this is needed.

If you have any questions please send me an email ... or write a comment just down here: