Several people have now attempted to interact with the site and had some difficulties, and it’s not their fault. As with all things – if your attempts to make things work don’t have the desired effect, either you aren’t trying, or there is something that you don’t know or don’t understand.

I thought I would give you the necessary clues:

First of all – the site provides a high level of information for all Internet users. Anyone can see and read and listen to whatever they can find by clicking the links in the site. However, there is more much available. Just like accessing your Bank web sight, there is lots of information, but nothing Personalized – you don’t see your bank statements unless you login. Site have various ways to get Registered, this one uses a fairly common approach.

Register – you need an email account somewhere – yahoo, gmail, shaw, telus, wherever. This becomes your unique identifier – no two email addresses are the same. Then you need to make-up a user name, this is what the outside world will see you as. You may try to use your real first name, such as John, but I already have that one. Or you may prefer to be anonymous or be creative and use a “pen-name”. When you complete the Registration form, the site will send you a confirmation email. You need to click the link in that email message in order to confirm that you are the owner of that email address and that you want to register with this site. If you don’t do this within a certain time period, it will time-out and you will need to start over.

Login - you must be logged in to see the additional features that are just for Members. Check that your user name is showing on the left login panel - sometimes it looks like you logged in but it didn't do it. If you stop interacting with the site, even if you are logged in, it will time-out your session (after 30 minutes) - this stops other people from coming to your computer while you are getting coffee or leaving the library and operating as if they were you.

You now see that there is an additional menu section on the left panel called “Members”. This provides access to a set of pages that are only visible to registered users. Such as the Events manager and Archived Articles (e.g. older Insights). Check it out, you can’t hurt anything, except your pride.

Click the Forum-Blog link in the left menu – this is your place to talk to each other. When you are not logged in, you can browse the Forum and read all the “Topic-Threads” and you may wonder how other people were able to add their comments. When you are logged in, the Forum adds additional buttons and features based on its knowledge about you. The important buttons are “New Topic” and “Reply”.

For example, in the Forum page, Click on the word "Life" in the centre block under "At The Centre"

Click "New Thread"

Fill in the Subject (name of the Thread/Topic) then either write the message or Cut and Paste your text from notepad or wordpad or word document. Using a separate text editor is a good idea because it gives you time to compose the note without the pressure of time-out and allows you to check spelling and grammar and leaves you with a local copy on your computer.

You can add formatting and smiley faces or upload documents and images.

Click Submit

It will show you the result straight away. You are interacting with the live site and your message becomes live as soon as you submit it. If you see any errors, you will be able to Click the Edit button (bottom write of message) and make changes - you can only do this to messages that you submitted.

Give a shot - let me know if you have problems

I appreciate you taking the time and trouble to try it out.


Thanks
John