What can I do here?

The technology underlying the internet / web is complex and you rightly don't want to know about it. Content managed sites like this one allow ordinary users to add and edit content without expert knowledge. Having said that, it isn't necessarily trivial either! Don’t let that put you off though, we’ve made a list below of the things you CAN do in increasing order of complexity and the first item really is so easy that anyone can join in.

Forums

The forums are akin to a village wide notice board where you can post messages or comments on anything you like, at any time you like, without leaving your home. You can chat to people about shared interests, offer items for free / for sale, ask for advice. Anything you like. We (the web team) can create specific forums for particular interests if there is a demand. Forum etiquette is very much in-line with general social etiquette – please be polite, open / fair minded and use reasonable language. Don’t use language / terms that others might find offensive and don’t be abusive. In other words, use common sense and common decency as you would in any other social space.

Actually using the forums is VERY simple. As long as you are logged in using the username and password assigned to you when you registered everything should be reasonably self explanatory and we would encourage everybody to contribute. For a few details on how to post a message to the forums, see this short article .

Submitting Web Links

Again, this is very easy and anybody should be able to use this feature. Anything you submit to the site via this route will potentially appear in the Useful Links  area of the website. Your submissions don’t appear instantly though, they are passed to a member of the team assigned 'Publisher' privileges – he or she will simply make sure the submitted link isn’t inappropriate for our site. Once approved, your link will appear for all to use. If you'd like help with the details of submitting a link, refer to this short article .

Submitting Articles / Stories  / News Items

If there's something you'd like to write about - a hobby, a local news item, a pet hate, whatever you like - then we'd love you to put keyboard to screen and submit it to the site so that others can share your knowledge / passion. It's not difficult to do and to help you get started we've written a short article to help you on your way. The more people contribute, the more interesting the site becomes and you might be surprised to discover others who share your views.