Site Tutorial: Tricks and Tips for Using this Site

LiveSearch Window

Subscribe to search

iCal and vCal Event export

Tags

Bread Crumbs

This site has many advanced features. You will not need to use them all -- or even any of them, if you don't want. But, if you want to go beyond normal Internet browsing, you're in the right place.

Searching

 This is an example of a live search (to the left) on this site. In this case, we typed in the term "youth".  The system starts responding as you type -- thus, "live". Press enter or click on "Show all" to see a final version of the search results. Normally, the live search will show the item you want.

The search tool will fine anything on the site from event listings, to web pages, and even photos. If you don't see what you are looking for with the search tool, it's probably not on the site.

The image under the LiveSearch shows one of the more advanced tools for this site. You can create an RSS feed for your search. RSS is the system by which blog postings get sent to a blog reader. While we do have a blog on the home page we hope you will subscribe to, you can also subscribe to searches. On the graphic displaying the search for "children", the pink line under "Search results" is a link to the page that will help you establish an RSS feed for your search. The site will let you know when a new piece of information has been added to the system that matches your criteria -- in this case, youth. This is a very powerful way to keep track of events you're interested in attending.

Search tricks: use "AND" and "OR" to limit or expand your search. So, for example, you could search for "youth OR children" to get a full listing of pages related to younger people. "Youth AND children" would return pages that have both terms.

Stored searches are searches we believe will be of interest to a large number of visitors. You may subscribe to as many of these stored searches as you want. Stored Search RSS page.

Because RSS works by having your computer contacting our web server, we don't have to keep any information about you. You may subscribe and unsubscribe from your own RSS reader. Our site does not  collect any personal information about you.

Alternatives to RSS

RSS is a fairly new technology and not everyone is comfortable with using it. You will see the terms "RSS" or "Subscribe". There are a ways to us this site's RSS feeds without using a standard RSS feed reader. Microsoft Outlook 2007 can read RSS feeds (instructions). You can have a free service read the feeds for you and send you an email version to your current email program. Subscribe to All-Events by Email is one such free service. And, you can do the same thing for SMS messages to your phone. Pingie is one such service.

Using the Content

 Print, Send, Subscribe are just a few of the actions you can do with the content you find on this site. At the bottom of every page is the option to print or email that page. On pages that have updating information, there will be an RSS option for subscribing. Subscribing means that new information related to that page or topic will be sent to your RSS reader. Subscrpting allows you to avoid multiple visits to the site just to see if anything new has been posted. You'll know right away.

Taking the Calendar with You

Individual events have the option for iCal and vCal. These options allow you to import the event information to your calendar. iCal works with Apple products and vCal works with Microsoft products. Many calendaring products can use one or both of these standards. You will the buttons for creating iCal and vCal exports on each event description box. You may also download all the events for a month from the calendar page.

Tagging

Every event and blog posting will have one or more tags assoicate with it. In the image to the left, you see that the event is filed under "bahai-center" and "jazz". If you wanted to see all the jazz events, you can click on "jazz" and if you wanted to see what else was at the Baha'i Center, you can click on "bahai-center". Tagging is a very handy way to filter information so that you only see what you are most interested in.

Bread Crumbs

Bread Crumbs is the term used for the line of location names just under the site's banner. The bread crumb starts with "you are here" and then shows a series of page names that got you to the page you're currently on. Not only is this useful information but you may click on the location names in the bread crumb to jump to one of the previous pages.