Alice Online is growing! But we want to make sure that you continue to get the most out of it, so we have written this short guide to using the site.

On every page you visit here at Alice Online, there will be displayed a navigation menu and a footer.

The Navigation Menu

This menu gives you quick access to the most important parts of Alice Online. Click ‘Home’ or the masthead to be taken to our home page. The ‘Info’ menu contains links to pages about Alice Online, including this guide. The ‘Contributors’ menu gives you quick access to a page that provides a short bio for each Alice Online contributor as well as a list of their contributions. The ‘Links’ menu consists of links to useful websites pertaining to Central Australia. To the right of these menus is the search box – enter your search criteria and hit the ‘Enter’ or ‘Return’ key to find a list of articles matching your criteria.

Below this are a number of menu items, each taking you directly to one of the sections of Alice Online. Each section of the site contains different types of articles – the name of the section should be pretty self-explanatory.

The Footer

The footer shows you all the recent activity on Alice Online as well as providing you with different ways to browse our content. From within the footer you can browse the most recent comments, the most recent posts and see which posts have the most comments. Here you will also be able to browse our ever-expanding archive of articles by month. All of our articles are given keywords, called tags. In the footer, you can see the most popular tags. The bigger the tag, the more articles that contain that keyword. Clicking on a tag will take you to a page which lists all articles for that tag. We also have real-time weather information for Alice Springs. Below this is the form for signing up to our Newsletter. We won’t be bombarding your inbox with anything other than occasional updates about what’s happening on Alice Online. So, feel free to sign up if you haven’t already!

The Home Page

This is the main page when you come to Alice Online. The current feature article is displayed next to excerpts of previous features. Below this is a list of recent articles contained in different sections of the site. Click on the title of any article to read the full text and make a comment.

Reading an Article

When reading an article, we like to offer you other stories you might like. To the right of the article you are reading you will find a list of related stories that might also interest you. Below that we also have a calendar you can use to find posts by date.

Below the article you will find all the comments made by readers like yourself. Join in the conversation and help make Alice Online a vibrant community! There are two ways to add your voice: you can reply to an existing comment or add a new comment. Simply click the ‘Reply’ button underneath a comment to reply to it. Otherwise, scroll to the bottom of all the comments to find the form for submitting your own comment. We require you give us a name and email address whenever you submit a comment, so we know that it is a human reader and not someone trying to spam us. We will not, under any circumstances, share your details with anyone else. You can also provide a website address, if you have one, so that other readers can visit your site. You will also notice that we offer some basic formatting for comments, so feel free to get a little creative.

All comments are moderated by the Editor. This is why your comment won’t appear straight away. This is to ensure that discussions adhere to our comments policy, so read it first if you have any questions.

Getting the word out – Sharing Alice Online with friends and colleagues

Our hope, at Alice Online, is to stimulate discussion and share stories about Central Australia. And you can help us do this. You will notice a ‘ShareThis’ link at the bottom of each article. Click on this link and you will be given a number of options for sharing that article with others you know, whether it’s Twitter, Facebook or email. If you like what we are doing, help us get the word out.

Staying in touch with Alice Online

There are many simple ways to stay in touch with Alice Online without always having to visit the site directly.

RSS Feeds

RSS stands for ‘Really Simple Syndication’ and it is a way to access the latest articles in real-time from Alice Online like a news wire. If you are not familiar with RSS, this Wikipedia article explains it pretty well. You need special software or a web service, like Google Reader, to subscribe to an RSS feed. Many web browsers and email clients also allow you to subscribe to and read RSS feeds. There are many different feeds at Alice Online. They are all identified by the RSS icon: . Here is a list of different feeds we offer and where to find them:

• Subscribe to all articles: This is a feed of each article we publish. The link for the RSS feed is in the footer and is called ‘Subscribe to entries’.
• Subscribe to all comments: This feed only contains comments readers make and not the articles commented on. The link for the RSS feed is in the footer and is called ‘Subscribe to comments’.
• Subscribe to comments for a particular article: This is useful if you have made a comment and want to keep track of any replies. Underneath every article there is a grey box with some additional information, including a link to the RSS feed for comments on the article. Click on the RSS icon to subscribe.
• Subscribe to all articles in a section: Every time you visit the page listing all articles in a section (e.g. by clicking on the section from the Navigation menu), you will notice a small description of the section at the top of the page. Next to this description you will see the RSS icon. Click the icon to subscribe to all articles for that section only.
• Subscribe to all articles with a particular tag: Every time you visit the page listing all articles with a particular tag (e.g. by clicking on the tag in the Footer), you will notice the RSS icon next to the title for the page. Click the icon to subscribe to all articles containing that tag only.

Twitter

Alice Online has a Twitter account, if you would like to follow us: @aliceonline. You’ll also notice the Twitter badge on our home page – clicking it will take you to the Alice Online Twitter feed. We regularly notify followers of new stories via Twitter.

Alice Online Newsletter

In the Footer is a form for signing up to the Alice Online Newsletter. Simply fill in the details to subscribe to the Newsletter. The Newsletter contains updates about Alice Online for those people who prefer email.

Please note: All content on this site and made available through our subscription services is subject to copyright. They are made available for personal use ONLY. If you would like to use or syndicate any material from Alice Online, please feel free to contact the Editor, Dave Richards.