Help

Jump to the sitemap.

You will see some posts with weird headings like user_login, wp_posts, pages, … They are in fact variable names, part of my project to document all the global variables in WordPress. You can ignore these if you are not interested in working on plugins or themes of WordPress.

This page is here because I got some feedback from some visitors that they did not understand how to use the weblog (also referred to as blog). This blog is hosted on WordPress.com hosting, so I don’t have much control over its layout and theme. The customizability is improving as I am writing this.

This information will also help because I keep experimenting with different themes available on WordPress.com, this is required to evaluate the themes and then settle on one. Hopefully I will settle on one someday :-).

The sitemap is provided at the bottom of this page.

Navigation

This website is a weblog – making all its posts or entries or articles (if you will!) as the main content. Most of the times, about 5 to 10 most recent posts will be available on the homepage. Typically, you will not need to click more once you arrive on the homepage to read these most recent posts. You might have to scroll down a lot to be able to read all of them, but that is a tradeoff.

In addition to this, you will see a sidebar (usually on the left or right, on both the sides, or at the bottom). The sidebar(s) will contain more ways of navigating through the sites. For the navigation purpose, lets split the content in two types – posts and pages. The pages contain information that is relevant for a much longer time than a post. They will be shown either as a top horizontal menu or in the sidebar under the heading Move Around. If you don’t see an entry for the home page, don’t worry, you can always reach the home page by clicking on the blog title (Abhijit Nadgouda @ iface) at the top.

Some themes do not provide a sidebar when individual posts are being read, you can click on the blog title (Abhijit Nadgouda @ iface) at the top to go to the hmepage.

To traverse through the different posts, there are some more ways available:

  • Topics: All the posts are classified under topics. The topics are displayed in the sidebar, typically under the heading Topics. If you would like to read posts only on a certain topic, click on the topic in the sidebar.

    The topics will also be specified along with every post (typically saying “filed under”), but they will take you out of this blog into the WordPress.com community. This is the current behaviour chosen by WordPress.com, but might change in future. You can return to the blog by using the ‘Back’ button of your browser or continue to surf the WordPress community posts.

  • Entire Collection: The posts are also bundled together chronologically – month-wise. You will see different archives like February 2006, March 2006 which will take you to all the posts in that specific month. They will be displayed in the sidebar, usually under the heading Monthly Archives.
  • Popular Posts: I have provided this facility so that you, the reader, has ready access to the top posts of this blog. I try to keep a track of the popular posts and list them here. They are displayed in the sidebar under the heading Popular Posts.
  • Sticky/Adhesive/Quick Links: These are posts that I would like to keep some posts that standout from rest, on top for a bigger period of time. They are available under the heading Quick Links.

If any of these are too cumbersome for you, you can always use the Search provided to get posts which contain certain keywords.

Syndicate/Subscribe to Feeds

This blog also provides a feed that you can subscribe to. You don’t have to visit the blog everyday, you can configure your web or desktop feed reader, to receive updates to this blog. If you are interested only in a certain category of posts, selective feeds are also available. You can find links to the feed URLs in the sidebar under the heading Syndicate This Site. Category feeds are available along with the categories in the sidebar (under Topics).

The different feeds that this blog provides are:

If you feel a little more adventurous, you can take advantage of the customizability that WordPress offers for its feeds.

If you feel feeds are too techy for you, you can use your good old email to read my posts.

Either way you will be able to read my full posts. Feel free to comment on the post by visiting the site if you feel that you want to respond to my argument or add value to it or just simply :-).

Other Blog Stuff

Initially I used to list other links in the sidebar, it however grew too big too fast. So, I have dedicated a separate page for it called Blogshelf. Whatever resources I come across will be listed in the page Resources.

If you wish to get in touch with me, you will find information under Feedback.

Sitemap

Here is the sitemap that highlights the different navigation ways.

1 Comment »

One Response to “Help”

  1. Abhijit Nadgouda @ iface » Make It More Usable - Help Says:
    March 5, 2006 at 7:56 pm

    […] I got feedback from some readers who asked questions which I had thought were already answered. Most common was reading posts only of their interest. Some of them were new to a blog, so they were not aware of RSS feeds or categories of posts. This is when I realised that I should provide provide this information explicitly on the blog itself. I have done this earlier for other projects, why not for this? And so came up the Help & Sitemap page. It is not very exhaustive, but its a start. […]

    Reply

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