Introduction to Appal.org

Basic Design

The Posting Date is Not the Date Something Was Written.

Search

Categories of Information in the Top (Main) Menu

The Bottom Menu

Basic Design

The website has a common look and feel. Each page has a menu at the top and bottom. Pages generally have a list of links or headlines running down the left side. Clicking on these will bring up the full text of the posted article. The site has been crafted to load quickly and retain it's basic look from computer to computer.

The Posting Date is Not the Date Something Was Written.

Appal.org is constructed much like a newspaper. Information is listed in chronological order by the date it is posted. It is important to note that the posting date has nothing to do with when an article was written. Because items are listed in the order they are posted, information gets buried over time, and you may need to search for it.

Search

You can search within the website, or across the Internet. You may also browse the headlines. The most effective means to find something on the site is to use the Search button, type in some keywords and press Enter. That will fetch all documents contain any of the words you've searched for. Once that page has loaded, use your browser's search/find within page (usually the Ctrl-F key pair) to look within the page for your query. Again, it is a two step process where you search up a list of documents, and then find your keywords within that document.

The Search button can be found at the top and the bottom of every page. The top link opens up a page of search options, and the bottom link immediately searches within the Appal.org website. The top search button offers to search within Appal.org, to Browse all headlines, go to Google search, or go to Google's Usenet Discussion Group search.

Categories of Information in the Top (Main) Menu

The Main Menu at the top of each page links to categories of information. Each category is a page a lot like the starting page, although the number of columns may vary. Each posted article has a headline that links you to the full text, and a lead paragraph or two that briefly introduces the article.

The categories are pretty ambiguous, so it is not always clear where an article is posted. However, every article, regardless of category, is listed in the headline column (the grey list on the left of the starting page). Items are eventually pushed off the bottom as only the most recent 50 items are displayed.

Some categories are explicit, however. If the information is a sound file or involves a lot of pictures, you'll find it in the Gallery & Auditorium. The Help/HOWTO contains documents like this one that explain how to use the site. The Search button has been described already. Contact information is the email and mail address. The Public Forums are 'chat rooms'. They may be moderated to keep Appal.org within the bounds of our ISP, applicable law, and polite conversation. The Links page has lists of related links. All the other pages listed in the Main Menu are more general.

The Bottom Menu

The bottom of each page has a Search button, a Browse button and a grey bar containing links. The Search button, described above, wil pull up all documents containing any of the words you key in. The Browse button brings up a list of all headlines ever posted on the site. You can scroll through that list, or use your browser's Find button (usually Ctrl-F) to locate a headline by keyword.

The grey bar has links for Private Meetings (invitation only), Privacy Policy, Webmaster & Acknowledgments, and Submit Photos and Articles. The Private Meetings link launches a password protected chat room, identical to the Public Forum. The Privacy Policy is Appal.org's rules for operating the website. The Webmaster page lists the programmers and coders who built the site and it components.

The Submit Photos and Articles link offers anyone a means to send information for possible posting on Appal.org. If you take advantage of this feature, please email also, and describe the information. There are size limits on the available storage which may cause your submission to fail without notice, so please email ap@appal.org if it is important to you to have the information listed here. There is no assurance that your information will be posted, however. It may be rejected for any reason.

The Submit step is too complicated to be called easy. If you prefer, you can email your submission instead.