English 421K, Technical Writing

For the first day of class, you'll want to explore some of the features of the site. This document gives an overview of a few features you might want to take a look at that will help you to navigate the site.

Navigation

In the header visible at the top of every page, you'll find one row of links:

• The first four take you to important sections of the course guide.
• The others take you to useful resource sites at Purdue.

Once you've logged in to the site, directly beneath the header on the left, you'll find the main navigation block, accessible from every page:

The navigation block is your gateway to many areas of the site useful for creating and viewing content and managing your work. For example,

• blogs
  Lists all the blogs on the site and includes a direct link to your blog in its submenu.
• create content
  From here you can post to your individual weblog or the front page (see How to Post to Your Individual Weblog).
• image galleries
  These are useful for uploading screenshots and other images that groups need to review and discuss.
• members
  Need to find out someone's email address? Use the members list. You can also click on any username to access the personal account page. Only registered users have access to the private portion of account pages.
• my subscriptions
  Our site allows you to "subscribe" to blog posts and other content so that you can keep tabs on follow-up responses. You can set your default subscription settings in my account > edit.
• recent posts
  This display allows you to access all of the recent content posted by everyone. Note how it provides red astericks to denote pages you have yet to read and notices of new unread comments.
• search
  Search the content of blog posts, stories, book pages, and galleries; also search for users by name or username
• my account
  Links to your profile information, site settings, and more. Adjust your account profile here.
• categories
  This function allows us to categorize all of our posts. By the end of the semester, there will be literally thousands of posts, and these allow some degree of organization. Later in the semester, we will use this same function to organize group spaces for Project 2 and 3.
• log out
  Use this to log out of the website, which is recommended after each session.

Book Navigation

All of our course materials on the site are integrated into the course guide:

The course guide is a hypertext with many levels of pages.

• You can use the book navigation links that show previous and next pages below the main text or use the breadcrumb navigation at the top.
• Use the printer-friendly version link beneath any page to get a text-only version of that page and all of its subpages collated into one. For example, if you go to the top page of the guide and click on printer-friendly version, you will see the entire course guide, including the calendar, on one screen (a very long one).