This is the summary page for the help tag, but there are also lists of other help wikipages, as well as of forum posts and files.
NB. Our help pages only provide a overview at the moment. If you’re stuck, please check the Website FAQ first, then email us if you still can’t find an answer.
Welcome! These pages are intended to provide a user-friendly and accessible guide to the main areas of the CRAGs website: the wiki, forum, groups spaces and member profiles. If you can’t find what you’re looking for, please get in touch with your question and we’d be happy to help.
See also: Website FAQ
Quick-start/Summary
Register. Registration allows you to contribute to the forum and wiki, join or start local CRAGs, and maintain a profile on the site. Enter your details on the registration page, and then confirm using the email you receive: you’re all set! Your profile and account settings are avaiable from the ‘account’ link next to your username at the top of the site.
Join a CRAG. If you’re a member of a CRAG or want to join, then signing up to a group space will allow to post into its forum and identify you as a group member across the site. It’s as easy as clicking “Join!” in the group’s space, or selecting a group during registration. Usually, you will become a member straight away, although where groups have moderated membership, you will to wait a little while for the group admin to approve you.
Start a CRAG. If you want to set up a new group in your area, click on the ‘start new crag’ link on the Groups pages and use the form to add a group description and set the options for your group space on the website. Your status should be ‘Start-up’ until you have sufficient members and have set your rules and started your carbon year, when you can switch to ‘Active’. Tell us about your new group on the forum!
Discuss issues on the Forum. The forum is the place for general discussion of carbon rationing and reduction, and any non-local CRAGs issues. Each discussion (or ‘thread’) is classified under its main subject areas using tags, which are listed on the left-hand side. If you have a contribution to make, first check if there is a pre-existing thread which you can continue, using the ‘add comment’ or ‘reply’ links under each comment. If not, then start a new thread using ‘start new thread’ (top-right), remembering to ‘tag’ the thread with its main subject area(s). The etiquette and acceptable subject areas for disucssion are outlined in the Posting Rules.
Write on the Wiki. A Wiki-wiki (the most famous example being Wikipedia) is an interlinked set of pages which anyone can edit, providing a tool for collaborative writing. If you’d like to correct a mistake or add or improve the pages, you need first to register. Then go to the page you’re interested in and click ‘edit’ at the top right. You can add new pages by clicking on any orange links (which create a new page entitled with the link title) or using ‘add new wikipage’. Pages are organised using the same tags as the forum, and each tag has a summary page with a matching title.
Stay up-to-date. You can keep up with the latest posts by email or RSS feed. Email notification sends you an email whenever a new comment is added, and can be enabled for the whole site or individual areas or groups. Enable or disable this option from your account settings page, and set individual group options using the ‘email’ icon at top-right on group, forum or wiki pages. RSS feeds are a means of automatically receiving the latest posts to feed-reading software or your internet browser. A sitewide feed is available by clicking on the orange RSS icon on the browse page, or individually from separate areas or group spaces. A list of addresses is also available at RSS feeds.
Organisation and overall structure
The CRAGs site is organised into areas with different functions, and by topics that group related material across these areas and the whole site.
There are five main areas with different purposes and a corresponding tab at the top of the site (Fig.): the wiki, groups, forum, files and people – each of which is described in detail below. The contents of each area are kept separate, but the links at the very top of the site provide some tools which allow you to browse through the entire contents of the site (Fig.).
‘Tags’ are another means of organisation that work across the five main areas (above). Whenever someone adds something to the site, they have the opportunity to mark or ‘tag’ it with the main topics that it discusses. All posts tagged under the same subject have a blue marker (Fig.) that links and groups subject areas together. So, for example, if you were interested in air transport, you could click on the ‘air transport’ tag and then use the blue tag marker to quickly find all the relevant writing, discussion, files etc. relevant to air transport. In addition, each tag has its own page in the wiki area that is used to summarise all the material under that topic in an accessible fashion. So, for example, the Air transport page summarises material tagged with ‘air transport’.