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How to use this site
- Roberto Di Statteo
- May 21, 2021
- 8 min read
I know people don't like reading long things these days, but if you do, you really will get the most out of this site.
Part 1 - About this post
1.1 Introduction
This post is for site users to learn how to use the site's different features. There will be a separate post, at some point, with a tutorial on how admins should use the site, as well as individual tutorials for different features, for both users and admins, that will offer a bit more detail. Please note that if you access the site via the Wix Spaces app, you will not find instructions on how to use it here.
1.2 Contents
Part 1 - About this post - 1.1 - Introduction (what this post is about) - 1.2 - Contents (click on these to navigate the post)
1.3 Finding the tutorials
There are three ways to see the tutorial posts; you can click "Help" on the green menu bar on the banner at the top of the screen, or you can click "Blog" then select "Tutorial" from the menu (you may have to click "more" first on smaller screens). On the mobile version, click the menu in the top left, then tap "Blog"
Firstly, please don't forget that the people who are writing tutorials on this site are also the people that are running it, and with it being a new site and an IT staff of zero, they're learning at the same time as you, so it may take a little while for everything to be running perfectly, but this is where you'll find the basics. However, if you're not really super-techie, and you're maybe not overly familiar with website and/or forum layout in general, you may wish to check out the GLOSSARY, which will explain what certain terms mean. The last thing we want is to give you a tutorial that you don't understand. And with that being the case, it's important to remember that if you get stuck, you can always click the chat icon in the bottom right corner and we'll be on hand to answer your query as soon as we can. Bear in mind that we're learning as we go, too, though. In fact, that seems as good a place to start as any...
Part 2 - The chat window
The chat window can be opened by clicking the chat icon in the bottom right corner of your screen (desktop), or tapping the speech bubble icon on the black bar at the bottom of your screen (mobile).
2.1 Contacting the admins
The main purpose of the chat feature is to "speak" to the website. You may have seen similar on other sites for live support... that's basically what this is. If you have any questions about how the site works, or you need any help getting around, just contact us ("Toontalk") through there and we'll respond as soon as we can.
2.2 Chatting to each other
Underneath where you see "Toontalk", you should also see a space for other chats. You can set up private chat groups among yourselves, as well as one-to-one conversations. We realise that, from time to time, conversations go off on tangents and people start talking about other things, not football. While this is inevitable, one of the rules of the forum is to stay on topic, so if you do get sidetracked, please try to move the conversation to private chat. ***UNDER CONSTRUCTION*** THE BELOW IS INCOMPLETE
Use the menu bar at the top of the page
The green menu bar at the very top of the page will take you to wherever you want to go on the site. There is the forum, the blog, the competitions, the matchday centre, the links page, and the help page (where you likely found this post). That is all the content we have on the site at the moment (in fact, as I'm writing this, it's not even all there yet, but it will be soon!) - so it's really simple to find everything you need. Here is a brief explanation of all of the different parts of the site, and how they work. The menu is laid out in order of what you are likely to use the most. As you read down, you can click each title in this tutorial to take you to that section of the site.
This takes you back to the home page of the website, and will be the first thing you see when you arrive at toontalk.uk. Right now, there's not a lot going on, on that page, but it does have a feed of featured posts which are basically blog posts that we think everyone should see.
The forum is something with which many of you will be familiar from the days before Facebook. The way forums work has modernised even though they've not been as popular over the last few years, so you should find the layout and structure pretty intuitive.
The forum groups are pretty broad-strokes, category-wise, so it should be pretty obvious where to go, to talk about what. All we ask is that you try to post in the right group. If you fail to do this, we might just move your post to where it belongs which might make it tricky to find later, so just try not to make the mistake in the first place!
If you hover over "Forum" in the menu, there is also a sub-heading, "Members". The members page lists all forum members so you can see their blog posts (if they're a blog writer) and all their forum posts and comments. You can also follow people here, and send them messages.
The blog is something with which many of you might not be so familiar... and we aren't either. This bit, we're kind of learning as we go along but here are the basics of how it works.
What is the blog?
- The blog is a collection of all original content (to be) written by the Toontalk admins, and by approved writers. - The blog's purpose is to provide material for our users to read, and also to attract new readers to the website.
- Covers ALL of the content published by the admins and is categorised as follows to help you find what you need.
ANNOUNCEMENTS - MATCHDAY - MEDIA - HISTORY - COMPETITIONS - TUTORIAL - NEWS - STATS
Announcements - This will be for all blog posts relating to the Toontalk website, as well as breaking news such as signings, team selections and so on.
Matchday - The matchday category includes any post about a specific match, be it a classic match from years ago, or the friendly we've got coming up against Harrogate.
Media - These will be any blog posts that we put out with audio or video such as podcasts, videos, music, or gallery submissions.
History - History posts contain links, footage, information, and pictures from the club's past, for those of you who fancy a trip down memory lane.
Competitions - All of our updates regarding the scorecast, the tablecast, Fantasy League, and any other quizzes or games we introduce, will be found here.
Tutorial - Not sure how to do something? Well, we might not be either, but if you go into the forum, scroll all the way down to where it says "Contact Us" and post in the appropriate group in there, we'll endeavour to help you do the thing you're trying to do. We'll discuss it in the forum, then eventually we'll put together an FAQ and a few more in-depth tutorials, as we expand the website.
News - As the word literally suggests, "News" is the category for anything new. This could be new information, a new opinion piece, a match report... but something to do with the club right now. Like history, except the opposite.
Stats - Posts that contain statistical information and/or analysis.
When a blog post is created, the creator will be able to add up to three of these "categories" to their post so, for example, let's say an hour before kickoff of the first game of the season, we want to post the team lineup as it's announced. This might be categorised as "Matchday", "Announcement", and "News". A post including a video where one of us is interviewing, say, Bob Moncur, about the 69 Fairs Cup, that might go under "Media" and "History". The blog posts don't have to have three categories, but they'll never have more than three. Hopefully, this will make things easier to find what you're looking for when searching as well.
If you'd like to contribute to the blog, please email rob@toontalk.uk and let me know what you'd like to write about/post about. If you have any suggestions for articles you'd like to see from the existing team, same applies, or you can use the "Suggestion Box" group in the forum.
Competitions
Pretty obvious what's here, but it's not a page on the site... it's just a dropdown menu that will list all of the active competitions, so that you can play them. The Tablecast is now being run offsite so this will take you to a page where you can arrange the teams in the correct order. The Scorecast has its own page on the site, which will feature a form so that you can submit your scores for each round.
Anything like quizzes, puzzles, and other member-participation type stuff, created by admins, will be here by way of a feed of just the Fun & Games posts from the blog. There is also a fun and games section of the forum, for members who want to do their own thing :)
At the time of writing this, the matchday centre is still not quite a fully formed idea but what it will definitely contain, will be the following:
- A (hopefully fully autonomous and live-updating) Premier League Table
- Any match preview, match review, match prediction, man of the match polls, etc. from the blog's "Matchday" category
- The fixture list, including results, scorer info etc. - A link to the "official matchday threads" section of the forum
This section will be updated as more features are added and when we decide how to lay everything out.
The "Links" page is pretty self-explanatory... this will contain all of the links that we think you should have. Links to other Toontalk pages, links to other websites, podcasts, etc. If you would like to see your page (or a page that you would suggest) in the links, please email rob@toontalk.uk
You probably came to the help page to find this post. There'll be more posts like this as the website is developed, explaining new features and how to use them, as they are added. Basically, the help page will contain all blog posts from the "Tutorial" category. If you can't find the answer you're looking for on the Help page, go to the "Contact Us" section of the forum or click the chat icon in the bottom right of this page. If we don't know the answer, we'll try to find out for you.
That's everything for this tutorial. As I've mentioned before, we're all learning so information is sparse at the moment, but please either email me on the address provided above, visit the "Contact Us" section of the forum if you have any questions, or visit the "Glitching Report" or "Suggestion Box" subsections if you have anything you'd like to draw to the admins' attention. TTFN!
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