A Guide to Navigating Disaboom

With all the questions out there about how to navigate Disaboom most effectively I thought a simple and informal 'Guide to Navigating Disaboom' was in order.  Here's my take:

Health – The Health area is a valuable and unique resource that is completely free!  All of the articles in ‘Health’ are written by a Medical Professional and you can comment on each article or link it up a blog post you may have about a similar topic.  Use the navigation column on the left of the screen to find the medical condition/topic that you’re interested in.  We plan to add a bunch more conditions/topics in the near term.

Headlines – real-time collection of news headlines relevant to the Disaboom community.  If you use Netvibes or iGoogle you can add the headline module to your custom home page by clicking “Get This” at the bottom of each Headline Cluster.  Try it out—Netvibes and iGoogle are both free, and Netvibes doesn’t require any registration.

Community – The Community is where all the Disaboom blogs live.  The latest 5 blog posts are summarized on the page along with a summary of the latest users to join Disaboom.  On the left there is a small navigation bar that lets you sort users by ‘Newest,’ ‘Most Active,’ Popular,’ and also by who is currently online.  The Tags on the right can help you find blogs—but the blogger has to select a good tag for his or her post for it to work best.  The bigger the text of the Tag the more posts are tagged with it (for example, if Sports is really big that means that a there are lots of posts about sports, if it’s really small that means there are relatively little posts on the subject.)  On the bottom of each blog post summary is a line that says:  “Posted to ‘blogname’ by ‘blogauthor’ on ‘date.’  (So mine would be: Posted to timpoindexter by timpoindexter on 8/28/07).  Right now, I think all the blognames are the same as the applicable blogauthor—I’m not sure if that will change or not.  Anyway, if you click on ‘blogname’ you will go to a summary of that person’s blog, if you click on ‘blogauthor’ you will get that person’s username summary.  The Username summary contains a Bio (if provided), a summary of recent blogs, and a summary of recent discussions participated in on the discussion boards.  On the right side of the screen a list of the Username’s favorites is listed if the Username has selected ‘Share Favorites’ in his or her profile.  On the Left side, near the top of the page is a summary of the User—it has name, age and gender.  Under the summary are links to add the person as a favorite, send them a private message or view the person’s blogs.

Discussions – The Discussion area is a collection of discussion boards (or forums or message boards—whatever you want to call them).  This area is currently being overhauled and we hope to have it organized in a more relevant and usable fashion very soon.  Categories are defined by Disaboom, but inside each category any user can start his or her own topic—just make sure the topic actually fits the category, or it may be moderated (i.e. moved to the right place or removed if it’s non sequitur).  On the right side of the screen are some useful summaries: My Discussions is where a list of the latest topics you have posted to is shown, under that is Active, where active (duh) ongoing discussions are listed.  Finally, Unanswered contains topics that no one has replied to yet.  Under that are a list of the most active users and bringing up the bottom are some more Tags (you can Tag blog posts AND discussion board posts. ).  Each Category as well as each topic may be subscribed to using an RSS Reader (Bloglines, Newsgator, Netvibes and Google Reader are some of the popular readers available).  I’ll talk about how RSS works later.

Reviews – Reviews are where you can make a buck or two!  Disaboom wants your experience and expertise to benefit the community, and they want it so bad they’re willing to pay for it (as long as it’s done before September 30, 2007).  But really, you should do it for the love.  When you signed up for Disaboom you should have checked ‘yes’ in the Promotion Rules box, if you did that and you filled out your contact information you should be in good shape.  To actually write a Review click Reviews on the top navigation bar and then after arrive in the Review section click on Write a Review which is on the bottom of the left hand side navigation bar.  To help with the review process we have printable Review Checklists available so you know exactly what information you need to generate a successful review.  You can get the checklists here: http://www.disaboom.com/reviews/checklists.aspx  Reviews are broken into several categories, and the navigation bar on the left can help you narrow down your search.  Your location is based off of the zip code in your profile, but you can search any part of the country for a review.

Toolbox – The Toolbox has general information for you on things such as, The Accessible Home, ADA Information, Travel Reference and Employment and Disability.  We’ll be adding to this section as time goes on.

Classifieds – This is the place to find job opportunities, events relevant to the Disaboom community and goods for sale of interest to Disaboom community members (i.e. a  converted car or specialized medical equipment, or even an accessible house for sale).  Post a classified by clicking ‘Post a Classified’ located on the bottom of the left hand navigation bar.

My Disaboom – My Disaboom is an area that contains information specified by YOU.  The blog posts of your favorites are summarized here along with your recent discussions and a list of your favorites.  Using the upper left hand navigation bar you can also Edit your Bio, Manage your Blog, Manage your Favorites and view your private messages.  This area may undergo an overhaul in the future, but for now that is the way it works.

Your Profile – Your profile is all about you.  You can change your password, tell us about you (if you want), upload an avatar, add favorites (or delete them) and decide if you want to share with the Disaboom community who your favorites are.

RSS Feeds – What is RSS?  For starters RSS stands for ‘Really Simple Syndication’ and is used to publish frequently updated content (like blogs and discussion boards).   RSS lets people keep up with frequently updated content automatically.  To use (subscribe to) RSS feeds you need something called a ‘feed reader’ or aggregator.  This software regularly checks the feed for updated items and downloads new stuff automatically.  You can get a Feed Reader for free online.  Popular readers include: Netvibes, Bloglines, Newsgator and Google Reader.  Each of the readers listed above is a web application and if you use one of them you won’t have to download any software to your personal computer.

Miscellaneous – A few miscellaneous things about navigating Disaboom – in most cases you can click on the Disaboom logo to get back to the main Disaboom page.  You can also increase the text size for easier reading by clicking on the bigger A’s at the top right of the page.   You can rate posts and discussion topics by clicking on the stars by them (5 stars is best).  And, you can search for stuff throughout the whole site or in specific sections.  The search field is near the top of every page.  Also, you HAVE to be logged in to comment.

Well, that’s it for now—I’m sure I’ve missed some stuff and I’m still working on figuring out all the stuff the site can do myself.  If your question isn’t answered leave a comment on what you’re looking for and I’ll try to find out the answer.  I hope this helps!

Tim Poindexter (username: timpoindexter)