Over the last several years I have visited hundreds of websites. Often, they
are well laid out, with a good structure, making it a fairly straightforward
process to find one's way around. Sometimes, however, they are like mazes:
you can very quickly become sidetracked, or even totally lost.
Generally, I rely on Netscape's "Back" button to take me back to where I've
just come from, rather than using links within a page itself. However, a
browser's "memory" only extends back so far; thus keeping downward chains of
links fairly short minimizes the chance of not being able to return to a
page much further back.
Sometimes, with the best will in the world, things can go wrong.
Occasionally the browser will crash; when you restart it, unless you've got
an exceptionally good short-term memory (and who has?), your only hope of
finding the page you really want involves trawling back through the
browser's History page - a time-consuming and often frustrating experience,
especially as the History itself keeps growing every time you revisit a
link.
I decided some time ago that, if and when I ever built my own website, I
would try to make it as easy to navigate as possible. Thus, it is
essentially menu-driven. There is a home page, a preliminaries page, and
then the main menu. Below that, there are other menus; and then within them
- sometimes - sub-menus. Thus the visitor can keep downward chains
reasonably short, and go up and down within the site easily - just like
using a decent file-manager program. Old but effective technology.
You can rely on your "Back" button for most things. Sometimes, you will find
links to other sites, or other pages within this site. By all means follow
these links; as long as you don't go too far afield, the "Back" button will
return you to any earlier page you want.
However, if things go wrong, and you can only get back to a page on this
site other than the one you want, all is not lost. If you are within a page
accessed from some menu page, you will find a link to that menu page near
the bottom of the current page. (Scroll down and have a look - this page is
like any other in that regard.)
Menus and major back-links (as just described) are easily visible. Just look
for my characteristic "Mad Teddy" logo - two pulsating light bulbs, one on
each side of the screen, each with an adorable teddy bear inside it. (These
also feature at the top of my home page.)
Take note, however: sometimes, on a whim - and to keep you on your toes -
you may find that I've put something different where you'd normally expect
to see the "Mad Teddy" logo. Just thought I'd better warn you!
Finally, as a last resort, at the very bottom of each and every "menu" or
"topic" page on this site (including this page), you will find a link to the
home page - and also, a link to the preliminaries page. There's also a blue
"HOME" link at the top left corner, just under the main heading. So, if the
worst comes to the worst, you can always start again from the very
beginning.
As far as I can see, that's the best I can do. The rest is up to you!
By the way - just while I think of it:
While developing this website, at some point I made up an icon along similar
lines to my "Mad Teddy" logo (mentioned above). I found it helpful to have
it on the desktop so that I could just double-click on it to bring up my
home page. It looks like this:
If you'd like to use it for a similar purpose, right-click
here
to save a copy.
IMPORTANT
If this is your first visit to my site, and if you've somehow arrived here
without first visiting my preliminaries page, please visit it before
progressing any further. It contains important information about legal and
safety issues. It won't take you long, and it will establish a good working
relationship between us.
Better still - visit my home page first!
UPDATE, Thursday, 26th August 2010
This is probably long overdue, as this website has now been on the web for
over four years, but better late than never.
When I launched the site on 5th July 2006, none of the pages at that time
had their posting dates mentioned at the top (or anywhere else). With
pages added thereafter, I've always made a point of placing a comment of
the type "This page added on (such-and-such a date)" at the top.
I've decided not to bother going back through all the original pages and
adding such headers to them. So you can reasonably assume that if a page
doesn't have a date of publication mentioned, it's been there since
mid-2006. (More than likely you've already figured this out, but I thought
that it couldn't hurt to spell it out here and make it official.)
My home page
Preliminaries (Copyright, Safety)
How this website works
Return to Main menu