AAGT Interactive Beginners Help
Welcome to using AAGT Interactive! Look what you can do!
When you first go to AAGT Interactive, you will start with the "Create New Account" link under the login fields. That will take you to a screen where you enter information about yourself to create a new account. Some information is required and some is optional. The required fields are marked with a red asterisk, like this *. When you finish filling the form out, scroll to the bottom and click the "Create new account" button. This will automatically send notification to the AAGT website staff that you have registered, it will also send a confirmation email to the email that you register with, telling you that your registration has been received and is in the process of being activated. This email is important, because once your account is validated and activated, you will use the information in it, the username and password, or the one-time logon link, to first access the account. At that time you will be at a place where you can reset your password to something probably easier to remember by going to the "my account" link on the left of the AAGT Interactive Front Page.
But first, the website staff must validate and activate your registration. When that is ready, you will be sent a second email telling you that your account is activated and asking you to logon as soon as convenient so that the activation process will complete. Once you have received your activation email, you can use the information in your first, confirmation email to login and start to use the various possibilities of the AAGT Drupal Interactive Area.
Who can do what? Different categories of users and user privileges are set up, which can be modified by AAGT. Any Activated User may participate in discussions by posting, editing, and reading comments. AAGT Members and Affiliates can create discussions as well as post to them and can create their own pages for their local groups or events. However, only Board Members, and Moderators can create Events that will post to the AAGT Event Calendar.
Tech Tip: On AAGT Interactive, a small right pointing triangle next to an item in a list, like "Create Content" means that there is more within that list and it can be expanded by clicking on it. It's called a collapsed menu item. Items with dots next to them are single items.
Discussion forums are open to all authenticated users. Use the "Discussion Forums" to participate in discussions. Members and affiliates can post new forum topics here or authenticated users can reply, edit, and post replies. General discussion areas have been set up, but these may be added to. Just click on the discussion you might like to enter and read what others' have said.
Netiquette: Courtesy is crucial on a discussion board, and required on AAGT Interactive. As with email, the written word reads more loudly than it may be intended. Terse comments may be misinterpreted, while a more tactful approach will encourage participation in the discussion.
Create content means Members and Affiliates can create things on the AAGT Interactive site. The choices are: Event, Forum Topic, Page, Poll, and Story. The differences between most are obvious. Page and Story take a little time to tell which is the better choice for a particular function. Starting with Page is always a good option and especially good for local groups to create their own homepages.
Save content: Whatever you create, be sure to scroll down and "Preview" it by clicking the Preview button, you can do this several times, and then once you are happy with your Preview, click the "Submit" button to save it to AAGT Interactive. If it doesn't appear right away, refresh your screen to see the page with your additions. Depending on how your browser "Caches" content you may have to "Refresh" or "Reload" more than once to force it to load a new copy of the web page.
