Finding your way around My CA

When you start with MyCA you will see in the centre column all the recent articles that have been published, starting with the most recent, although there may be one or two sticky items at the top, such as the Welcome message. There are quite a few pages of these articles and most of them can be accessed more easily by using the menus in the left hand column.

Several of the menu items, such as Book Reviews and Classified Ads, also have pages organised in the same way, most recent first. But they also have ways of selecting and searching for items. Thus with Classifieds you get the following:

You can browse any particular categories by selecting them with your pointer, holding down the control key to select more than category, and then click on the Submit button. Initially all categories are selected. In addition you can search for a keyword by putting it in the box which will limit the search even more.

Often when you click on a menu item, a number of sub-items will appear and this is a convenient method of finding your way around. e.g. if you click on Committee Minutes, you will see a tree of all the CA's committees and Groups.

Adding to MyCA

Unlike the static part of our website (cruising.org.uk) which requires special editors and uploading methods, MyCA uses a content management system called Drupal which allows anyone who is authorised to update the site using only a browser.

An example of this which occurs on many pages is the "Add new comment" link. If you press on this you will be able (if logged in) to add a comment underneath an article. We won't deal with the details of this process here as they can be found in Contributing to MyCA .

Often the author of the page will be able to respond to your comment and may then delete it if appropriate. e.g. you may see a CIR (Cruising Information Report) to which you can add useful information because you've been there. In this case the regional editor responsible will be able to incorporate your comment into the original report if appropriate. If they disagree, they may well communicate directly with you to tell you their reasons.

There is one way which is open to every member: the log. This is a page which is linked to the individual and can be used to post a page about anything you want. It was originally called a "blog" but we are used to logs in nautical terms so we've used that term. It doesn't have to be limited to accounts of sailing.

Another popular way of contributing is via the forums. These are conversations about any topics that are important to members. One of the features of ours is that if you prefer you can treat it as a mailing list. i.e. you can receive all the contributions by email and respond to them in the same way. For details see MyCA Forums.