How To #1 – Navigation
Each day this week I’ll be looking at a different area of the site and giving you a quick overview of how it works and how you can use it to share ideas and advice with the rest of the community.
So, what better place to start than the site navigation?
There are four ways to navigate across The Conch:
- Search (including Advanced Search)
- Location
- Activity
- Tags
Let me go into a little more detail.
1. Search
Unlike most travel sites, The Conch uses more extensive search to help you find relevant content wherever it may be.
One thing that bugs me with some other sites is that lots of useful information gets lost in the ‘dark corners’ like messageboards and group threads. It can be some time before you know where to look and even then you can’t be sure you’re not missing something.
We’ve opened up our search to include all uploads (audio, photos and text reviews) as well as relevant groups and individual group threads. So whatever you’re looking for, if someone else is talking about it, you’ll find it…fast.
For really obscure searches, give the advanced search a go. You can specify the search term, the content type (for example, audio only), upload date or even the member that uploaded it. So as well as helping you find all the information you could ask for on your chosen location or activity, we’re also well suited for the more discriminating among you.
2. Location
Whether you know exactly where you’re going or just want to get some ideas, you can navigate by continent and country to find what you’re looking for.
3. Activity
If destination isn’t as important you can also navigate by activity.
The ‘Most Popular’ and ‘Most Active’ options are based on our community ranking system (which I’ll be talking more about tomorrow).
Most Popular – ranks the activities with the highest average score.
Most Active - ranks the activities with the highest number of scores.
The Conch Recommended - shows a bunch of activities you might want to try – safely and under instruction!!! No lawsuits please.
4. Tags
Finally, you can navigate all uploads on The Conch using tags. Tags are keywords, associated to a piece of content to make it easy to share.
You might want to tag location-specific uploads with the name of the country, region or neighbourhood. Once you’ve got the hang of it, you might want to get a bit more inventive.
See the Wikipedia article on tags for a fuller explanation.
So that’s your lot for today. Hopefully that’s made things a little clearer. Of course, finding the best adventure locations and activities depends on someone uploading them. So go ahead and tell us about where you go and what you do to reach that all important high!