The Poetry Aloud website has grown in complexity and some people have asked for a guide. Here it is, but if it seems incomplete note that this document will develop over time.

Home page

The page that you arrive at is called the 'home page'. It has a menu across the top. We will call that the 'Primary menu', a menu down the left-hand side called the 'Navigation menu', a large panel in the middle carrying various items of news and information, then various sections down the right-hand side and below the Navigation menu that are designed to help you navigate the site quickly and easily.

In general, any text highlighted in blue or white (if a dark background) is clickable and will take you to somewhere else on the site. So you could simply click on anything you see to see where it takes you. Why not? You won't break anything, and if you find anything broken please tell the webmaster (click here).

Now let us look at each section of the home page.

Primary menu

The Primary menu appears on every page of the site so you can rely on it to get you around. In this image, 'Home' is shown as selected by the white pointer above it.

• Home - this brings you right back to the home page
• Poems - this is where you will find the poems. If we have a recording of the poet reading the poem you will find it here.
• Events - a calendar of poetry events in and around Suffolk
• Blogs - our poets keep blogs of their thoughts and concerns here
• Forums - discussion forums and other useful things like this help document

Navigation menu

The Navigation menu has these options if you are not logged in. Other items will appear if you are logged in depending on your privileges.

Not really part of the navigation menu, but convenient to mention here, there is a search facility. This searches everything on the site, so is good for finding poems on particular topics, poets, or if you know a title, or part of a title, poems.

• Index - provides links to A-Z indices to the various sections of the site.
• My bookmarks - if a page offers a 'Bookmark this' option, the bookmark will be available here.
• Poems by reader vote - you can vote for poems, and poems voted for are listed here.
• Popular content - this provides two lists of popular content, most popular across all time and most popular today.
• Recent posts - if you need to catch up on the latest postings then this is the place to start.
• Your votes - if your have voted for poems then your votes will be listed here.
• Votes cast - this lists all votes cast.
• Portfolios - poets can create portfolios for discussing the development of their work.
• Contact Us - a way of contacting us through the site.
• Links - links to other poetry sites and resources.

New forum topics

As items are added to the forums, the most recent ones will be listed here. This helps you quickly catch up with things.

Recent blog posts

Similarly to 'New forum topics', the most recent blog entries will be found here.

Archive

The archive lists the poems read by month. The number after each month is the number of poems posted for that month.

Upcoming Events

This lists of the next five events on the Suffolk poetry calendar. Select 'Year', 'Month', 'Week' or 'Day' for detailed calendar view of those periods. 'Prev' and 'Next' move to calendar views of the previous and next month.

Random Poems

This is a list of five poems chosen at random. The list will change each time you change pages.