Welcome! We hope you enjoy browsing our website. It already includes a great deal of content, and will continue to grow as we develop additional methods of community engagement, and as our collective autobiography grows through members adding their stories. Hopefully, this article will help you to get the best out of the site.

The Menu System: There’s a menu strip right at the very top of the window, which you will already have discovered. If you mouse over an option in this main menu, a sub-menu will drop down offering additional selections: click on the selection that interests you. Note also, however, that clicking on the Main Menu options themselves will take you to a page with additional information. Normally these will summarise the content you can access via the drop-downs, and trying them is a good idea if you want to get a general idea of what a sub-menu option is about. The Main Menu options are discussed in more detail below.

Finding Stories, Members and more: We’re frequently asked, “How do I find stories?”, and “How do I find a specific Member?” Let’s take a moment to describe the different ways you can navigate the site to find stories and other pages.

We’ve made extensive use of links throughout the site, so we encourage you to use them to click through to the site’s ever-growing content.

We hope you find this useful, but if you have any problems or need further hints and tips for navigating the site please contact us.

Finding Members’ Stories

The short answer is: “Stories are everywhere!” We’ve created several different ways to move from one story to another. Once you are in any story there are several opportunities to click on links that will take you to other stories. We hope you enjoy exploring!

On the Home Page we list Latest Stories half-way down the page.

In the Gallery “Faces of Our Community” you can click on the portrait or name, and if the member has written a story, it is listed with their profile. As not everyone has written a story we have added a “Storytellers’ Gallery” which shows everyone who has already submitted a story, so clicking on anyone will take you to their profile with a list of their stories.

Navigate the Collective Autobiography

You can use the Main Navigation Menu Bar at the top of the window to access the different categories of stories. Don’t forget that as well as hosting drop-down submenus, each Main Menu Bar option links direct to a page when clicked.

The “Community Facets” section under “People” contains the majority of members’ stories, and is the best way of finding them. These “Facets” can be thought of as Categories.

Thus each story will have:

• A Category, or multiple Categories. For example, selecting “The Core > Our Roots” from the dropdown menu will display all stories categorised under Our Roots. On the page for a given category, you’ll find every story that’s listed in that category.
• Story Title – click through to the individual story;
• Member Name – clickable to view the Member’s Profile;
• Categories – lists the other categories that this story is listed under;
• Tags – clickable, for grouping similar stories with a common theme.

We use clickable icons in various places: some are navigation icons, particularly on the Community Facets page; some indicate the source of the story (such as from the 50th Birthday Book or Faces of Findhorn), or provide a link to Findhorn Foundation website pages as relevant. We hope to use this method more in future – so if in doubt, just click and see if it is a link.

Search Functions, and how to find a specific Member

If you are looking for something specific, you can use the “magnifying glass” Search icon – at the far right of the main menu bar, and in the sidebar on individual stories – to search for keywords. In addition, many pages have a blue “Search” box to search directly from the page.

Looking through a Gallery of hundreds of portraits is challenging – and in addition, the “magnifying glass” search function doesn’t find Members – so we have added a Member Search button, which you can find on the Gallery page and elsewhere around the site. You can use it to search for a Member’s profile.

Navigation Menu

The headers on the main menu bar at the top of the window cover:
HOME – clicking this accesses our Home Page, which tells you about the purpose and goals of the site. Hovering your cursor over HOME will bring up About Us, which when clicked on will take you to a page which discusses our names, some information on the web site, and this page.

Back to the main menu, OUR COMMUNITY TODAY discusses how we can connect with you – our Newsletter and contact information, and how you can join in.

The PEOPLE menu provides one of two primary ways of accessing the stories that make up our Collective Autobiography. The options here include our Members’ Gallery and the Storytellers’ Gallery, which contains stories written by or about Members. In addition there are pieces on and about people who grew up in the Community, and there is a section listing members who have passed away.

OUR STORIES is the other main way of accessing our stories, as the name suggests. Clicking on OUR STORIES will bring up a discussion on the Collective Autobiography and its purpose, along with links to a short history of the Community and a Community Timeline. You’ll also find details on how to access stories including the use of our “Community Facets” which define categories through which you can find the stories you are looking for. Hover your pointer over the OUR STORIES label and a pop-up menu takes you straight to the Community Facets page and individual pages for each of them. You can also access our growing collection of e-books and other reading materials in Reading & Media.

The MEMBERS AREA link will take you to our Member Login – or if you are already logged in, then to the Family Room, which has its own set of menu options which are largely self-explanatory.