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.

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 on the bottom of 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 at the top of the window to access the different categories of stories.

The “Community Facets” section under “Community History” contains the majority of members’ stories, and is the best way of finding them.

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 each 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.

You can use the Search function (the magnifying glass top right of the main menu bar) to find any of the above elements, but note that this does not find Members.

Some stories have an icon next to the title, which you can click to learn more about that topic. For example, stories from the 50th Birthday Book have an icon which clicks through to a page about the book and its contents.

Some icons take you to the Findhorn Foundation website if appropriate.

Search Functions

If you are looking for something specific, you can use the “magnifying glass” Search icon – at the far right of the main menu bar next to the Login option, and in the sidebar on individual stories – to search for keywords.

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 cover:

60th Birthday Celebrations: Everything about the celebrations including “upcoming” events, stories of past events and the 60th birthday quiz are under this heading. This section will soon be removed and it will become part of the Community History as our members tell the stories of the 2022 60th Birthday Celebrations.

Community Connections: The pages under Community Connections are about how we can connect with each other – locally and globally. There are options to sign up to receive the monthly newsletter, and join us by becoming a member.

Community History: This embraces everything about our past and present, and the dropdowns include pages for:

• A brief summary and timeline;
• People including a photoboard of our members;
• Community Kids; and
• In Memoriam.

Community Facets is where our collective autobiography is being written and members’ stories are filed. We also have multiple pages of resources and digital copies of books.

About Us: the dropdowns describe our “one incredible family”, the gallery, and how you can support us, as well as providing useful links:

• One Incredible Family – The origin of the expression and what it means to us;
• The Gallery – Our contributors and storytellers: the faces of our Community;
• Support Us – How you can help with a donation;
• Links – a collection of links to Findhorn Community related organisations and resources;
• About this Site – Who we are, and who does (or has done) what.

Login: this is for members of our COIF Community. Once you have been approved as a member you will be able to login to:

• View/Edit your Profile;
• View your Stories;
• Join our Family Room where members can view other members-only-related pages;
• Access the member database;
• If you are logged in, clicking “LOGIN” will bring you back to the Family Room.
• Additional functionality will continue to be included in this section as time goes by.