How to use this website

How to get best use and maximum value from this site.

R E A D

First you read it. The home page itskeptic.org is the same as the blog itself itskeptic.org/blog. The most recent blog posts are at the top.

If you prefer me to do the hard work for you, you can receive a newsletter every month, "The Skeptical Informer", with my picks and summary of the month's content on the blog, plus additional material unique to the newsletter. You don't need to register to subscribe.

Important or useful information is organised into a hierarchal “book” under the “About” menu option on the main menu at top right – it is not just the usual yada yada yada.

BOKKED (also on that main menu) is a public service provided by the IT Skeptic: a repository of known errors in bodies of knowledge such as ITIL. It lives on this site alongside the blog.

Foreign readers can take advantage of BabelFish translation, which is a block (one of those areas on the left and right of the main page). As I write this, it is way down the bottom on the right, but I can move blocks occasionally. A special welcome to all my Brazilian, Spanish, Dutch and Belgian readers. USA readers: I’m sorry but BabelFish does not provide Yank as an option so you will just have to struggle on OK?

If you want to dig back into the past, you can just scroll down (there are paging links at the bottom of the blog). Or you can check out:

• Popular Content is a block. It shows the all time favourite posts as voted by you folk viewing them.
• Follow a topic thread. At the bottom of almost all posts are the "Related topics:" links so you can find posts on a similar topic.
• Browse the topic threads, using the “Topics” option on the main menu at top right. Some major topics like “ITIL” and “CMDB” are on that menu too.
• Google search using the block about half-way down on the right
• Read back issues of The Skeptical Informer

S H A R E

To save away bits of The IT Skeptic or to share with others, use your preferred book-marking tools such as Digg, Delicious or Google. At the bottom of each post there are icons for bookmarking. And there is a “social networks” block with links for bookmarking the whole blog (rather than individual posts) e.g. Technorati.

I never use those “email this page” links – I figure it is none of their business. So I don’t provide such a link on this blog. Do like I do and copy the link into an email.

W A T C H

To keep up to date with new posts you can use RSS or you can subscribe.

The RSS feeds are in a block on one side of this website. There are feeds for the blog, for podcasts, and for comments.

To subscribe to email notifications, you need to register and log in. Once you are logged in, you can click on the link below each blog post that says "subscribe blog" and you'll get notified of new posts.

If you click on "subscribe post" you'll get notified of new comments on that post only.

You get auto-subscribed to anything you comment on, if you are registered. (If this is not working, click "My account" on the small menu block on the right, then "edit", then make sure the "Autosubscribe" checkbox is checked.)

Sadly I haven't found a way to get Drupal to consolidate all your notifications into the one daily email... yet.

To turn OFF getting notification emails:
Go to "My subscriptions" and turn off any threads and blogs that are checked.
Then go to "My account" (on the small menu at right), "edit" and turn off "Autosubscribe".

P A R T I C I P A T E

Please do participate in the blog.
There is far too much Web 1.0 one-way pontificating around, especially in the ITIL world. Web 2.0 is all about two-way traffic, community and user creation of content.

You can take part:

• Comment. Just click on the “add comment” link below a post or the “reply” link below a comment. You don’t need to register, though I think comments have more integrity if you do. If you log in you get a choice of "input format" for comments. You can change to "trusted format" which allows embedded links in your comments.
• Contact me. Click on “Contact” on the main menu at top right. I welcome direct feedback and I try to answer all mail. I respect the anonymity of contacts and I work hard to ensure nothing posted is traceable back to sources.
• Contact other posters. If you click on the name of someone who posted a comment, you can see from their profile whether they allow others to contact them via this site (all email addresses themselves are hidden to prevent spam harvesters).
• Share it round by using the social networking links and by emailing friends
• Contribute known errors (BOKKEs) to BOKKED, and vote for those that are there.
• Be a guest blogger. I am open to proposals from interested persons who want to post. My policy is to edit guest posts only to comply with the terms and conditions of the site (slander, obscenity etc). Otherwise you get free rein.

The monthly newsletter of the IT Skeptic: all the news on ITIL, CMDB and other IT topics that is fit to print... and then some!
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