If you are visiting the Click Start portal at www.clickstart.org.uk you might have noticed that things are looking just a little bit different…..
Last week we launched Version 3 of Click Start. If you weren’t involved in the portal user consultation process last year then you may not know that in recent months we’ve been working on the latest upgrade to the Click Start software.
The Click Start portal has been given a radical makeover. The red and black pages have been replaced with a new lighter, cleaner colour scheme and a simple, less cluttered interface. The new seach interface makes finding information on Click Start super-easy, with clear new catagories and icons and a simple 3-step search process and results window. Portal Editors have a new, improved Admin area giving them an instant overview of all Wikis in their borough. It makes managing their local portal quick and easy. Wiki owners can now choose to make their Wikis private. There’s also a range of great new colour themes they can add to their Wikis.
So how will the upgrade affect you? The Click Start local portals will be offline for a few days while we tag the existing Wikis to make them easy to search. Visitors to www.clickstart.org.uk will find a notification to say the site is temporarily unavailable. Wiki users can still log into their Wikis by clicking on the ‘Login to your Wiki’ button, or by visiting www.clickstart.org.uk/user/login directly. Also visitors can visit the Click Start blog as usual by clicking the ‘Visit the Click Start Community’ button. We estimate that the new improved local portals should be live and available by Tuesday 3rd May 2011.
We are working hard to ensure that disruption to Click Start is kept to a minimum during this period of transition and we thank you all for being patient. We know it’ll be worth the wait!
Click Start now has a feature that lets you upload video files directly to your Wiki, without the need for first uploading to YouTube. You can still use the YouTube option if you want to. If you are uploading video to Click Start directly, here are some tips:
1. Make sure that the video file you are trying to upload is less than 9mb in size. We recommend that your video file is between 5-9 mb. If your file is bigger than 9mb then before uploading it you must compress it. You can compress video files in Windows Movie Maker. For a guide on how to do this click HERE.
2. Try to keep your video clips short, so not more 40 seconds long. This will make the clip easier to upload. This is also good practice for keeping your Wikis usable and accessible by not giving your visitors too much information in one go.
Bring organisations and service providers from your borough to the Click Start Wiki making afternoon at the Rix Centre on Tuesday 8th June 2010! You can download the Wikimaking publicity flyer here:Click Start Wiki Maker Flyer. So make sure you come along to the workshop where you will find support and guidance on building easy-build, accessible Click Start Wiki websites. The workshop will run from 1pm. If you will be attending please email info@rixcentre.org
We have added a new feature on the Click Start Wikis which allows you to choose a different kind of page to display your information.
Now when you add a page of content to a section you can choose between having the normal page, which has a large image and some words, or you can choose to have a more text based page which has a smaller thumbnail image, space for lots of text and to which you can add up to 6 links. We would welcome your comments about this new feature which you can view and learn how to use by clicking HERE.
Struggling to make your logos and images fit nicely into the central image space on your Wiki home page? Watch this instruction video and find out how it’s done.
This week’s Wiki of the Week is a Havering website called ‘Transition After School’. It has an amazingly useful section called the ‘What’s Next Directory’. This is a directory of links to text based documents that provide tons of valuable info about Transition, from simple explanations of person centred planning, to guidance on making choices about what to do when you leave school. They are a brilliant resource and full of useful web links, phone numbers, simple explanations of relevant laws and policies and step by step advice on each topic. Make sure you add the sub-sections called ‘Making Choices‘, ‘How to Plan‘, ‘Your Rights’ and ‘Advocacy’ to your portal as they all contain information that is relevant to young people in every London borough.
If you made a Wiki last year but have missed out on recent Click Start news then you’re probably asking yourself “My Wiki looks different, what happened to my Wiki?”. Don’t worry, your website is not broken and none of the content you had on your original website has been lost.
Over the past six months we have improved the Click Start software, making it even easier to use. Each new Wiki has a home page featuring a spider-web design with six clear sections for your content. We have also added a cool navigation map to each of your pages, so you always know where you are. Click here to find out more about Click Start phase 2.
In January we transferred all Click Start 1 websites (above left) into Click Start 2 websites (below right). On a small number of Wikis not all of the content transferred over. Don’t worry, we still have all of the original content and have rebuilt most of the Wikis that needed attention. If your website needs rebuilding you might choose to do this yourself and take the opportunity to improve, re-order and add to your website at the same time. Perhaps you always wanted to finish your Wiki but never got round to it. If you want to rebuild your Wiki yourself just download the instructions from the Guides, Help & Tools page. If you want us to rebuild your Wiki for you or help you get started you can contact us. So check out the new design and enjoy your new Wiki!
With the Wiki making workshop coming up you might want to start planning some of the websites you intend to make. You can download the latest planning tools from the Tools Guides & Help section. You might also find it helpful to have a look at the modelwiki to get ideas on how to organise your sections and find standard images that are free for you to use.
The sole purpose of the Click Start blog is to support you, the community of Click Start Wiki Makers and Portal Editors, and help you to make accessible, easy to understand information for people with learning difficulties. We are in the process of updating the blog. Tell us how we can make this blog even more useful for you? What would you like to see? You can email your suggestions to info@rixcentre.org, or even better, share your suggestions with the Click Start community by adding your comments to this post!
This week’s WIKI OF THE WEEKis the Daffodil Advocacy Project’s website. The Wiki is very clear and easy to understand and contains a really helpful and generic section called ‘What is advocacy?’ that you should add to your portals. Daffodil have also added an ‘under construction’ place holder for one of their unfinished sections. This is a really good idea as it lets visitors to the website know exactly what is going on. If you want to use the same placeholder for your own unfinished sections you will be able to find it in the gallery….just don’t forget to come back and finish building your website later.
This is a blog site for the community of people involved in making accessible information for learning disability using the Click Start software. The Click Start software allows you to make simple, 'easy read' multimedia websites, which we refer to as 'Wikis'. On the left are blog posts giving the latest Click Start news. Below are links to top Wiki websites and a list of our Click Start pages which contain info about the project, user guides, learning materials and Wiki registration forms.
