The South Silver Spring Neighborhood Association now has a website! For those of you already familiar with blogs and wikis, you can skip this primer.

The website is divided into two major sections: the Blog and the Community Guide.

Blog
Many of you are probably already familiar with blogs, where select people publish an article and then anyone can comment. When a new entry is published, it appears at the top of the page.

From any point in our website, you can click the “Blog” link on the top navigation bar to return to the main blog page, showing the most recent entry.

The blog also has an integrated Event Calendar, which you will see on the right column of the blog. Dates in red have an event. If you hover your mouse over the date, you will see a short description. Clicking the date will load up the extended description. If you use iCal, Mozilla Sunbird, or Google Calendar for your personal calendar, you can subscribe to the SSSNA Event Calendar by clicking the little “broadcast” icon on the calendar on the sidebar. The icon is located just above the month.

Community Guide
The Community Guide takes the form of a wiki, which is Hawaiian for ‘quick’, because it is a website that can be quickly edited. The website contains information about local parks, businesses and residences in the community, as well as information about business that provide services to South Silver Spring. But the twist is that anyone can make changes to the website. All changes are tracked, so pages can be reverted quickly and easily. To make a change, all you have to do is click the “edit” tab at the top of the article, make the necessary changes, and then click the save button.

You are encouraged to sign up for an account using the personal toolbox to the left of the articles. While you can still make changes without logging in, changes made with a username will lend credibility to your edits.

To get started, click the Community Guide tab and then read the articles in the “Help” box. The help articles are, by the way, editable as well. If you are a business owner, be sure to read the help documentation for some tips.