You can login to the Design Aid website with the "Open control panel" tab at the top of every page. Click on the Tab to see further options!

Now you start enjoying the advantages of a great Web 2.0 website that supports your charitable community. As well as gathering information and support from the site you can publish your news, links, events, appeals and advice direct to the website.

Here is a brief overview of how to use the Design Aid website to support your charitable projects and the charitable community as a whole.

You can login to the Design Aid website at any time through the "Open control panel" tab at the top of every page.

Once you login you will see an additional "members only menu" just below the main menu with many new options

Most menu items are self explanatory:

• Invite a friend - a simple and fast form (name, email, submit) to tell friends about the Design Aid website and invite them to join. Please do get all your friends along to check out the Design Aid website
• My Profile - check and edit your profile details including uploading your avatar and gallery pictures/files. Your profile also has many useful tabs to keep you informed of your site activity listing the news and articles you have submitted for publication each with a hit counter as well as listing your posts on the forum.
• Submit News - As long as your membership has "Author" status or above, (just ask us and we can upgrade your membership to "Author" free) you can use this to submit your own articles and news features for publication on the site and in the newsletter. You will use a simple WYSIWYG (word like) editor to write your item you can add pictures and links also. You can even add key words and meta tags for the search engines, as well as select the date if any to stop publishing the item. (TIP: while typing an article the website will think you are in active and could log you out automatically (your progress will not be saved in this situation) to avoid this you can regularly click the "Apply" button (big tick) this will keep you logged in, save and continue. Otherwise type your copy in notepad first then cut and past.
• Submit a web link - submit any useful or relevant links you have found for publication on the links pages.
• My Details - your login details, use this if you wish to change your password Logout - can also be found on the control panel.

You can also go direct to the Calendar and the forum through the main navigation menu to post your events in the calendar and your views, questions or advice on the forum.