CFSupport | Q & A | How to Use this Site

Questions and Answers (Q&A), Our Way
Insightful, Conversational, Encouraging,
Long-winded, and from Experience

Q&A Index

How do I Use this Website?

Introduction
Overview of Sections
What Changes Most?
Notes on Design, Printing, and more
We help you Power Search Elsewhere
Jumping from this site to our Yahoo Groups/Email Archive and back
Accessibility Tips
Alphabetical Index of Almost Every Section on Site

A D G L P Q S T

CFSupport <-> CFS Support <-> CFS and FMS Support

Q. I don't have much energy or concentration.
I am easily frustrated. I can't remember where I find stuff on the web.
Can you help me navigate this website better, faster, at all?

A. Yes! Since we know first hand about the cognitive problems, limited energy and limited upright at a computer time...

we've been adding easier ways to find things on a certain page

- more Tables of Contents for the individual web page you are looking at
- more links for you to jump directly where you want to go next
- a search this site page
- making our pages more likely to pop up in Google and Yahoo searches

Also, we've been adding more and easier ways to navigate around the site

- a site map that lists our pages, divided by major area
- expanding the drop down menu on the home page to include more items,
sorted alphabetically, and now with some cross referencing
- a new site index, housed on this page
- a Table of all the Newsletter Tables of Contents

Every page has at least "Home" "Email Us" "Subscribe" "Search" "Sitemap" at the top and bottom. Don't know how to get to where you want to go? From any page:

Choose "Home" to use the left side major area links;
Choose "Home" to use more extensive drop down menu, then CLICK;
Choose "Sitemap" and see the overview of the website by major area;
Choose "Search" to scan this site for keywords; or
Choose "Subscribe" to go sign in at our Yahoo site and read archived emails.

Search will always be somewhat incomplete because search engines either don't have all of our pages or the latest changes of our pages. Therefore, browsing is very important. Choosing "Email Us" to ask us is another option.

Below, we've added an alphabetical index list similar to the one in the Home page's drop down menu. This one has more cross referencing and explanation.

Have you not noticed the drop down menu at the Home page? You are not alone! Also, when you use it, be sure to click the button next to the drop down menu to go to the selected section. Several people, including us. forget that, too. Repeatedly!

More step saving tips:

Use bookmark of the pages you check or need to refer to most frequently.
Use your browser's status bar - look at web addresses under links before you click.
(In Safari - the switch for statud bar is under the View menu.)

Overview of Sections

Most websites have sections of their own content such as newsletters, articles, events. Our content sections, we're we write about stuff or list it with some detail, are

Q&A, Our Way
Newsletters aka Group Newsletters
Events - Upcoming DC Area, Global, Past
EGG - Elly's Gratitude Group Descriptions, Resources, Summaries
Clinical Trials/Studies
Books & Videos, Amazon Store
About Us
Meetings: Guidelines, Directions
Speakers - Upcoming
Speakers - Prior: Contact Info, Links to articles by and about
Practitioners
What is CFS? What is FM?

Also, many websites have a "Links" page. We probably have more links to other sites than original content! We direct you to leave our website often to go see great information already elsewhere on the web, trusting you'll come back sometime. If we do have content for a subject that matches one of our links categories, we link to it so you can see what we offer in combination to other authors commenting on the same subject.

We've organized our many links into a few major topics, each with multiple sections:

Resources, References, and Links by Subject - 8 pages, 51 subjects so far
Other Groups - A directory of CFS, FM, OI, and related Associations & Groups
In the Media - a listing of news articles, interviews, tv, and radio
Webrings & Friends

What changes the most? What do I check when I visit?

The sections that get upgraded the most are "In the Media" as news is happening quite frequently now with the awareness campaigns, new research findings and enrollments, and more human interest stories; "Events" as speakers are scheduled; and "Books & Videos" as new items appear almost monthly.

The "Practitioners List" gets lots of little changes on the fly as we get tips about people to add and remove. We suggest to look at a certain specialty when you begin to have interest in it, copy and paste just the section you are most interested in to a document or email for printing, make notes on the print out as you learn about insurance options and ask around about the practitioners, and then check back as your decision time approaches to see if we made changes.

In 1st Qtr 2007, its the "Q&A, Our Way" section undergoing the most expansion. We are reviving and editing some of the wisdom from earlier emails and meeting summaries and putting it into new content pages. Check the Q&A Index every couple of weeks to see if a new page is there. Here is where we will try to pile our collected suggestions for explaining what's wrong and what helps.

"Group Newsletters" get written sporadically. The items in them are usually repeats from our CFSupport E-mails. These have been averaging every other month. PDFs of a Print Newsletter for meetings have been showing up twice a year.

Group E-mails sometimes alert people to major web changes. Consider signing up for our CFSupport leader announcements only at Yahoo Groups. There is a "Subscribe" link on every page with "Home" "Email Us" "Search" and "Sitemap"

If you have a specific question about the website, please Email Us.

Notes about Links, Printing, Design, Organization...

Links: We try to fix most broken links, so Email Us when you find one. The exception is on the media pages - the links to news articles. We leave the orginal link so you at least know how to find the original source/news outlet. If we learn of a new place, we'll add that link, too.
Visual Style: We've tried to keep the design simple, avoid animation, too much color or busy-ness. Our text sizes vary, see next section for tips on changing the size of text that suits you best.
Our Filing System: We've tried to group similar things together so readers can more easily find them again.
Printing: Some of our pages are very long. You may want to select just the portion you want to print and paste it into a document or blank email and print only that. Also you may want to select "Black Only" as a print option to save on color ink.
Color: We use navy blue lettering in many places because it makes our active link color of blue not be so jarring to sensitive eyes and brains.

We help you Search Elsewhere!

In order to keep our site up to date, we developed ways to more efficiently search the web for finding news items for specific conditions, finding support groups, looking up events. We've built those search phrases into links and put them in the sections relevent to and/or we give the sources to check for updates. These are powerful tools when feeling brave enough to click because...

You can get up to date info even if we don't update a section for awhile.
You can more easily find something we wouldn't necessarily include.
and
You can personalize the search if the results are too narrow or too broad for you by adding a location or changing the search terms. Look up at the url, the web address, or look at what is in search engine entry box. See if you can adjust it more for your needs.

Example, to check today's news, I open the home page. Then I click on "In the Media" on the left. Them I click what is currently the 5th choice, "Search the web for News: As it happens, By the Week/Month, Archived." That takes me to a bunch of search options, but I most often pick the first one. I've copied it here if you'd like to try it:

"Google CFS, FM, ME News Search."

Another power search we provide is for finding research articles. These are found under Resources> Research Publications:

PubMed CFS Search PubMed
PubMed FM Search PubMed

We like sending you to other sites, giving you tools to discover what you are seeking. We trust you'll come back if you need or want to, soon or months from now, maybe in a few years. To find your way back, use a bookmark or two or search the web for "nova cfs (or fms) support group." Perhaps instead, our site is just a one time stepping stone along your path. Either way, thanks for stopping by. We wish you your best.

Jumping Back and Forth from here to our Yahoo CFSupport Site

Like this website is called CFSupport, our Yahoo group is called CFSupport, too. It can be a little confusing. Yahoo owns Geocities and so it can get even more confusing when trying to describe the two websites. We're used to confusion, so we can get through this.

Every page has at least 2 links to jump to our Yahoo group. The link is called "Subscribe" to direct new members wishing to join. It is also just a convenient link for established members. Just click to go to the Yahoo Groups CFSupport Home Page and sign in. There, search and read archived emails, look at photos, check the rideshare database, vote in our polls, and/or use the handy DC area meeting calendar.

To get back to this Geocities CFSupport site, use the "Related Link" on the home page at Yahoo Groups CFSupport, look in the Links section and choose the first link after the folders, or use a bookmark you may have previously set up.

General Accessibility Tips

Enlarging/Shrinking Text, Speech to Text, Accessibility

Some people need bigger or smaller lettering than we publish in and our pages appear in different sizes. We try to use good spacing and colors, and make things as simple and readable as possible, but learning some adjustments for you specific needs may make for a more enjoyable web visit.

Apple Mac OS X
On Macs, which our leadership swears by for ease of use and intuitiveness, the way to make text look bigger is to hold the Command/Apple Key down and press the "+/=" key. Repeating that makes the text bigger still. Pressing Command "-/_" (minus/hyphen) makes the text smaller. It still works regardless of the Shift key being held down or CAPS lock on. For text to speech options, so you can close your eyes and let your computer read to you and more options, visit
Apple Macintosh Accessiblity Options - Literary Access Online

MS Windows
If you want to change the size of the text while surfing the web & you are using Netscape Navigator, all you need to do is press CTRL + ]. Maybe this or a similar thing works in other programs. For other accessiblity features, see
Microsoft Windows Accessibility Options - Literary Access Online
Guide for Aging Computer Users,Ten Tips for the Awkward Age of Computing
Baby boomers can use Microsoft Windows XP to customize their computers and counter the effects of age-related difficulties with vision, hearing, and dexterity.
Enlarging Text in Microsoft® Internet Explorer

Alphabetical Index List of Almost Everything on Site CFSupport:

A C D G L P S T