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1. What is ScoutBase UK?
2. What are the objectives behind ScoutBase UK?
3. What is on ScoutBase UK?
4. How do I find my way around ScoutBase UK?
5. What happens if I can't find an answer?
6. Browser compatibility - Which web-browser should I use?
7. I would like to link to ScoutBase UK - can I? and is there an image to use?
8. What if I find something is wrong on the site?
9. What else do I need other than my browser?
10. Printing pages
11. Trouble shooting

ScoutBase UK is the official Members Website of The Scout Association, and has been running since the summer of 1996. It is primarily a collection of resources for Leaders and other adults involved with Scouting and related youth organisations.

ScoutBase UK was originally created to unify the various collections of Scouting information made available at that time by individuals on the World Wide Web. More on the history of ScoutBase UK is available, including an article published in Scouting Magazine in May 1998, just two years after the Site first saw the light of day on the Web.

The objective of the ScoutBase UK team is best summarised in our mission statement:

Mission Statement

• To provide a quality easy-to-use Members Web Site.
• To provide useful and trustworthy support material for Scouting activities through the Internet.
• To provide a comprehensive and up-to-date resource of official Scouting information.
• To enable Scout Members to keep in touch through the Internet.

ScoutBase UK has articles on all aspects of Scouting both in the UK and around the world; the Site comprises in excess of 5000 (text) pages together with a vast number of images. The Site is probably the largest of this nature in the UK containing as it does over 1 gigabyte of information. Material on ScoutBase UK is either the formally supplied programme etc information provided by Gilwell Park, or ancilliary items in support of the programme which will have been authored by competent individuals and approved by Gilwell Park.

As you have seen from the front page, ScoutBase UK is broken up into six main sections:

To help new users move around the site, we've prepared a guide to to the various navigational elements to be found on every page.

Before starting to navigate your way around you need to understand that ScoutBase UK is built up in a hierarchical manner.

Basically, a series of index (or menu) pages lead down to underlying pages of content, or to other index (menu) pages. It's therefore useful to understand the concept of the 'Up' button on the navigation bar (see below). The 'Up' button will always take you back to the index (menu) page for the area of the site that you're in.

Navigation Bar

The first row of links give you access to:

• Home/Up - general navigation
• Accessibility/Help - information about accessibility features on ScoutBase UK and also this page
• Log-in/Sign up - give you access to the Membership Database
• Search - links to the saerch page - which allows you to search both ScoutBase and the Scouts.org.uk site.

The row of logos give access to the main Scouts.org.uk site (click on the Scout Logo), the Young people's sectional pages and to the main page of ScoutBase

The final six links across the top of the page take you to the main page of the respective areas of the site.

Left hand bar

The structure of the section you are in is shown in the left hand margin of the page. These links help you quickly navigate within the section you are currently in. This list expands depending on your exact location.

Footer

The footer of the page contains a couple of things:

• A copyright notice and a contact us link.

Other navigation

You will see "more..." links on the pages these will in general take you to new pages with more information on the topic on.

If you can not find the answer you are looking for on ScoutBase UK then you have a number of options, you could contact one of your local Commissioners, or you could contact The Scout Information Centre which is based at Gilwell Park.

The latest ScoutBase UK design is built to the XHTML 1.0 specification, using CSS to render the pages. Most modern browsers should then support the correct rendering of the pages, if you are finding the pages difficult to view we would recommend that you upgrade your browser to the latest version available.

We have tested the site with the following browsers:

• Microsoft Windows:
  Internet Explorer v6+
  Firefox v1+ (and other Mozilla engined browsers)
  Opera v8+
• Mac OS/X
  Firefox
  Camino
  Safari
• Linux
  Firefox
  Konquerer (and other KHTML browsers)

Useful links:

• Internet Explorer 7 for Windows 98, Me, NT, 2000;
• Firefox 2 for Windows 98, Me, NT, 2000, XP, Server 2003, Linux, Mac OS/X
• Opera 9 for Windows, Linux, Mac OS/X

We are currently investigating other browsers - including those for PDAs but due to a plethora of bugs and a lack of standards between the two main PDA browsers this may prove to be impossible.

If you have any problems please contact us and we will investigate. We may be unable to support older bug-ridden browsers and so as a first stage recommend upgrading to the latest browser first. It is useful if you can supply which browser (and version) and operating system (and version) you are using along with a screen shot to illustrate the problem.

By all means include a link to ScoutBase UK on your website - you can use one of the two images below, or look on the ScoutBase logos page of the the Clipart section of the site for other options.

sbuk-plain-w-200.gif	sbuk-plain-w-150.gif

To include it just download the image, and include the following text in your WWW page:

<a href="http://www.scoutbase.org.uk/"><img
  src="sbuk-plain-w-200.gif"
  alt="ScoutBase UK - Support and resources for volunteers"
  width="200" height="40" border="0"></a>

-or-

<a href="http://www.scoutbase.org.uk/"><img
  src="sbuk-plain-w-150.gif"
  alt="ScoutBase UK - Support and resources for volunteers"
  width="150" height="30" border="0"></a>

Alternatively if you wish to include a text link, then we would prefer the following text to be used.

ScoutBase UK - support and resources for volunteers.

For which you can use the following HTML:

<a href="http://www.scoutbase.org.uk/">ScoutBase UK</a> -
  support and resources for volunteers.

If you find something on the site that you believe may be incorrect, then contact The Information Centre.

In general ScoutBase UK uses HTML for its documents. There are some cases where this is not practical or desirable and we may use Adobe Acrobat or PDF files; to see the content of these files you will need a PDF viewer, e.g. Acrobat Reader.

If you have access to the CD-Rom 'Scouting essentials', then you will already have an Acrobat viewer -- there are versions for PC and Mac on the CD. If not you can look on the Adobe WWW site at: http://www.adobe.com/prodindex/acrobat/readstep.html. On this site you will find current versions for the AppleMac; the various MS operating systems; OS/2; and for various flavours of UNIX, including Linux. Many of the popular computer magazines carry Acrobat Reader on their cover CD-Roms.

To save the "toner cartridge" on your printer, there is an alternative style for the printing. If you are using one of the following browsers:

• Internet Explorer 6+
• Mozilla Firefox
• Mozilla Suite
• Safari (and related KHTML browsers)
• Camino
• Opera 8+

Then you will get a simplified copy of the page without the navigation and adverts being printed.

The site has been designed to be trouble-free in use.

One problem which has been frequently reported is a difficulty in downloading and opening Adobe Acrobat (PDF) files - in our experience this has always been rectified by the user re-installing Acrobat Reader.