Using Slaw

We’re a multi-author blog that’s been running since 2005, which means that this site is rich with material from various sources about various matters. It also means that unless you’re the adventurous sort who clicks this and that to see what turns up, you might be missing out on some of this richness, even though we try to make our site as user-friendly as possible. Hence this little guide — and the request that you let us know if something about the site is confusing or if the site is lacking a feature that would make it more useful. We practice what one of our members identified as kaizen, which means we will make regular improvements when we think of them.

blogs & columns & more, oh my!

We have something like two dozen members who will post entries to the blog each week. These blog posts appear in the central column of the home page and represent the beating heart of Slaw. Our bloggers write about whatever catches their interest, usually — but not always — something with a connection to law. The basic, straightforward way to enjoy Slaw is to read these entries each day, either by coming to this site or by subscribing to an RSS feed or email delivery of our content. You can learn about our bloggers by clicking on their names as they appear at the head of an article, or by going to the page about Our Contributors.

The title is where you’ll find the “permalink” for each blog post. Clicking on an entry title on the main page will take you to a page where you can read that entry on its own. If you would prefer, you can read blog posts in large type by using our EasyReader function: simply click on the little document icon that appears beside the title and you’ll be presented with the post in a large type overlay.

We also offer columns as well as blog posts. Slaw has a large roster of columnists who write less frequently for us and focus on a particular topic: legal information, justice issues, legal publishing, legal marketing, the practice of law, legal technology, outsourcing, or e-discovery. The latest columns appear excerpted in the left sidebar; simply click on the header or on the “more” at the bottom of the excerpt to read the entire column. You can learn about our columnists by going to the page on Our Columnists. The columns appear within the regular RSS or email feeds, along with blog post, and are identified as such only by the “columns” category label at the bottom.

The more? Well you can see the tab marked “fun stuff” and the one below for “comments,” both of which you should check out; but unless you scroll down past our listing of categories you might not see Slaw’s Linkblog in the right sidebar. The Linkblog is where our members can make you aware of interesting developments that perhaps don’t merit a whole entry. You can subscribe to a feed for the Linkblog. And below that in the right sidebar is SlawNET, our blogroll: a linked list of all of the great blogs that our members maintain in addition to their work on Slaw.

on your mobile

We want you to be able to enjoy Slaw whether you’re reading us on your laptop, your desktop, or your mobile phone. We’re trying out the WordPress Mobile Pack plugin right now, which should mean that all you have to do on your mobile is go to our regular URL to find a mobile version waiting for you automatically.

At the moment the formatting is very basic. Columns and blog posts are merged in the single column (columns are identified by their categories, at the bottom of each entry). You can comment and read comments as well in this mobile format.

categories

You’ll notice that at the bottom of each post (and column) there’s a phrase that loosely captures the topic of the entry. Slaw makes use of a limited number of these categories, in order to help us — and you — organize our offerings. You’ll find a list of these categories lower down in the right sidebar, each linked to a page where posts or columns on that topic are listed. As well, you can find that same list using the archives / by category item in the main menu, which is always present at the top of every page. An item might be categorized by more than one term.

taming the flow

You’re busy. You have a lot you should be reading, and more comes in each day. How to manage? We offer a number of ways to help you get the best out of Slaw. Of course, because we’d like to see you put our content at the top of your “must read” list, we hope you’ll either visit the website at least once a day or read us via an RSS or email subscription. If you’re on Twitter, you’ll see that we tweet an announcement @slaw_dot_ca about the publication of each blog post and column, giving you the title and a few words of the entry so you can know what’s available and decide when you want to read the whole entry.

If you read Slaw for our entries on a particular topic or for entries written by a particular person, you can tailor your RSS feed to get just the topics or authors that you want. Our subscribing to Slaw page offers you separate RSS feeds and email subscriptions for each of our categories (including the columns on that same topic). And our author archive (archives / by author in the main menu) provides a link to the RSS feed for entries by each of our authors.

But if you’d like to have a single RSS feed made up of a mix of some categories and some authors, you can “roll your own” on our RSS feed customizer page. Simply tick the boxes next to the items you want your RSS feed to contain and click the “submit” button at the bottom. The resulting URL, which will likely open your RSS reader, will be for the material you have chosen.

To find something in Slaw, we recommend you search for it using our search box, which appears at the top of the right sidebar. Or, because Google indexes us regularly and quickly, you could run a Google search including the phrase site:www.slaw.ca

Finally — and at the bottom — our hefty footer will contain copies of many of the links you might need in order to find a feature on Slaw.

talking back

We’d love to hear from you — if you’re a human and not a spambot, that is. Slaw invites you to comment on our blog posts and columns, expecting that your comments will be sensible, relevant, and non-libellous. We ask you first to decode a blurry word in our reCaptcha feature, necessary, alas, to weed out computerized comment spam (which rains on us and on all blogs literally by the millions each year). Then, if you’ve not had a comment on Slaw before, we ask you to wait a bit while we take a look at your comment. We moderate comments because, again alas, there are those who are unwilling or unable to be responsive and reasonable in what they say. Once you’ve had a comment approved, you should be able thereafter to be published without any wait.

Please don’t use comments (or the contact link, for that matter) to ask for legal advice. We don’t give it through Slaw directly or indirectly.