Guidance on how to use this website and the Manual
The conversion of the Minnesota Stormwater Manual into a web-based application will create a new learning curve for users of the Manual. In addition to the web-based format versus the traditional hardcopy and pdf formats, the contents of the manual have been re-arranged. This guidance provides Manual users information on why we went to a web-based format, why the content was re-arranged, what the formatting style is, and most importantly, how to navigate the website.
Guidance - General Information
Contents
Categories
The wiki allows different subjects to be placed into different categories. This allows a user to view just the topics within a particular category. For example, Fact sheets could be a category that includes all the fact sheets contained within the website. A user could click on category and open the page with all categories. The user would then select the category called Fact sheets to display links to the different fact sheets within the website. The number of categories will continue to grow as the website becomes populated and organized.
Finding a topic
Each webpage within the website is essentially an article. The Manual is therefore a collection of articles, each with its own webpage. Articles usually contain multiple sub-sections. We attempted to keep articles at a reasonable length, dividing a topic into multiple articles when the length for a single article became too long.
Exporting to a pdf or Word document
Creating a book
The Minnesota Stormwater Manual uses the same software for the "Create a book" option found on the left navagation bar as Wikipedia does. Wikipedia has an excellent article on how to use this option. So with full create going to Wikipedia, click here for the Wikipedia article on how to create a book.