HTYP:Purpose Guide

This page explains how HTYP can be used for a number of specific purposes.

Small Business Owners
Many smaller businesses don't have web sites, or don't know how to update their existing site directly and easily. You'd like to post more information, or update what's there, but you have to bother someone else to do it, or spend hours remembering how to edit the HTML and upload the changes.

HTYP provides a space where you can post information about your business and update it through your web browser, at no cost. You can post specials, the latest news about the store, new products, etc. – whatever you'd like people to know about. Customers can "watch" your page (or pages) in order to be notified by email whenever an update happens. They can also provide feedback via your talk page, or send you email via HTYP's email form without you having to post your email address publicly (and risk it being harvested by spambots).

Government Users and Employees
Procedures for working with the government can be notoriously difficult and poorly documented, and government web sites tend to be administered under regulations which discourage frankness and transparency, never mind frequent and easy updating or interactive dialogue.

HTYP can provide a venue for:
 * "how-to"-style documentation of procedures for accomplishing particular tasks:
 * which forms are needed (and where they can be found)
 * what individuals to talk to
 * who is in charge of what
 * what the official rules are (and how they got that way)
 * news and changes which may affect those interacting with particular parts of the government
 * Example: In the process of trying to find help for an autistic child, User:Woozle has been documenting the mental health care system in North Carolina, i.e. the NC Division of Health and Human Services and its many departments, and building lists of the various contracted "providers" available (from which mental health clients must choose, currently with little or no information)
 * direct experience regarding what works and what doesn't
 * accountability: notes on which agencies are doing their jobs and which aren't

Everyday People
We're surrounded by advertisements for phone books and directories which each claim to be "your" directory, but almost none of them allow anything beyond very limited editing of very specific fields (the printed phone books can't be editing at all, due to the non-editable nature of ink; it remains unclear how they can claim to be "your" directory in any real sense).

HTYP allows you to add whatever information may be relevant, in a free-style format – narrative text, lists of links, or whatever seems best. You can even create entirely new pages, if the subject seems to need a page to itself. For example, we have a lot of town pages on HTYP, but most of them are minimal and there are many, many more which need pages.

You can also upload pictures and diagrams -- a picture of a product you are reviewing, a wiring diagram you worked out, a picture of the results of a recipe you have posted.

Also, everything you put on a page becomes searchable, and you can assign pages to categories to make it easier to find related pages. (Example: A category for pages about things in Durham, NC.)