WE HAVE TRIED HARD to make the SSSD Website easy to navigate and pleasant to use. As it is a large and complex site, it may be helpful for you to know a little about its overall structure and navigation.
The purpose of the site is to inform and educate you about this unfamiliar new sleddog breed, the Seppala Siberian Sleddog. Accordingly, the site contains several "layers" of knowledge about some key topics. Once you've read the introductory material linked on the page headed "The SSSD Ideal", you should go on to read the text on the GENERAL INFORMATION page; it is a capsule summary of facts about the breed and its history. Within that summary text are numerous links to pages that expand key topics; each expansion page opens in a new window so you don't lose the GENERAL INFO page; you can just close these windows when you have finished with each individual expanded topic. Sometimes a link at the end of the expansion text will refer you to another page with further information, or to one of our downloadable documents. Thus you will find more than one level or layer of information about many topics.
We hope you'll have to use your browser's "Back" button very little. On all except a few specialised pages you'll find a basic set of links at the bottom of the page. To keep these page footers easy to use, they usually contain just links to the CORE PAGES or subdomains of the site or to other pages directly relevant to the page you're on. "THE SSSD IDEAL" is simply an introductory page, useful to first-time site visitors. GENERAL INFORMATION is the most useful core page (our "home page"); it's the one to bookmark for your next visit to the site. It contains the most links to various aspects of the SSSD Project, but not to everything! Pay attention to the dark blue link bar at the left of the GENERAL INFO page, as well as to the inline text links . Links within the text of the GENERAL INFO page are largely unique, not all are duplicated in the blue link bar. It pays off explore the GENERAL INFO page thoroughly; there are a couple of small surprises hidden here and there.
Our DOCUMENTS subdomain's index page controls our files of documents designed especially for you to download or print hard copies. The HISTORY subdomain has a number of special essays on various phases of the breed's past; this material is of general interest to Siberian Husky fanciers also, since the two breeds share a common history in many respects. (Many of the topics on the HISTORY index page are unique to that page and not linked to GENERAL INFORMATION.) We are in process of reorganising our PHOTO GALLERIES as of summer 2006; for awhile the two older galleries will still be available on the GALLERIES subdomain; then they should be replaced with more comprehensive collections of larger images controlled by a gallery application.
Two more recent subdivisions of the site are NEWS (which now contains our onsite "current events" bulletins and also our SLEDDOGBLOG and our online newsletter, SLEDDOG LEGACY ONLINE), and SIBERIAN HUSKY BLOODLINES. This latter subdomain is our contribution to Siberian Husky education, offering for the first time on the Web a comprehensive resource explaining in detail a substantial number of historic Siberian Husky breeders' kennels and bloodlines. We have a separate mini-website called SEPPALA HISPANA that offers basic breed information in the Spanish language for our friends in Spain and Latin America, and we are just beginning construction in summer 2006 of a similar French-language site under a separate subdomain. Our private online FORUMS for active, committed Project supporters constitute yet another subdomain.
SEPPALA KENNELS, the parent kennel of the SSSD breed, now has a website of its own, as does the Agriculture-recognised federally-chartered WORKING CANINE ASSOCIATION OF CANADA. The corresponding International record-keeping association for Seppalas and other legacy sleddog breeds, the INTERNATIONAL SEPPALA ASSOCIATION, also now has its own independent website. We should also mention SEPPALAWIKI, which is an independent Wikipedia-style online Seppala knowledge base with Project affiliation.
To summarise: the following are our CORE PAGES and major subdomains from which you can navigate to all the detailed information, documents, photo collections, etc. contained on the Seppala Siberian Sleddog Project's family of web services.
The website is full of photos and images. If you browse with images turned off (does anybody still do that?), you're missing a lot. For those of you who still have a really slow dial-up Internet connection but would still like to see some of our photographs, we recommend our original PHOTO GALLERY, which is set up to minimise image loading time; if you take the Gallery photos in order, the next image is always loading while you view the current one, so there's less waiting time.
It has taken many long hours of hard work to make this website informative and enjoyable. Please respect our labour by respecting our copyright. We are not happy to find our photographs on other websites or on teeshirts and coffee mugs, nor are we pleased to find people linking their classified ads to this site to help them sell Siberian Husky puppies over the Internet. We're happy for you to download and read our documents, but please keep it to personal use and write us to ask permission before you use anything for other purposes, including club newsletters.
PLEASE DO NOT RIP ANY MATERIAL FROM THIS WEBSITE FOR POSTING TO ANOTHER WEBSITE! Siberian Husky Clubs and breeders in particular are warned that our material is copyright and that our copyright will be enforced. Please don't be lazy -- develop your own website content! THE "ISSSC" IN PARTICULAR IS HEREBY WARNED THAT ANY MORE INCIDENTS OF IMAGE RIPPING FROM THEM MAY RESULT IN LEGAL ACTION.
We wish you happy Web trails and good sledding!
