Once upon a time, many moons ago, there was a thriving online community of deaf and hard-of-hearing people who participated in a forum called the Deaf Tribe. Such was the strong sense of community here, that after a while the people regarded themselves, rather than the forum itself, as the Deaf Tribe.

(Even more moons earlier than this, the community revolved around the forums at the RNID, but this first collapsed amidst online arguing, then was taken away only to be replaced with a massively inferior software, and in the fullness of time the RNID decided that they did not have the resources to support it and it now resides in oblivion. The community were already starting to see the difficulties of establishing a permanent, stable, long-term home).

However, the Tribe was based on PHP board software, which was fine for posting simple messages, but had little else to actually offer the community. So it came to pass that the founder of Tribal Villages, Dale Mellor, contemplated the design of a new kind of forum, written from scratch to provide a more immersive experience.

The need for new software was exacerbated by the fact that the original Tribe forum disappeared due to useless system administrators, who lost the forum due to hardware problems and did not have a backup. A new Tribe was soon established on a different system (but which used the same underlying software).

Then the world flipped on its head. Very many people decided the new concept would be worth trying out, the second original Tribe forum started to show the same cracks as the first one and became erratic, and the Tribe administrator, er, fell out of popularity (it's a story best not recited). The forum was unceremoniously closed down.

To fill the void that opened up, a new forum called Smoke Signals was formed.

It quickly became apparent, however, that a new forum should not be run by a single individual, but should be regarded as a community resource, run by the community. Thus, the new village was born, and was quickly blessed with a written constitution which put the village onto a parliamentary-style democracy. Volunteers came forward to moderate, were duly elected, ratified the constitution, and the Village has been going happily (alongside Smoke Signals) ever since!

The role of the moderators

The power of the moderators

There are some great places around the Village, and there's even a Village Map to help you get about the place. In addition, the places are arranged to make it feel like a real Village - we've got a High Street, Uptown and Downtown districts, a Housing Scheme and much more. To get a deep breath of that fresh Village air, just go to the Village map (you can click on the Village logo at the top of any screen) and take a gentle stroll around.

• The High street makes for an interesting visit if you're after information about goods or services, or maybe you fancy popping into the newsagents for a glance at the gossip?
• Go Uptown if you want to look in the Library, talk about the arts, philosophy or religion. The Village maintenance depot is here too, if you need to report a fault.
• If you like a good old chin-wag, then head on over to the Downtown area and have a look around - there's a Night Club, a Cinema and even a Funny Farm!
• Perhaps you're looking for someone specific? Try looking around the Bow Bells Housing Scheme - most people have a place there, and you can leave them a message.
• The Hospital District has a wealth of help and information relating to all sorts of health-related things. There are even a couple of self-help groups in here as well, so have a good look around.

There's much more besides, but the best way to see it is to go to the Village and experience it for yourself.

Netiquette is all about on-line behaviour. Quite simply, it's etiquette for the net; some do's and don'ts that'll make your on-line experience that little bit more rewarding. It's also designed to steer people away from the kind of behaviour that has lead to the decline and fall of many good forums in the past. We want to learn by other peoples mistakes, and avoid this fate for the Village - and we hope you share that view. Please take the time to ponder each of the following:

You get yourself feeling even more at home if you spend a few minutes setting up your User Profile - a list of all your special options and choices. There's a link to the User Profile settings at the top of most pages, and when you click it, you'll see a fairly big page of information. The top half of the page looks like this: This section of the page is concerned with critical user information. This is essentially your registration details, and so changes are only allowed in a controlled way. If you change any of the details in this section, you must type in your Village password in the Old password box before you click the SUBMIT button. Also, for security reasons, if you do change anything you'll be sent an E-Mail asking you to confirm the changes before they are actioned. Please read the E-Mail carefully and follow it's instructions.

The bottom half of the page contains all the fun stuff. It looks like this: We'll look at the various options in turn.

Note: RSS feeds are rather technical. You don't need to know what they are or how they work in order to use and enjoy the Village. Some Villagers find the RSS option useful whilst others never bother with it at all, so if you're not interested in RSS, you can happily skip this next section altogether.

The Village provides its content in RSS format. RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication and is used as a way of delivering web content in convienient packages. The content that the Village provides is the messages that users post, and the packaging for the messages takes the form of XML tags which gives machine-readable structure to the information. This means that any RSS Reader can read the Village posts.

You'll need to get an RSS Reader application if you're interested in using the feeds - try typing "rss reader" in Google and browsing a few sites. They come in all manner of styles, for all platforms, at all sorts of prices. Some are even free. The instructions for installing and setting up such an application will depend entirely on your own circumstances, and the application that you choose, so be sure to read any supplied documentation carefully. The critical pieces of information that you need to know about the Village RSS feeds is their addresses. They are:

You've read all this and you've still got questions about The Deaf Village? Don't worry! Why not browse through our most Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)? You're bound to find an answer in there!

If you prefer, you can dive right in! OK, go straight to The Village.