BADC Site Guide

Introduction

The World Wide Web is the principal interface to the BADC. It provides access to both public and restricted datasets (provided you have a login account for the latter) and both technical and science information about the data. It also provides a number of services, including access to the BADC Trajectory Service .

Design

A fixed tab menu system - as shown below - has been adopted throughout the BADC web site to provide fast and easy navigation through the whole site. It also allows users to quickly get familiar with the site and its content - tabs have been chosen by analogy with a filing system.

There are 6 main top tabs corresponding to 6 main sections of the BADC web site i.e.: Home, My BADC, Data, Search, Community and Help. The user may go from one tab to any other by clicking on the chosen tab itself. The selected tab will then appear in dark blue and move in the foreground. The other 5 unselected tabs will remain in the background in lighter blue.

Under each selected main tab (dark blue), a sub-menu dark blue bar will appear, including links to most visited sub-sections within the selected tab section. In the example above, the Home tab has been selected and this Home part of the web site presents 3 most visited sub-sections: one about "more about the BADC", a second about "login" and a third about "New user registration".

Note that to avoid overcrowding on the blue menu bar, only most visited sub-sections are displayed on the menu bar under each tab. There are often more sub-sections under each tab than displayed on the blue menu bar. All sub-sections available under each main tab are always indexed on the tab index page, i.e. when the user selects a tab, an index page will be displayed at the same time, containing links to all sub-sections under the selected tab. A good illustration of this is the Help section (where the blue menu bar shows much less sub-sections than the index page).

Similarly, a fixed bottom blue bar remains at the bottom of all our web pages. This bottom bar displays the last modified date of the current page displayed above, and 2 shortcuts: one for going back to the BADC Home front page and another to contact BADC Support.

Content

Home tab:

Under the Home tab sits the BADC Home page (http://nerc.badc.rl.ac.uk). From the Home page, there are links to "About the BADC", including background information on the BADC, its "History", "Job opportunities" and also a link to "Research" work at the BADC.

From the Home tab, a registered user may use the Login link to directly log on to "My BADC" section, while a new user may register with the BADC by following the link to New User Registration. A registered user may also apply for access to additional datasets following the link Apply for datasets.

My BADC tab:

The My BADC section is the registered user personalised page at BADC. All registered users will be able to use their own "My BADC" section. From "My BADC", users will be able to view and edit their own contact details, change password, view which datasets they are authorised to access (and pending requests), get to data and related documentation and software they have been granted access to, access their "Workspace", and perform quick searches.

Data tab:

Under the Data tab are presented all data related activities, e.g. get and submit data. The "Get Data" is the gateway to the BADC Archive from which users may download data directly over the web. Documentation about the "Access Rules" is also provided under this section. A section dedicated to science programmes currently submitting data, documentation or software to the BADC is also available ("Submit Data"). A complete list of all datasets held at the BADC can be viewed ("Dataset Index") and finally the "Data Extractor" is a web-interfaced service to registered users with access to selected datasets (e.g. MIDAS Surface data, CSIP, some ECMWF data, HadCM3 data). It allows the user to define and extract subsets from a selected dataset.

Search tab:

Under the Search tab are displayed all BADC searching facilities including search for keyword in the BADC datasets catalogue, in the whole BADC website, and in Met Office stations catalogue. Users may also search other NERC data centres via the NERC MetaData Gateway. A full A-Z index of BADC webpages is also provided.

Community tab:

The Community tab includes the collaboratory workspaces project components aiming at promoting interaction and collaboration between UK atmospheric scientists. These components are "News" (where recent news are published), "Workspaces" which provides a platform for collaboration between groups at geographically remote sites (e.g. discussions on chosen topics may be initiated in this section between atmospheric scientists), "Conferences" providing information on future conferences and seminars, "Who's Who" to find out who our users are, what research they are doing, what institutes they are from etc., and the BADC "Trajectory service", a service providing a user-friendly interface to an atmospheric trajectory model. Other services are presented under this section such as the Meeting Registration service, the mailing lists service, the Project Spaces service (restricted FTP access to disk space dedicated to a specific project), Ancillary file service and the Data Extractor. There is also a link to services that the BADC used to provide but that are now retired (Retired services).

Help! tab:

The last tab is the Help! tab unveiling the Help Central Page. The Help Central page has been developed and divided into 6 sections: "Help with Data", "Help with Data Tools", "Help with Web site", "Help with Administration", "Other useful information" and "Contacting the BADC". This page has been compiled from most recurrent user queries so that the Help is now available online. However, if users did not find the answer to their queries then they should contact the BADC Helpdesk (badc@rl.ac.uk).

We hope you will enjoy browsing through the BADC website.

Home Contact Disclaimer
Last Modified: