Digging deep in the Dandavats data mine

By Antony Brennan

This web site, Dandavats.com, has become a library of articles and stories of interest for the devotees and well wishers assembled in cyber-space. Like most libraries the content you see when you come in is only a small part of that which is available.

At the risk of mixing my metaphors this ‘library’ that Dandavats has become is also a ‘mine’ of information that continues to grow deeper and deeper. If you make yourself familiar with the column on the right of the page you will find you can improve your access to the jewels that are there be uncovered.

The right hand column is like your remote control for Dandavats. It makes it easier to access the articles and stories in the archives as well as other web content you will find useful and inspiring.

Here is my guide to getting familiar with that column over there on the right.

At the top you will find the ‘Live Events’ section. Links here alert you to web sites that are making live video or audio available. If a link shows it means the event is currently taking place. If you can click you can participate immediately.

Next is the ‘Streaming News’ section. This is a collection of links to interesting content being published on other web sites. Click the links to be taken to the source, or click the bar to see the stories which have previously appeared.

Moving down the column you can make a donation to support Dandavats.com and you can see how many other readers are on-line.

Next is ‘Recent Comments by Article.’ In this section you can see which stories have produced a discussion amongst other readers. Click for access to the story or the comments.

Under ‘Blog Thoughts’ you will find interesting blogs published at Dandavats.com and around the web.

Next is the ‘Message Board’ where you will find stories that don’t make the front page but are no less interesting and useful to us all. Many items on the ‘Message Board’ inform us about events, festivals and services, etc. It’s like the message board near the water cooler.

Moving along we come to “Philosophical Corner.” This is a scrolling set of links bringing your attention to some of the more interesting articles in the archives that discuss the philosophy and science of Krishna consciousness. Click on the title bar to browse them all.

Now we come to some navigation links. You can click to find the last comments another reader has made. You can see the comments indexed by the authors’ name. You can click to see the most popular stories at Dandavats and well as the ones most people have looked at the past seven days. You can see which stories have the most comments and look at lots of general statistics about this web site.

The ‘Vaisnava Media’ section is amazing. To access this you have to allow pop-ups in your internet browser. Click on the links to access as many Krishna conscious video and audio files that you could ever watch or listen to.

The ‘Search’ box is next. This is one of my favourite tools. You can search for stories by subject, names, topics, or anything you can think of. Try this: Type ‘Citraka das’ into the box and click search. What you have is a very useful list of stories by Citraka prabhu which can help you make better use of the services the Internet makes available.

Click on one of the blue bars you can see below the search box and you will find a series of quick links. Using these you can see which web sites link to Dandavats and you can translate stories on Dandavats to a language you are more familiar with.

‘Editorials’ lets you see the last few articles from the Editor’s desk.

‘Categories’ is a very useful section. All the published stories are tagged with one or more of these categories. You can click to go directly to the kind of stories you are interested in. Choose from book reviews, vegetarianism, events, classes and much more.

At the end of the column is the date index. Here you can see all the stories and articles published on Dandavats.com since 2006.

Now you can navigate like an expert. See what good things you can find.