About the New Site
Welcome to the brand new SPD Support website! This is the new home for what used to be two seperate websites: SPDParentSHARE.com and the support boards at SPDInternational.org.
As of June 1st, 2011, SPD Parent SHARE has changed its name to SPD Support, and its SPD Parent SHARE Hosts to SPD Support Hosts. The mission of the site and the Host community remains the same; only the name and website have changed.
The Old Sites
SPD Parent SHARE was home to all of our articles, resources, and the SPD Parent SHARE Host network. The site ran for about 5 years and was an excellant source of support annd information for those searching for a better understanding of Sensory Processing Disorder.
The biggest problem with the site though, is that it was mostly dormant. It was difficult to update the site frequently with new, relevant information, so things were gradually going downhill. In order to boost interest and help people find the site easier, it was decided that a consistant stream of new content was necessary. In fact, what it could use was a message board.
SPD International had the message board/forum that would be needed to help solve the lack of new content issue that SPD Parent SHARE was having. For about a year, it had been running and growing steadily as a beacon of support in the online SPD world.
If there was one major flaw with that site, it's that there weren't many resources available. It had a makeshift wiki and some excellant posts, but it didn't have the symptom checklists or the articles that the other site already had. So, it became quite clear what needed to be done. These two sites needed to be merged in order to avoid replicating information accross multiple sites, and hopefully strengthen the community on one unified site.
More Complete and Convenient
SPD Support has it all, really. Every article we have, every resource in our databank, and every post in our forum history can be found here. It continues to grow to this day. It is a bit on the small side now, but will continue to expand. Some of the features you can find here:
- SPD Support Forum. A free interactive message board that enables parents of children with SPD, adults with SPD, and anyone else with interest in the topic to communicate with one and other and get to know each other. This is an excellant way to find friends, get support, vent frustrations, and share success stories.
- SPD Support Hosts and Hosting Information.
- SPD Articles.
- SPD Symptoms, Resources, and Links.
- SPD Support Chat Room. This is where you can really get to know people. There is almost always someone on; just hop in and start chatting whenever you'd like. We are very open and accepting.
Easy to Remember and Recognize
Perhaps one of the biggest reasons for the change of name is that SPD Support is much easier to remember and to type out than SPD Parent SHARE or SPD International. The name SPD Parent SHARE also seemed to imply that it was either only focussed on parents of SPD children or was only accepting of parent members and/or hosts. That is simply not the case, as there are many adults with SPD and therapists on the site. SPD Support is much more general and doesn't exclude anyone through title alone.
Another reason why SPD Support was chosen is that it makes it very easy for people to see our purpose right away. With the old SHARE name, it made people wonder what SHARE stood for (Support, Help, Advocacy, Resources, and Education). Support, however, is our focus, and that is now self-evident in our name. SPD Support (or SPDS) is simply shorter and more recognizable.
The New Design
The new site has been reorganized and resituated. The color scheme has been improved, thanks to the help of Sila, our newest site moderator. The forum also offers additional styles that people can select to make the site appear the way they prefer to see it. Currently, there is no easy way to get all the non-forum pages (including articles, resources, about pages, etc.) to appear in any of the additional styles.
So, if you change your theme on the forum, and then see it's going back to the standard theme on other portions of the site, that is the only way things can work for now. Additionally, you will not loose the theme setting, and will retain the theme you selected when you revisit the forum section of the site. Also noteworthy is that there is no good way to get dropdown menues to work on the forum software, so they are disabled on the forum.
The Future
This is only the beginning. The old sites needed a tune-up, and we feel the new site, our content, and our memberbase can only improve from centrally locating all our resources into one place.
So, feel free to check out our articles, borrow from our resources, hope into our chat room or sign up to our free support boards today.
Best wishes, and enjoy your time on SPD Support!