Hello from Candradasa and the online team here in the U.S. 

Some quick basics: posts in the 'latest' feed are brief extracts. Click 'read more' to view the full post (try it with this one) and 'respond' to read and comment. You'll find everything you need for daily participation in the retreat under the 'course materials' feed, and some great blog posts from the rest of the teaching team under 'team posts' (these are also brief extracts). Check back each day for new posts designed to help you go deeper with your practice and encourage reflection and discussion in this space. Please take care to read our Community Guidelines too.

You can also make posts yourself. Let us know how the retreat's going, upload your shrine pictures, a favourite quotation, or even video practice diaries you've made on YouTube or Vimeo. (We've kept things simple to keep a clear focus in the retreat itself, so you won't be able to embed other html.)

We'll post all our course materials in ways anyone can access online, so you shouldn't have to install anything or sign up for any other services if  don't want to. But we'll also be offering some material in alternative forms - using more experimental web contexts that offer really neat ways of accessing content. You can read about those in the next post.

You can also follow us on Facebook, where we'll be having a special Discussion event on Friday. And we'll be tweeting on Twitter too. Follow @buddhistcentre and watch for the hashtag #urbanretreat.

I'll be working with Lokabandhu in Glastonbury, UK and Samudradaka in Saudi Arabia to look after this space and provide you with the materials you need to get the most out of your retreat this week. Please feel free to contact us anytime via comments on the site or by email: urbanretreat@thebuddhistcentre.com. 

This is the first public test of our fledling social network on thebuddhistcentre.com, so we're excited to see how it all goes! We hope you enjoy using this early version - and have a great retreat!