Author guide

Authoring logins for local meetings

Giving logins to local meetings means that pages can be kept more up to date, interesting and relevant.  Each local meeting has a login to enable this, and the name and usually email address of the local author should be available on the page.  If no one in your meeting is up to this, the webmanager can still do things for you as before.  And ask questions at any time.  

Your login can be judiciously shared with one or two people within a local meeting.  But if you want the associated email address to be changed, contact the webmanager. 

Be sensitive about posting any information about individuals, including photographs - see further information below.

PLEASE SHOW THIS INFORMATION FOR YOUR MEETING:

You shouldn't have to start from scratch, something under each heading should be there when you inherit the page.

• Meeting place - address including postcode
• Meeting for worship (times) 
• How to get there (landmarks, directions, maybe transport links) and link to an online map.  
• Photo - is nice.  Of the meeting place or a local view or landmark
• Other info - whether you can look after children is a common Q
• Bit of local information and/or meeting history and description to add colour and depth (e.g. Arbroath is home of the smokie and the Bell Rock lighthouse [this is true]... Stornoway meeting generally has an attendance of a couple of hundred people [this is not true], that sort of thing).  You can make this as interesting and varied as you like.  
• Contact person for info about the meeting -  an email address is useful for people who are discovering you via the Web. 
• and Who edits the page - so that Friends know who to contact if a change is needed.

YOU CAN ALSO DO ANY OF THESE THINGS - optionally:

• Post a newsletter. But see caution below.
• Advertise an event.
• Post minutes of your business meetings, and keep them on the web as an archive. But see caution below. 
• Post photos.  But see caution below
• Have sub-pages for particular purposes, such as 
  • Children's class - see caution below
  • Opening up/closing meeting or other rota
  • Local outreach or other special interests

YOU CAN'T DO THIS:

• Hide anything from the big bad outside world. All our pages are public and open. 
  At the moment, there are no members-only areas.  So be sensitive to what you show (see below).
• email all your members and attenders automagically.  We don't have a list.

Caution

Be sensitive to the content of newsletters, minutes and any other material you are publishing.  Read through them to be sure they don't contain things that people might not want on the web. Examples might include contact details, full names of children, or names of adults in some circumstances.

How to author Local Meeting pages on this website

• Log in at the login page https://quakerscotland.org/user
• (Haven't got a login/ have lost who has it?  Contact the webmanager)
• Navigate to the page you want to edit from the menu on the left.
• Click on the 'Edit' tab at the top of the page ('View' is the other tab).
• Under 'Meeting Image' you can click on 'Browse' to upload an image of your Meeting House that will appear at the top right of the page.
• A simple text editor is provided. You can switch to edit the HTML if you know how.
• Write directly to the page, or paste from emails, etc. If you want to paste from Microsoft Word, click on the clipboard with the "W" on it

  Word icon

  
  . This will open a new window, into which you should paste the text from Word before clicking "Insert". If you try to paste directly from Microsoft Word into the editor, all sorts of rubbish comes along with it. Don't try 'save as HTML' in Word either; that's awful too.
• You can bring only limited formatting with you. For example, font sizes and colours are not transferred when pasting from Word using the "W" button. You may have to make some alterations after pasting in web editor.
• Ignore the 'Location' areas below the text box unless you know what you're doing.
• When you've finished, go right to the bottom of the page and click 'Save'. The edited page is immediately online. Don't forget to click 'Save', or it won't be! You can also 'Preview' before putting the alterations online. But you must click on 'Save' on the 'Preview' page in order to save the changes.

Adding hyperlinks in the text editor

• To add a hyperlink like this one, highlight the text or object you want to link to and click on the chain icon

  Link icon

  
  
  
• To an external link, paste it into the box and click Save. Include http://
  
• To link to another page on the website, paste in just the url of the page as it appears in the bar at the top of the page.
• 'Title' in the hyperlink pop-up box is what shows up in a yellow box when you hover your mouse over the link.
• 'Target' - 'Open in the same window' is what you usually want.

Adding Images

• To add an image to your page: With the cursor where you want the image to go, click on the picture icon 

  Picture icon

  
  in the menu above the text. It first needs to be uploaded and the pop-up box gives you the option to use an image already in the system, or to upload a new one.
  
  • Make sure it is small - ideally less than 50kb, as a jpg, gif, or png file.
  • You can move it and resize it once it's on the page.
  • Set alignment, padding etc on the image menu.
  • You can resize the image on the page.
  • To alter alignment or wrapping etc, click on the image and then on the camera icon again.
  • It can be a bit fiddly to get it right. Ask for help if necessary!
  Caution - don't use copyrighted images without permission (and declare whose they are). Some people may be sensitive about photos of them. Check that parents are happy if photos are of children.

Problems?

You can retrieve a lost/forgotten login by clicking on 'Request new password' in the Login window at www.quakerscotland.org/user.

Contact the webmanager