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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 webmaster 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 webmaster. 

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. 
  • Contact person for page authoring - with email is best, if you don't mind.  

YOU CAN ALSO DO ANY OF THESE THINGS - optionally:

  • 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.

How to author pages on this website

  • Log in at the login page http://quakerscotland.org/user
  • (Haven't got a login/ have lost who has it?  Contact the webmaster)
  • 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).
  • 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 form Microsoft Word, click on the clipboard with the "W" on it. 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 transfered when pasting from Word using the "W" button. You may have to make some alterations after pasting in web editor.
  • When you've finished, go right to the bottom of the page and click 'Submit'. The edited page is immediately online. Don't forget to click Submit, or it won't be! You can also Preview before putting the alterations online. But you must click on Submit on the Preview page in order to save the changes.
  • To add a hyperlink like this one, highlight the text or object you want to link to and click on the chain 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.
  • To upload documents (Minutes, etc), click on 'File attachments' below the box with the page content in. 'Browse' to find the document just as you would open a file. The click on 'Attach' to upload it. Change the description shown for the document to be a descriptive title, then click 'Submit' at the foot of the page. (Advanced users - 'List' is checked by default. If you uncheck it, the name of the document won't appear on the page. You can link to it from the text instead - use the url in tiny print below it to make a hyperlink as described above.)
    Note: unless you actually want people to be able to edit files, it is a good idea to upload pdf versions of written documents. That preserves formatting better and makes it a little more difficult for them to be altered.
    Caution - be sensitive to the content of 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.
  • To add an image to your page: With the cursor where you want the image to go, click on the camera 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.
  • To add a new page, if you have widespread editing privileges you can go to "Create content" at the top of the right hand menu. If you don't, you need to ask the webmaster to do the following steps to create a blank page for you, with a name for the menu.  
    • Click on "Page"
    • Give it a name - shortish (it will be used in the menu bar to the left)
    • Select a 'parent' page - this must be one of the pages you are allowed to edit. This makes the page appear as a daughter of your original page (or grand-daughter, etc).

Editing the Calendar: new item

  1. Go to "Create content" at the top of the right hand menu
  2. Click on "Event"
  3. On the page that appears, give the Event a
    • Title
    • A page (from the pull down menu) on which the event will appear
    • Start time
    • Optionally, an end time
    • A Location
    • A description
  4. Click on Submit
The event will appear in the Events box on the page that you selected in step. It will disappear from the box once the start time of the event has pased.

Editing the Calendar: modifying an existing item

In the box in the right-had column entitled "My Events" not "Events", there is a list of all the events you have created. 

  1. Click on the title of the event in the box
  2. To edit the page, click on the "Edit" tab, and edit as above
  3. To delete the page, first click on "Edit" and then click on the "Delete" link at the bottom of the form.

Problems?

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

Contact the webmaster