There are really three problems that prevent many from writing for a Web site. These are:

• Writing
• Writing using a computer
• The WYSIWYG Editor

Hopefully, this article will help you get started on a successful (and unpaid, volunteer) career as a writer on and for this Web site. (That’s obviously because the Webmaster and Administrator—who might just be the same person—are too inhibited and unskilled to write all, or most, content for the site. But, that’s another matter…)

Let’s examine these inhibiting factors a little more closely.

Writing

It’s somewhat strange to note that, while very few are reluctant to speak with others, many are very circumspect about writing.

Writing Using a Computer

Okay, it’s not an IBM Selectric (and, if you’re unfamiliar with that outstanding piece of equipment, there’s nothing I can say) but using your computer keyboard and the computer monitor are very much like using a typewriter with paper. Except that the typewriter doesn’t have a typing ball or platen, and the paper is always upright, positioned to your left (or right), and looks more like a TV screen. Other than these, the similarities are remarkable.

The WYSIWYG Editor

Those ivolved with information “technology” and software like to call the thing you see on your monitor when you type the “WYSIWYG interface,” or the “Editor.” Personally, I think they do this either because they’re convinced our English language lacks good descriptive words for the thing, or because they want to impress everyone else with their own jargon. WYSIWYG is not a pronounceable string of abbreviations that has, regardless, become a pronounceable acronym (“wizeewig”); the letters stand for What You See is What You Get. (No politician or lawyer can be so described, by the way.) What this really means is that the words and paragraphs you see on your monitor as you type will be seen by others looking the same way after your blog or article is published on a Web site.

Get Started!

1. Open your Web browser to the location of this Web site (okay, so you’re already here; it’s still the first step).
2. Login to your Member Account.
   • Enter your username
   • Enter your password
3. Click the Login button.

The Contribute Content Menu

The Contribute Menu appears on the right-hand side of the Web page, directly under the Member Menu. This offers a set of links that let you create or edit a personal blog or create or edit an article for the site. You can submit or edit a:

• News article
• Personal blog
• Story about our reunions
• Story about memorable experiences with classes, faculty, sports, and school activities, like band, chorus, or Latin Club
• Link to another Web site

People who are not members of this site can see this menu or access anything from it.

Write An Article or Blog Item

Click a link in the Contribute Content menu; the Add Content form appears. You’ll see:

• The name of the Section
• A blank field labeled Title
• A field with a drop-down list labeled Category
• Two large, blank text fields labeled Intro Text (Required) and Main Text (Optional)
• A field that shows something about Images that has two other tabs (Publishing and Metadata)
• Three fairly strange-looking icons

The two main areas we’ll deal with right now are the fields for Intro Text and Main Text.

Intro Text

You have to write something in this field. Keep in mind that it really is used to introduce your topic, that’s why all articles on this Web site show a paragraph or two and then a Read More link.

Main Text

Usually, you’ll type the bulk of your article in this field. When a reader clicks the Read More link in the Intro Text displayed on a Web page, the Web site opens the entire article for viewing, including the Intro and Main text areas.

1. Enter the Title for your article.
   
2. Click Select Category and choose the proper category for your article from the drop-down list.
   
3. Enter your opening paragraphs in the Intro Text area.
   
4. Enter the rest of your article in the Main Text area.
   

The Joomla Content Editor

The Joomla Content Editor^© (JCE) may look confusing to you; that’s unfortunate. You can do a lot of very good things using this editor, and without having to know about Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) and its tags. (Well, with a couple of minor exceptions…) The Editor looks like this:

Note: The Webmaster updates this component when new versions are released. So, the icons displayed here may change; run your mouse over the icon to see what it is, if you’re uncertain. In most cases, the changes will be minimal.

These images show the buttons you can use and identify their uses:

Row 1

Row 2

Row 3

Row 4

Row 5

Note: You can ignore the Joomla Content Editor by clicking the show/hide link above each of the two text areas; by default, the show option is active.

Mechanics & Other Stuff

There are all sorts of things you can do to, or include within, an article or blog you write. And, they all have to do with those very curious and (maybe) confusing buttons in the editor panels above the text fields.

Formating Text

Text Formats & Styles

Web designers and developers today use Cascading Style Sheets to set up the way text is displayed on Web sites. This saves them from the burden of formatting each individual line of text, ensures that text will appear the same throughout the site, and saves time for visitors, since the styles information is loaded into the memory of a Web browser when you open the site. This Web site uses the Joomla! content management system; there are Styles that are unique to Joomla and there are Formats that you Fearless Site Developer & Webmaster has modified or created to display text uniformally. When you write an article or blog, you’ll need to select a Format for the text you enter. These formats are:

• Paragraph—This is “normal,” or body, text. If you type a single paragraph, you will need to click the Format drop-down menu and select Paragraph for paragraphs. If you press the Return key and type another paragraph, the Joomla Content Editor automatically applies the Paragraph format to your text.
• Heading 1—If you use headings, or title slugs, Heading 1 is the largest, boldest of the bunch. As in any outline, subordinate headings fall out underneath this top-level heading.
• Heading 2—Usually, a Heading 1 is followed by a Heading 2. This is a general rule, however.
• Heading 3—This is the next subordinate heading level.
• Heading 4—Of course, this is the last subordinate heading.

And, these are all the text formats you’ll need to use routinely.

When you use the proper Formats, you help us promote our Web site to the public who may wish to find information about our class or school. Why? Search engines, such as Google, send out code to find and catalog Web sites. They do this because of the HTML tags in the sites. Each format listed here is a tag; these tags tell the system how to display your content and help search bots catalog the data for the public.

Modifying Text Formatting

You can modify sections of the text you enter. For instance, you may wish to make some text stand out by making it bold or italics. You may want to “get fancy” and show some text in superscript or subscript (text above or below the text line, such as 3^rd or CO₂). You can create bullet- or numbered lists, or set quoted text from another source apart (in this case, enter the quote in a separate paragraph and then click the Indent button in Row 1 of the Editor).

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Sed congue tempus lorem. Aliquam blandit egestas felis. Nulla facilisi. Nunc porttitor, dui et dignissim mattis, tellus pede sollicitudin nisi, ac posuere mauris elit non ipsum.

You can also highlight a section of text and change the font by selecting a different one from the Font family drop-down list. Similarly, you can change the size of the font for specific text by selecting a different size from the Font size drop-down list. 

Cut & Paste

There are buttons on the Editor that let you know that you can cut and paste text. However, if you try to use them, you’ll probably get an error message telling you that, for security reasons, your browser cannot cut and paste data on another server unless you do some really strange things to reconfigure your browser.

Forget that stuff. Instead, highlight the text you want to cut and press the Delete or Backspace keys—that works. If you want to paste the deleted text somewhere else in your article, place your cursor where you want that text to go, and press the Control + V keys.

Insert An Image

You can insert, edit, and remove images from your article or blog item. Use these steps for images:

1. Place your cursor where you want to set the image.
2. Click the Insert/Edit Image button.
3. Select the folder where the image exists (if you need to upload an image, see the next section).
4. Select the image from those listed in the folder menu.
5. Leave the URL> and Description fields as they are (these are automatically filled in).
6. Change the Title field to show the name of the image without the filetype (*.jpg, *.png, etc.).
7. Tab to the VSpace (vertical spacing) field; this is expressed in pixels—you can leave it as it is or you can enter a value (NEVER greater than the original file size).
8. Tab to the HSpace (horizontal spacing) field: this is also expressed in pixels —you can leave it as it is or you can enter a value (NEVER greater than the original file size).
9. Tab to the Alignment field and choose from the drop-down list (commonly, you place an image to the Left or to the Right of the text; if you use Default, you have usually placed the image on a line all on its own—you can use the text formatting buttons on Row 2 to set the image to left, right, or center in this case).
10. Click the Insert button.

Note: By using this method, you avoid using the Images tab below the Add Content form to set graphics. Really, the steps I describe here are best; the native Joomla code to handle images is neither as efficient nor as effective as handling them from the Editor.

Upload An Image

Note: You use the Insert/Edit Image button to upload images to the Web site and then place them, following the steps in the previous section of this FAQ.

1. Place your mouse over the buttonson the right-hand side of the Insert/Edit Image window.
2. Click the button to Upload Image.
3. Click the Browse button in the opened Upload dialog box.
4. Choose the image file on your computer in the Windows Explorer window that appears.
   
5. Click Open in Windows Explorer.
6. You can click the checkbox to Select File after Upload.
7. Click the OK button (or Cancel).
   

You’ve just found and uploaded an image from your computer to the image folder on our Web server (the one you selected or had already opened). Go back to the previous section and follow those steps to place it in your article or blog.

Insert Link to a Document

If you want to insert a link to a file in our Documents section, follow these steps:

1. Place your cursor where you want the link to appear.
2. Click the DocLink button.
3. Choose the proper category folder from the list in the middle pane.
4. Select the document from the list displayed.
5. Disregard the URL field.
6. Disregard the Target field.
7. Enter the Title of the document as you want it to appear (otherwise, the Editor will display the name of the document as it appears in the menu list).
8. IF you want, you can click the checkboxes to display the filetype Icon, Date of the file, and file Size.
9. Click the Insert button.

Insert A Web or E-mail Link

You can insert a hyperlink (Web link) to:

• An e-mail address
• Another Web site
• An article in a Web site
• A photo album in our Gallery
• Another content item on our Web site

Here’s how…

Link to an E-mail Address

1. Click the Insert/Edit Link button.
2. Go to the E-mail Address field.
3. Enter the Address.
4. Enter a Subject for e-mails sent to this person (depends upon the context of your article or blog).
5. Click the Create button.
   Note: JCE creates the code needed to format an e-mail message to the person you’ve identified, along with the code to automatically identify the subject of the e-mail.
6. Click the Insert button.

You really should enter e-mail address links this way: the editor encrypts the address information so that spammers cannot “read” the actual address from the HTML of the Web site. If you follow these steps, those who receive e-mail from your links will be very, very grateful.

Link to a Web Site

1. Identify (or copy) the Web address of the site to which you want to link.
2. Highlight the text where you want to place the link.
3. Click the Insert/Edit Link button.
4. Enter the location for the Web site in the URL field.
5. Disregard the Anchors field.
6. Select the “Target” for this link—do you want it to open in this browser window or tab, or in a new window or tab?
7. Enter a Title for the link (such as the name of the organization or personal blog).
8. Disregard the Class field (that gets very complicated; you’d use it only if you’re setting the linked content to appear in a pop-up window, and then only if you really know what you’re doing).
9. Click the Insert button.

Add Typographically-Correct Characters

If you’re familiar with, and want to use, styled characters, such as apostrophes, em-dashes, en-dashes, fractal characters, and so forth, you’ve noticed that there is no way to do this from your keyboard. Here’s how to use them:

• Place your cursor where you want to set the character.
• Click the Custom Characters icon.
• Find the character you need or want.
• Click the character.

Article Managment

Now, it’s time for the admin stuff…like setting the publishing options and recording identifying data (“metadata”) for your article or blog.

Publishing Options

1. Click the Publishing tab below the Main Text field.
   
2. Choose the groups who can read your article.
   • Public = Everyone, registered member or visitor, can read your article
   • Registered = Only registered site Members can read your material
   • Special = Only an “author” or site administrator can read your stuff
3. If you want to hide your name as the author, enter a euphemism in the Author Alias field; otherwise, leave this field blank.
4. Select the date you want the article to first appear on the site (click the button in the right to open a calendar and select a date); otherwise, leave this field as-is.
5. Select the date you want the article to disaappear (end publication) from the site (click the button on the right to open a calendar and select a date); otherwise, leave this field as-is.
6. If you want your article to appear on the Front Page of the site, click the checkbox.

Bibliographical Information

1. Next, click the Metadata tab.
   
   (Metadata are words or phrases that help the Internet identify and classify your article, much like a library does for books)
2. Enter a phrase or sentence that describes the material in your article in the Description field.
3. Enter words or short phrases that are used in your article and that can help classify the material on the Internet in the Keywords field.

Save or Clear Your Information

You must click the appropriate icon to either save and exit or exit without saving your information. If you just type your article or blog and then logout, your material is locked and cannot be viewed by anyone until you save it.

The buttons, or icons, are for Save, Apply, and Cancel (exit without saving).

• When you click the icon to Save your data, the system applies all changes you have made, saves the data in the database, and exits the Add Content form 
• If you click the Apply icon, the system applies your changes and saves your data, but does not close the Add Content form
• Of course, when you click the red “X,” the system closes the Add Content form but does not save and apply your changes

And, that’s all there is, folks!

Note: If you’re unsure whether you’ve saved or cancelled articles or blogs you worked on after you closed the Add Content form, click the Member Menu link to Check-in Your Items.