Adding News Articles to the APEO Website

It is now possible for selected users of the APEO website to add news articles to the website. This article gives a little guidance as to how to do this. Click read more to see the instructions for this process.

You must be approved as an author

In order to add news articles you must be approved as a site author. There are several steps:

• Register as a user. (Click "Create an Account" at the bottom of the Log In menu)
  
• Complete the Registration form and send. It will send you a confirmation email. In the confirmation email is a link. Click on the link to confirm. You will be taken to the website and your  account will be confirmed as a registered user. If you do  not need to create articles, you do not need to go any further. As a registered user you will be allowed to download and upload files. (Any uploaded files must be approved and published by the site administrator before the file is available to the public.
  
• If you are going to be contributing articless, contact the web administrator to upgrade your status from Registered to Author.
• You will be informed once you have been upgraded to Author status. You can now write articles for the site.

How to create an article for the website.

• Log in to the site. If you have been upgraded to author status, you will see a new menu on the left.
• Click Submit a News Article. Important. When you save the article, it will not immediately be publlished but must first be approved by the site administrator. Do not be frustrated if you do not see the article immediately after saving it.
• You will see this editor. While you are editing, be sure to hit the Apply Button (big green check mark on the top right of your screen). Apply saves your work.
  
• Enter a title for the article. NOTE: This title will not show in the article. I suggest a brief title. This will be the title that shows in the browser and become the important part of the URL
• Enter a complete title at the top of the article. Select format Heading 1
• Type your article. If you have headings, use the format Heading 2 or heading 3. Do not attempt to format the text beyond making a few words bold or italic, etc. Let the format styles control the formatting.
• If you MUST copy and paste from Word, it is better that you first paste into notepad to remove all formatting and then copy and paste it into the article editor. MS Word adds signficant amount of unneeded html code. If you must preserve a lot of formatting from word, use the paste from MS Word button.
• If your article is long, I recommend you type a short "teaser" and then use the Read More. This will keep the majority of the article hidden until the reader clicks the readmore button.
• If you want to use another HTML editor like dreamweaver, edit your article in dreamweaver and paste in here.
  
• Inserting photos
  • Edit your photos before uploading them to the website. There are many free photo editors. During the edit process, you will want to 
    • Crop the picture to remove unnecessary details
    • Resize the picture. I recommend that you do not use a picture whose longest dimension is greater than 400-450 px. Greater than that will overwhelm the page and create a drag for people downloading.
    • Use jpg compression. This goes by different terms depending on what editor you use. I recommend something in the range of 45-75.
    • Do not use spaces in the name of the photo. I personally use camel case (e.g. PhotoOfMyFamily.jpg)
  • Place your cursor in the spot where you want to anchor the photo. Click the Insert Graphic button (see the above graphic). The website will take you to a new inteface
    
    
  1. If the photo you want is already uploaded, click on it to select. (Instructions on how to upload are below). When you select the photo, you will see it in the details panel, the correct URL will appear at the top and an alternate text will appear.
  2. Edit the Alternate text. This is the text which will appear when the person's computer cannot view photos. This text is also used by search engines.
  3. Select the alignment. There are several options, but the important ones are as follows: left: picture will be on the left and the text will wrap around the right; right: picture on right and text flows around the left; not set : no text on either side, picture floats to the left. Note that is not possible to center a picture on the page.
  4. Enter margin value. This is the amount of space the picture has around its sides. Usually 5 is enough.
  5. If you want a border, you can select the border tick and set values.
     
  6. Hit Insert. You will see the photo in the text. You can resize it if it is too large. Don't resize it if it is too small. The quality will be destroyed. Click on the photo so that the corners appear. Hold down Shift and click on one of the corners and drag.
• Uploading photos.
  

1. 1. Select the folder you want to put the photo in (see above)
      
   2. Click the Upload button in the Image manager dialog (see above)
   3. Browse to select your photo
   4. Hit upload. Your photo will appear in the folder selected. Now you can select it and insert it following the steps above.

• Adding captions to photos. You can add a nicely formatted caption to a photo. To do so, first insert your photo then select it. Now hit the insert caption button (see the first graphic above). A separate dialog will appear and you will be able to enter the caption for the photo. You can experiment with settings to get it the way you want it to appear.

Setting Categories and Publishing Information

At the bottom of your editor screen you will see the category and metadata screens.

• Select Section: Articles and Category: News to place the article in the news area of the website
• Leave the Show on front page setting off
• Access Level Public unless you want to limit this article to registered users.
• You can enter the Author alias, e.g., who the real author is if not you, etc.
• Publishing date. You can set the date when the article will start and stop publishing. It defaults to start now and remain forever.

Meta Data

Meta data is what is used by search engines to categorize and display your article.

• Description. This is a short description of the article. It will appear in the search engine listing when someone finds it on Google or Yahoo.
• Keywords. Enter words separated by commas to help the search engines determine how to classify your article.

There, you're done!