Ret did this, starting a thread so we can work on it easily:
How to submit and format articles and images to the library, history and news sections of libcom
A well formatted article is easier and more pleasant to read and should be easier for site users to quickly print off a readable copy. So a little extra work is worth it.
Many articles submitted to the library have been scanned in from hard copies of varying quality; the lower the quality of the original source book or magazine the initial scan comes from, the more errors needing correction in the scanned text. So proofread the scanned text as necessary for mistakes to be corrected.
SUBMITTING AND FORMATTING
First, take a look at a formatted article - http://libcom.org/library/reds-green-short-tour-clerkenwell-radicalism. This will give you an idea of what we are talking about below. Also read the formatting guides for news and Library and History.
Submitting text/article
1) Click on 'create content' at top of page.
2) Click on library, history or news. This will take you to the appropriate page.
3) Type in the title of the article in the 1st box.
(Below the title box is the image box; it is usually preferable for an article to be accompanied by an image, but we will deal with this later, after the text has been entered.)
4) Choose the appropriate categories for the article in the 'regions' and 'sectors' list. (If you are unsure on the correct choice, admins can do this after submission when the article is sent into the moderation queue for checking.)
Also fill in, where appropriate, the 'authors, people and groups' and 'tags' boxes. catch - these are admin/editor only now
5) Enter a brief explanation of the article in the 'Introduction' box. If appropriate, this could be the 1st paragraph of the article. Otherwise, write a short descriptive summary of no more than a few lines. This will appear at the beginning of the article in bold type in the finished submission.
6) Paste in the article itself to the 'Body' box.
The various buttons above the 'Body' box are for formatting the article; to use them, first highlight the part of the text you want to format, then click the appropriate button.
For example; if you want to italicise some text, just highlight and click the 'italic' button. Do the same to make bold.
'Quote' works the same as it does in the forums; it will
put text in a quote box
. Just highlight the quote and press the 'Quote' button.
The Chinese anarchist movement
A history of the Chinese anarchist movement in France, Japan and China itself from 1900 up to the formation of the Chinese Communist Party.
If you do not use the break button, the break will be made automatically. When you do a final check of the formatting - by pressing the Preview button - before submitting the article, check that the break - - is made in an appropriate place place in the text.
'Image' will be explained below.
'Underline' is self-explanatory.
'Url' is for putting links in articles to other sites on the internet or to elsewhere on Libcom. An URL is a web address, such as; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uniform_Resource_Locator. This URL will take you to the wikipedia page about URLs. To do the link as a word (for example, 'see here'); paste in the link and then highlight it, click on the 'url' button and it should surround it like this;
[url=Enter URL here]see here[/url] (in this case 'see here' is the link). Then delete 'Enter URL here' in the 1st bracket and paste in the same place the appropriate URL. This will now appear in the text as see here.
Other formatting tips. - catch - this should probably just link to the bbcode guide
There are some ways of formatting for which there are no buttons. Instead of the buttons automatically writing the formatting code, you must type formatting code symbols (called BBcode) around the appropriate text. Text is enclosed within two brackets, with the 2nd bracket using a slash / to close the code command. See below for practical examples.
It often improves the look of an article if heading, sub-heading etc are centered. This is done by typing
at the end. This will appear like this;
.
If you are are doing a lot of centering, then - rather than type
every time - speed things up and copy
Sometimes a piece of text may be italicised, bolded and centered;
[center]like this
In such a case, make sure that the sequence of the formatting code symbols mirror each other on both sides of the text;
While;
Some articles in their original format have too many line breaks. to correct this use a site like this one; http://www.fwointl.com/FWOFormatter.html
- and set max characters to 999999 and Format.
Articles can also be improved by enlarging some headings, like this;
To determine the size of the font, type
Footnotes
- these currently aren't available to anyone except editors and admins, we'll probably add a wikipedia style [ref:] thing as well so it's more like bbcode.
Various punctuations on your keyboard - the 'equal' = symbol, or asterisk *, for example - can also be used as ways of breaking up and defining different sections of of articles. They work best when they are centered, as described above. Like this;
Or this;
Or get ornamental and mix two together, e.g. 8 & =;
Submitting images
When uploading images:
1. Use jpg or png files only.
2. Give the file a meaningful name.
3. Don't upload huge pix (over a mb). If you can only find a large version of a pic, pix resizers can be found online to use or download for free.
4. Don't use AP or similar files.
To submit a main image that will appear at the top of the article, use the 'Image' box.
You will need to have the image downloaded to your computer.
Click the 'browse' button to browse your PC to find where you have stored the image. A 'file upload' window will appear.
If, for example, you have the pic as a file on your PC's desktop, choose 'desktop' from the 'Look in' box at the top of the 'file upload' window.
Then find your pic among the files listed on your desktop; click on it to make its name appear in 'file name' box.
Then click 'Open' and the file will appear in the 'Image' box on the Libcom submissions page.
Then press 'Upload' to bring the image file from your PC onto the site and into the article.
Then you can add, if you want to, in the appropriate box, a caption for your image. This caption will appear when readers hover their mouse over the image.
To submit an image within the main text of the article, as http://libcom.org/library/the-grunwick-strike-a-sivanandanhere; you must use the 'Image' button above the 'Body' box.
Find a suitable image online, right click on the image and 'copy image location'.
Right click and paste the copied link for the image into the appropriate place in the text in the 'Body' box.
Highlight the link and press 'Image' button. The pic should now appear within the text. You may wish to add a caption beneath the pic.
ideally we want images uploaded as files - but I really need to sort out a better way of doing this
Finally...
When possible, always provide the source of the article and the date of publication.
Can comment on articles and discussions
Some of the coding is not showing on there - it's blank where there there should be code examples,eg, for centering - I guess cos it's functioning as code? But I wanted to show correct/incorrect coding.