HOW TO Create Web Content

SHORT ANSWER: It's a lot easier to do than to write about!

Registration on this web site is available to all Chapter members. Once you have registered, you may login using your username and password. At the top of the left sidebar, you'll see a menu of things you can do, including "create content". When you click on "create content" in the middle of the screen you'll see a page listing the "types of content" you may create, including a page, a forum topic, a personal blog entry, and more. This HOW TO will focus on creating a web page, however, all content types are created in similar ways.

Click on page, and you'll be taken to a screen where you can edit your page's content. There are several fields of information you can easily select just by pointing and clicking with your mouse. First is the title of the page. It's one of the few required elements, and will show up as a "headline" of your page.

The next element of a page is Categories, where you can select one or more categories to which your page applies, such as "homebuilding", "engines", "meetings", "Young Eagles", etc. To select more than one category that applies, click and hold down the control (CTRL) key while clicking on each category term that applies to your page. By selecting applicable categories, youll help others find subject matter of interest, and help to build the web site efficiently.

The next item is the Body, which of course, is the nitty gritty content. Here you can type in text, but you can also use the many icons at the top of the Body section to do common word processing functions. For example, you can select (highlight) a word or words with your mouse, then click on the large dark "B" icon to make the seleted text turn bold. Similary you can italicize, underline, or strike through the selected text, change its font, font size or color, and indent or align text to the center of the page, etc.

You can also make highlighted (selected) text into an active web hyperlink by clicking on the "chain link" icon, then entering the URL you would like the page to go to when a user clicks on that link. Email addresses and literal URL's (those with http:// in front of them) are automatically turned into hyperlinks.

As you edit, you can create a new paragraph using just one carriage return (ENTER KEY). (Now there's an antique term!) You can create bullet lists using the icons appropriate for that, and more.

The next item under Body, is a menu selection "disable rich text" which normally you should not change. If you turn it off, you won't have all those helpful icons to use, and you'll have to know HTML coding to make anything look nice, build hyperlinks and all the other cool stuff. So don't mess with that one unless you know what you're doing.

Next is a place to attach images by browsing your computer for the image you want to add, and uploading it to the page. Note that use of this field will just "attach" the image. It will not put the image inside your formatted text. You can use one of the icons to do that, however.

At the bottom of the editing page, you'll see a button to PREVIEW your web content. On the PREVIEW page, you'll see the current result and, underneath that, continuation of the editing page and options. You must PREVIEW your content before it becomes visible to site visitors.

Finally, on the PREVIEW results page, there's a SUBMIT button at the bottom which will "publish" your web content, which means it will then be visible to other site visitors. At any time you can return to content that you have created and edit it.