Contributing to the site

Thank you for wanting to share with other bridge players.

This item helps you create and edit articles, which are used for all contributor information on the site apart from events (see Create/edit an event for all contributor information related to an event). 

To create an article you need to (once you are logged in):

1. Click on the Create article link in the Home menu (visible when you are logged in) - this will take you to an editing area - click on the Content tab (below the Save button) if this is not showing
2. Enter the article's title (up to 30 characters)
3. Enter the article in the Editor text area - most of the editor icons at the top will be self-explanatory, and tool-tips will appear when you hover over them. On the whole minimal formatting is best such as bullet points and applying bold or italics only to particular words or phrases. Avoid applying colours or large fonts as it looks odd/inconsistent on the webpage. Those who copy and paste from Word can use the drop-down option on the Paste icon that allows you to Paste as Plain Text so you can avoid all the corruptions that Word's formatting causes.
4. If the article is longer than a paragraph, place the cursor at the end of the first paragraph and click on the Read More button that is located below the Editor text area - this will mark off the intro text that is shown on pages (such as the Home page or the category page) which display introductions to a number of articles.
5. Avoid abbreviations, ambiguities and ampersands! Check for typos - these will normally appear with a red line underneath them!
6. Click on the Publishing tab (just below the Save and Cancel buttons) and use the Category dropdown to select the appropriate category for the article - this is important to ensure the article appears on the correct pages on the website.
7. If you want the intro text to appear on the site Home page then also set the Featured attribute (fifth item on the Publishing tab) to Yes.
8. Click on the Save and Close button at the top of the form when done.
9. Check if the article appears as you want it to on the website - you may need to do a Ctrl-F5 to refresh the page if you had that page open before you saved the new article.

Simple, yes? The article will now appear on the live site at the menu item that points to the category you selected.

Of course you may also wish to do more, such as one or more of the following:

• If you want the article to only appear after a certain date or to no longer appear after a certain date click on the Publishing tab to enter Start and Finishing Publishing dates - otherwise the article will appear as soon as it is published and will stay on the site forever unless it is manually unpublished or deleted.
• If the article is a draft or incomplete you can change the Status on the Publishing tab from Published to Unpublished. You, when logged in, will be able to complete the article by editing it - see below.