Authoring Instructions

Provides guidance to NSWAGTC staff/volunteers wishing to edit existing or create new web pages

Introduction

The audience for these instructions are those NSWAGTC staff members and volunteers who are conversant with word processing and wish to be able to author/edit web pages within the standard NSWAGTC site design. They are not intended for authors who are competent with web page design and who are responsible for a section with its own "look and feel", such as Kidbits.

The basic approach proposed is for staff members and volunteers to download and edit the content of a page, and then to email this edited page to the webmaster (ie me) who will upload it to the web while checking the design is preserved.

A suggested authoring or editing tool is Microsoft FrontPage Express as this is free and provides the user with a WYSIWYG ("What you see is what you get") interface with many similarities with Microsoft Word. Alternately some of you may have FrontPage 2000 (possibly as part of the Office Premium suite) and this can be used in an almost identical manner to FrontPage Express. Moreover if you are familiar with another suitable html editing tool, or wish to use WordPad or NotePad or another similar text editing tool, this is also possible - we simply need to trial the process and see if it works out. The following instructions may however need to be tailored if you use other than FrontPage Express (or FrontPage 2000).

Instructions for editing an existing page

1. In your browser (eg Internet Explorer) open the web page you wish to edit eg www.nswagtc.org.au/info/index.html
2. To download this page, click on File | Save As (ie click on the File menu at the top left of the browser window and then on the Save As option that appears). In the dialog box that appears you should choose a name that identifies the page (keeping the existing name is normally a good idea) and a folder where you want to store this file temporarily while you edit it - I use the Desktop - and click OK.
3. Repeat steps 1 - 2 for other pages you wish to edit.
4. Close your browser if you wish and then open your copy of FrontPage Express (or other tool that you are using to edit the webpages).
5. In FrontPage Express click on File | Open and, ensuring that the "From File" option is selected, "browse" to the file you wish to edit and select and open it.
6. Edit the content using FrontPage Express, taking note of the following:
   • Avoid using the font or font size options - the font is set in the site's stylesheet to provide a site-wide consistent look and feel.
   • Do use the Heading level commands shown in the top left of the FrontPage Express window - Heading 1 and Heading 2 will show as blue in the final published webpage and should be used as the normal page and section headings.
   • Use bold, italic and font colors sparingly for emphasis or highlight (italics for book titles, attributions at the end of quotes, etc).
   • If you are copying material from an existing document read the section below on this first!
   • Use tables, bullets and numbered lists if you feel comfortable with them.
   • Use hyperlinks to external or internal websites if you feel comfortable with them.
   • Insert photos or artwork if you feel comfortable with it and have these appropriately edited and optimised - the site standard is for a 1pt border and for a description to be in the Alt tag.
   • If you have any problems or uncertainties, simply take a note of them at this stage so you can let me know.
7. Proof check the content for spelling, grammar and factual errors. Do not assume that anyone else will check these before it appears on the web! I will only be checking the design of the published page - not the content.
8. When you are happy with the content, click on File | Save. This will save the edited file over the top of the unedited file on your hard disk - if you need to start again you can download it from the web again.
9. Repeat steps 4 - 8 for other pages you wish to edit.
10. When you have completed the editing process, close FrontPage Express and open your normal email program. Create a new email to webmaster@nswagtc.org.au, attach the edited html files, attach any graphics or other related files, and include in the body of the message any problems, uncertainties or other information I should have.
11. I will cut and paste the revised content to the published pages and upload to the web.
12. I will also reply to your email when this is done so that you can check the newly published pages.

Instructions for creating new pages

The procedure is very similar to the instructions above except for the following:

• Instructions 1: In your browser go to www.nswagtc.org.au/template.html and use this as your starting point
• Instruction 8: When you are ready to save your created page, click on File | Save As and type in the name you think the file should have (ie blogs.html if you think that blogs.html should be the name of the final published webpage).
• Instruction 10: Include in your covering email details of which folder or part of the website you think this new page belongs. Also include a suggested title, a suggested one or two sentence description and the search engine keywords for the page so that I can suitably add these to the published page.

Copying material from existing documents

Unfortunately this is not as simple as you might expect. Certainly copying material from a Word document into an html page (in FrontPage Express or other editor program) can create a mess. The problem is that word processing programs control formatting in a different way to web pages.

There are two alternative approaches you can adopt:

A. For copying to pages that will be edited again

1. Open the document in your normal word processing program (eg Microsoft Word).
2. Click on File | Save As (ie click on the File menu at the top left of the browser window and then on the Save As option that appears). In the dialog box that appears you can keep the same document but need to change the file type to text only (which might be called ASCII in some programs) - this will give the newly created document a .txt (or possibly .asc) suffix or file type which will distinguish it from the original document. You can also identify a folder where you want to store this file temporarily while you edit it - I use the Desktop - and click OK.
3. Close your normal word processor and open NotePad (not WordPad) or other simple text editing program - NotePad can normally be found by Start | Programs | Accessories.
4. Open the newly created .txt file in this text editing program and highlight (by dragging the mouse) and copy the part you want to copy to the clipboard - either by Edit | Copy or by Ctrl-C.
5. Switch to FrontPage Express or other html editing program with the appropriate page open, and place the cursor on a new line where you wish to insert the material.
6. Copy the material in to that point by either Edit | Paste or by Ctrl-V.
7. Unfortunately even with this routine, FrontPage Express will show all the copied material as one "paragraph" with line feeds giving the appearance of separate paragraphs. If you wish to apply formatting (such as centering) specifically to one paragraph, you will need to manually delete the line feeds (joining the text of two paragraphs together) and then hit the enter button to create a new paragraph.
8. You may then need to add any special formatting for section headings, bullets, words in italics etc
9. Save the webpage when you are finished in the normal way. Discard the .txt file when you are finished with it.

B. For creating static web page versions of documents such as articles

1. NB: this method, which you can probably use simply with a recent word processor, produces a relatively messy, hard to maintain and control webpage - it is only appropriate for webpages that will not need to be subsequently edited or merged with existing pages.
2. Open the document in your word processor.
3. Click on File | Save As Webpage (ie click on the File menu at the top left of the browser window and then on the Save As Webpage option that appears). In some word processing programs you may need to use the normal Save As dialog box and change the file type to htm or html. Either way this will give the newly created document a .htm or .html suffix or file type which will distinguish it from the original document so you can keep the same document name if this is appropriate. You can also identify a folder where you want to store this file temporarily while you edit it - I use the Desktop - and click OK.
4. Close your word processor and open your browser (eg Internet Explorer). Open this .html file by File | Open and then using the Browse option to locate the .html file on your hard disk.
5. Check if the file displays adequately in your browser.
6. If so then email me both the .html file and the original document together with [1] instructions on where the file should be located within the website [2] suggestions where it should be linked [3] suggested title, one or two sentence description, and search engine keywords, and [4] any other relevant information/issues.

Conclusion

There are bound to be more items I should have included on this page, and it will grow as these occur to us.

Please let me know of any misunderstandings or problems you may experience.

David Farmer
Webmaster, NSWAGTC

 © NSWAGTC 2007

Jump to... Top | NSWAGTC Home

Suggestions? | Like to Help? | Disclaimer | Webmaster | Site maintained for the NSWAGTC by Austega