Website documentation for Authors

Last updated 14 May 2008 (change log)

Introduction

Writing content on a web page in a way that is helpful to all (humans and search engines) calls for a few simple guidelines, some of which are covered here. Also here are a few quick tips on using the Wordpress editing system. And finally there are a few specific features that this website has, such as ‘Member – only’ information. Beyond the specifics of this website, this book (or similar) may also be of interest when it comes to writing for the web.

While all the information here should be useful to some or all CIHA authors, a few important items are highlighted.

Writing content

Writing content
- A ‘Page’ or a ‘Post’.
  - Pages: What is a page: A page is a normal web page of copy (written text). Examples include the home page, the CIHA page. A page can be ‘top-level’, that is it can be one of these: Welcome, Practitioners, Documents, FAQ, Calendar, CIHA, Members only, or it can be a sub-page, that is, it is a page that lies underneath one of the top-level pages. Examples of sub-pages include CIHA membership & benefits or Board members, both of which are sub-pages of the top-level CIHA page. There is one other case, which is a sub-sub page, should you find the need for these (unlikely) and are unsure, see ‘More help‘.
  - Pages: How do I edit a page - BASIC:
    - First, login. You will now find yourself on the ‘Admin’ side of the CIHA website, just like the normal side, this side of the website has a number of different pages too. The page you are placed on after login is the ‘Dashboard’ page.
    - We’re here this time to edit a page, to do so we need to go to the page. This can be accomplished here on the admin side or on the normal side — as you are logged in, when you return to the normal side you have now ‘un-locked’ the admin side and so when you view a page you will see an ‘Edit’ link, usually in the lower left. As you are familiar with the normal side of the website, the easiest way to choose the page for editing is to return, momentarily, to the normal side, with the ‘Visit site’ button. Now navigate to the page to edit, here we’re choosing the ‘CIHA membership & benefits’ page (here). Scroll to the bottom and click the ‘Edit’ link in the lower left, above the dark blue footer section or if there is no edit link, see here.
    - …And you’re back on the admin side, only now you have selected the document you wish to edit and it is open for editing.
    - Edit in your changes — things to NOT change lightly are: The title - this is known to humans and search engines so unless there is a compelling reason, leave the title as is (when making a new page choose the title with care). The second thing NOT to edit is the little yellow area beneath the title called the permalink. For more help on editing, read other sections here that cover the tool bar, copy-pasting and more.
    - If you have edited, but want to see what the result looks like, click the ‘View this page’ button (top right) — this opens a new window, leaving your editing window still open. Look around your new window and then close it and return to the original editing window.
    - Make more edits if needed or if you are happy click the ‘Save’ button (right side). When you have finished editing, either use the link in the newly-popped-up yellow box near the top that says: ‘Page updated. Continue editing below or go back’, logout or click the ‘Visit site’ button.
    - It is recommended that unless you have a reason to stay logged in, you logout.
  - Pages: How do I edit a page - ADVANCED: (see elsewhere on how to add a NEW page or post)
    - Above, the basics of editing a page are covered. There are a number of advanced steps that can be taken when editing a page, many of which are irrelevant in day-to-day usage. However three which are useful to introduce and understand now are shown toward the bottom left of the page editing screen: ‘Page parent’, ‘Page order’ and ‘Page author’.
      - Page parent: This click-and-drop-down box shows hierarchically, all the pages in the website. Use it to choose where in the structure of the website you wish the page you are editing to go. For example, if it is a new page that is to go under the ‘Documents’ section, then scroll it and click on ‘Documents’.
      - Page order: This field allows you to type in a number, 1 to 99 typically. For example, currently under the ‘Documents’ section of the website there are these pages. As denoted, the top one is always the main page or top page for that section. Those under it are sub-pages of the top-level page. The order the sub-pages are displayed in is determined by the number in their ‘Page order field’. To swap pages around, simply edit each page affected, scroll to the Page order fields and edit these numbers.
      - Page author: This field denotes who is currently ‘holding the baton’ for this page - who is currently in charge of it. Edit the page in the normal way and change this to someone else’s login name if you wish to pass editorship over to another person.
    - TIP: If you have done some editing, perhaps deleted a sentence or paragraph, and the display looks like the content does not quite naturally flow, it may be simply that the content needs to be re-freshed (re-drawn), this is not achieved with the browser reload button but simply by clicking the ‘HTML’ tab momentarily and then clicking back into the visual tab again and continuing.
  - Posts: What is a post: A post is an entry in the weblog (blog). As such, all posts written will be displayed in chronological order (newest first) on the ‘Blog’ page. In theory a post can contain anything, in the same way a page can contain anything, however, blog posts are suited to information that is of-the-moment, chatty, informal. Using a blog entry to talk in a casual / particularly friendly manner will invariably not leave the reader feeling your organization is one that is not professional.
  - Posts: How do I edit a post - BASIC: (see elsewhere on how to add a NEW page or post)
    - This process is nearly identical to editing a page, covered elsewhere. One difference is that the ‘Edit’ link for a post is at the bottom of the post and as sometimes several posts are displayed on a page, you look at the bottom of the post rather than necessarily at the bottom of the page to find it.
- Headings (lists, B(old) and I(talic) are good:
  - It is vitally important to people with a sight impairment using a screen-reader that content be ‘semantically marked up‘. Also this approach helps SE’s (search engines) such as Google and Yahoo more easily work out what your content is about (and rank it more highly for a given search term). And last but not least, using these ‘good’ things, the ‘Heading 2′, ‘Heading 3′ and ‘list’ elements etc, will mean your content automatically looks consistent and professional, due to the way the website is designed.
  - How to use headings (list, etc):
    - Make sure you can see all the buttons: Get to the point where you are editing a page or a post and use the provided buttons on the tool bar. Specifically, make sure you have the ‘extra’ buttons set to display by checking for the presence of an oblong button with ‘Paragraph’ on it. If this is not visible, then turn on the ‘extra’ buttons by clicking this button.
    - Use the buttons to describe your content: If you write a page or a post, then you have to title it, in the oblong ‘Title’ box at the top of the screen. This means the page has already been given it’s top / highest heading, also known as ‘Heading 1′ or ‘H1′. This is a special type of heading and should be present once per page or post (so as it’s automatically inserted for the title, don’t use this option). However, your copy may well have many sub-headings, logically splitting it up. This is where you use the button usually marked ‘Paragraph’ , clicking it and selecting ‘Heading 2′ (H2) for the next most important heading and if later in your copy, you have another equally important heading, then using this button again, or if you have a heading that is subordinate to a preceeding H2 heading, then this time selecting ‘Heading 3′ (H3).
    - TIP: The easy way to make an H2 or H3 heading is write it out on screen, hit enter / return to make a new line (and I usually begin my next new line, even with one word), then click with your mouse anywhere in the preceding normal looking line that is to become our heading and leaving the flashing cursor there, click the ‘Paragraph’ drop-down button and choose ‘Heading 2′ or ‘Heading 3′ (as appropriate) and your line will instantly transform into a title (bolder, bigger), and more than this, when you save and later view your web page, your title will look consistent with all the titles on the website ensuring all content portrays the same professional image and is better interpreted by Google et al.
- Other cool buttons when editing: from the preceding section you saw how the extra tool bar buttons can be displayed. Two other useful buttons on this tool bar are the ‘Paste as plain text’ and ‘Paste from Word’ - both can be seen by their icons (hover over an icon for a second or so and it will tell you what the button is for). These largely self explanatory buttons are useful if you wish to paste content into a post or page. WARNING: pasting content in without ‘cleaning’ it in this way will often load your page with junk ‘mark-up’ that will break the page in one or more ways (for the SE, for the human with good vision or for the human with impaired vision), more on keeping content clean and semantic.
- Pre-made style(s) available to the author:
  - beleza: This is the name given to the style used on the homepage, that is, where the first paragraph of copy underneath the H1 title is automatically made large. Should you wish to employ this style on other pages, or have other custom styles made, see ‘More help‘.
NEW pages or posts - not simply editing existing…
- Login and then simply click either the ‘Write a New Page’ or ‘Wrtie a New Post’ buttons.
- A new page:
  - If you are writing a new page, then simply follow the instructions as described above for editing a page. It will be necessary to choose a parent page since a page with no parent is a top level page, and the only top level pages are those in the main ‘navigation’ (seen running across the top of the website).
- A new post:
  - A new post does not require (nor can it have) a parent page. However, it ought to be given one or more categories and ideally, one or more tags. Entering tags and categories makes it esier for people to find content as they are shown in the sidebar on the blog pages. Also it makes it more likely content will be more highly rated by SE’s.
    - Categories: Generally speaking, caution should be exercised when it comes to adding new categories (and tags). Were 10 authors to add 10 posts over a month and use three new categories per post, the website would be groaning under the weight of 300 categories. The software can cope with this easily, but the human reader would invariably be defeated by the complexity of something that, ironically, is meant to help them find content. A few well thought out categories with new categories only being added after some careful consideration will lead to a clean and clear navigation aid to the visitor. The same can be said for adding tags.
    - Tags: Almost all the same things apply to tags as they do to categories. However, generally tags can be thought of as less formal categories. So while a post about photography might be put only in the category ‘hobbies’ (rather than making a new category called ‘photography’ because if this was done, then each new hobby would spawn a new category and we would sooner or later have category bloat, something to avoid) this same post could certainly have the tag ‘photography’ and if it were about a trip to Egypt then it would be good to tag it ‘Egypt’ too, (etc).
    - Tags and categories summary: In short, categories can be thought of as broad groups of posts and tags as mini-groups of post.

Features

Just a few of the features of this website that an author ought to be aware of:

Features:
- Email obfuscation:
  - If at some time you need to write an email address in a page or a post, use the link command (the icon that looks like a chain) by highlighting the text you wish to apply the email link to, such as the phrase ‘contact Bernard’ or the text ‘me@here.ca’ and upon clicking the button, in the pop-up box, delete the pre-entered text that reads: ‘http://’ and in the empty space type ‘mailto:’ (without the quote marks, no spaces) and immediately following the colon (no space) type in the email address, then click the ‘Insert’ button. The website is designed to automatically obfuscate (hide) the address you typed in from email spam bots. No technique is flawless and there is no guarantee this will foil a spam bot, but it is often all that is needed to keep your addresses safe.
- DRY (don’t repeat yourself) content:
  - Continuing on from the above point about entering email addresses; this website and it’s content has been carefully constructed to avoid duplication of data. Many web authors think, wrongly, that if they want people to find something they had better repeat it at every opportunity, or at least in more than one place. It is proven that this always obscures clarity and produces vagueness into a website that destroys peoples abilities to find content naturally. To that end, always ensure that if you are entering content, it is in the right place and if it is not, then put it in the right place and make a link to it from somewhere that might be the wrong place but where you need to refer to it. An example is where we want to tell people where to send their membership applications to, here we could have given the details of the person to whom these need to be sent. Had we done this, then when this persons email address changes (etc), then we now have two places to go and correct it. That is one reason why linking to a single source of information is so much safer and clearer for visitors and maintainers alike - a visitor who returns begins to get comfortable and familiar with the fact that all contact information is in XYZ page and all ABC info is in 123 page etc.
- BIO’s:
  - BIO’s are broken into two parts, peoples contact info’ and their written bio. The contact info and photo is stored in a database that is accessible only to fluffDESIGN Inc. and so should an edit to a phone number need to be made, please follow the information under ‘More help’ below. The same would apply if a new person was joining and a new Bio page needed setting up. Editing a persons written bio is entirely open to designated CIHA authors to do, simply edit the page in the normal way.
- Directory page:
  - The directory of practitioners is a special page and is maintained by fluffDESIGN Inc. Please follow the information under ‘More help’ below if you need this page edited.
- Calendar:
  - Editing the calendar is identical to editing any other page, with the following important points:
    - The calendar is built from a normal multi-level list, like this documentation is. When you edit the calendar, this is what you see. It is important to the correct display of the calendar that it remains built in this manner, that is, a three level depth per entry, with the outer-most entry being the month, the next being the activity and the last being the details.
    - The details line is deliberately broken into: date and time, then person or people and finally title or description of the event — in that order.
    - The details are also deliberately formatted italic for the people and bold for the description.
  - If calendar entries are edited, following the above simple formula will ensure each entry is consistent, easy to read and will automatically have the appropriate icons added without any need on the editors part to insert fiddly little images (etc) - so the ‘ordinary’ looking automatically turns into the neat, icon identified.
- Secure content:
  - Adding secure content is almost identical to writing a blog post, with two differences, you upload some content that is to be secured (e.g. a .MP3 file) and you password protect the post; as follows:
    - Uploading audio:
      - Write a blog post or some of the blog post (such as the title) and hit the ‘Save’ button (but not yet the ‘Publish’ button next to it).
      - Click the ‘Add audio icon’ and then choose the file, upload it (after clicking the ‘Upload’ button nothing will appear to happen, particularly if this is a multi-megabyte audio file, but the ‘Gallery’ tab will eventually have a bracketed number after the word ‘Gallery’ that will be one higher than before, showing the file has uploaded), click over to the ‘Gallery tab’, click ‘Show’ on the item you uploaded, give it a Title, Caption and Description (the more you describe it the better, but make sure you fill in at least the ‘Title’ since that is the link-text that will be inserted for you in your post), adjacent to ‘Link URL’ click the ‘File URL’ button and then click ‘Insert into Post’.
      - Now complete any other copy editing you want, if any.
      - Scroll down to the ‘Categories’ section and un-check ‘Uncategorized’ and check ‘Members only’.
    - Secure post:
      - Now you simply need to apply the CIHA secure content password to this post. To do so, scroll down to the section titled ‘Password protect this Post’ and enter the global CIHA password.
    - Click ‘Publish’. To test if your new item shows up, go to the normal side of the website like any other visitor, and click ‘Members only’ in the main navigation and then click ‘Members only’ in the side bar (under ‘Categories’). Your new item should show up amongst the others already there.
Uploading images
- The maximum width image you can upload is 525px. Any image uploaded that is wider, the copy on the webserver will be automatically and permanently shrunk down to 525px.
- To upload an image, follow the instructions for uploading audio except click the adjacent ‘Add an image’ button instead. Also, this time you have options to let you position the image left or right (etc) — one important option, not instantly obvious is the ‘Link URL’ choice — if you simply want an image in your page or post, click ‘None’, if however you have a large image but want to normally show only a ‘thumbnail’ or ‘medium’ size, then click ‘File URL’ and below, choose ‘Thumbnail’ or ‘Medium’ (then if the viewer mouses-over the image they will see a ‘hand’ and clicking they will be shown the full size image). Finally click ‘Insert in post’ (you may need to scroll down the pop-up window to see that button).
Some other features of this website:
- Google ‘sitemap‘ generation - automatic - this is good for SEO (search engine optimisation).
- Sitemap page - automatically updates when Pages or Post are added or their titles edited.
- A good degree of automatic SEO has been added and will continue to be automatically added as the site is edited.
- Commenting on blog posts can be enabled with varying levels of control. Currently commenting is turned off.
FAQ
- Where’s my Post / Page.
  - If you began a Post or a Page and cannot see it, check the ‘Drafts’ view — I chose: ‘Manage’, ‘Pages’ and you can instantly see that there are two ‘Draft’ pages in this image.
- Why can’t I edit a page / post?
  - To edit a page or blog post:
    - you must be logged in,
    - you must be the ‘Page Author’ — if you are not, then you can simply become the ‘Page Author’ by asking the current person to change the ownership over to you. See the ‘Page Author’ section in How do I edit a page - ADVANCED for help with this.
- More FAQ’s? — by all means send more FAQ’s to fluffDESIGN if you wish this list to be expanded for future reference.

Appendicies

More help

If, after reviewing the help information here, you still need a helping hand, refer to the nominated web person within the CIHA. This person may then be able to help you or alternatively may wish to talk to fluffDESIGN Inc. where we will be glad to help. Support and help is provided via our ‘Time’ service, more details at http://fluffdesign.com/time.

Marking-up content

Poorly created content can spoil both the humans experience looking at and reading a website and a search engines ability to index the content on the website.

The goal of semantic HTML requires two things of authors:

To avoid the use of presentational markup (elements, attributes, and other entities).

To use available markup to differentiate the meanings of phrases and structure in the document.

Wikipedia on ‘Semantic HTML’

To quote Douglas Adams, “Don’t panic!” — this does not require that you learn HTML or any other technicalities. The key phrase is ‘…use available markup to differentiate the meanings of phrases and structure in the document’. In this context, it means using the most appropriate buttons on the editor to insert (for you) the HTML to assign portions of text as headings or lists etc.

Changes

14 May 2008:: Minor edits. Added index.
7 May 2008:: Document released.

Introduction

Writing content

Features

Appendicies

Writing content

Features

Appendicies

More help

Marking-up content

Changes

RSS Links

Search

Pages

Last few articles

Archives

Categories

Last few comments

Popular spots

The CIHA

Website documentation for Authors

Introduction

Writing content

Features

Appendicies

Writing content

Features

Appendicies

More help

Marking-up content

Changes

RSS Links

Search

Pages

Last few articles

Archives

Categories

Tags

Last few comments

Popular spots

The CIHA