Entry Instructions: Staff and Leadership Messages

Each member of staff can enter "messages". "Messages" are specifically intended to be that staff members "blog". Interested members can follow one specific leader's or staff member's messages, or watch the newsletter to follow all of them. It is important to remember that staff and leadership messages do not expire: They remain published, and they are just pushed down lower in the blog as newer messages are published. 

Staff and leadership should be entering their own messages, so these instructions are partially for them, in doing so, and partially for whoever reviews their messages and switches them from the Drafts category into the live news category.

The Title of the article should begin date of intended publication (typically a Monday), in the format Month DD, YYYY. If there is an appropriate subject for the message, then the date should be followed by a space, a dash, and a space, and then finally the subject. This will keep the titles of the articles consistent.

The Created Date and Start Publication date should be set to the current date, and current time. (Be sure not to save the article with the Start Publishing date in the future.) There should be no Finish Publishing date.

The first item in each message should be the staff member's or leader's photo. Placing the cursor at the upper-left corner of the Article Text editor window, click the Image button below the editor. In the popup, find the person's photo; generally, it starts with "profile_" and so will be found roughly two-thirds of the way down the gallery of photos. Click on the file name of the photo. This will put the correct URL for the photo in the Image URL field. Enter the person's name in the Image Title field, to assist the vision impaired. Leave Caption set to No. (Image Description can be ignored.) Then click the Insert button in the upper-right corner of the popup.

Once the image has been placed into the editor, it needs to be adjusted. Click on the Toggle editor button below the Article Text editor. You will see something that looks like this (at the start of the code). 

<p><img src="/images/profile_name.jpg" border="0"
 alt="First Last" /> 

Add a style attribute before the '/>', as shown below. 

<p><img src="/images/profile_name.jpg" border="0"
 alt="First Last" style="float: left; padding-right: 10px;" /> 

This will allow the text entered to flow around the photo to the right, and ensure that there is an attractive amount of space between the photo and the text. Click Toggle editor again, to return to the rendering of the article, and begin entering text.

Generally, email addresses should not be included in messages. Spammers regularly scour websites for email addresses presented directly like this. Instead, it is always better to provide a URL link to a Contact Form. First, find the URL to the Contact Form you want to link to. There are separate pages for lists of Contact Forms for staff, leadership, programs/teams/committees, and for members of programs/teams/committees. Start here http://uureading.org/members. From there, you can use the index in the right alley of the page to navigate to the other lists. Open the Contact Form you desire, and copy the URL from the address bar of your browser. (While not required, it is always best to copy the URL starting after http://uureading.org/ since that relative URL is more compatible with testing, conversions and domain moves. However, if you're unsure, just use the whole URL.)

Once you have the URL, enter the words you want for the link. ("Click here to contact Paul for more information.") Then highlight the words and click the Insert/Edit Link tool in the toolbar above the editor. That's the tool in the middle of the second row of tools in the toolbar, that has the chain links on it. That will popup a popup within which you would paste the URL into the Link URL field. Then click Insert to close the popup and make the words "hot" as a link to the Contact Form.

Pay close attention to the use of dollar signs in the message. Due to the underlying website software, it is essential that dollar signs be followed by a breaking space. So type "$ 10" instead of typing "$10".   

Finally, please ensure that there are no extra blank lines at the end of the message.  

• < Prev
• Next >