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Authoring a story on the WAPA Web

Practical Considerations

This article describes how someone with "Author" status is able to create a new story and post it to the WAPA Web.

Before authoring and posting any stories on WAPA, it is important to understand the importance of your role. The WAPA website is a public site that is indexed by any number of search engines including Google, MSN and Yahoo. Stories potentially have a very wide exposure, and it is critical that stories do not expose WAPA to any liability. Because of this, we ask that the following guidelines be followed:

  • Do not post copyright material verbaitim without explicit permission.

Most news stories on the web have copyright held either by their publisher or original authors. Under fair use, it is acceptable to quote or excerpt small parts of the article as necessary to clearly identify the subject at hand. Then include links to the original material. If you suspect that the original material will be transient in nature, contact the web admin for asistance in making an archive copy for future reference. However this archived material should not be posted directly to the story. If you do get permission for posting of copyright material, forward it to the WAPA Clerk for future reference

  • Check your links.

Link to relevant sources of information in the article so that readers can easily find supporting material. Make sure that all the links work prior to setting the article to display on the web.

  • Do not post inflamitory or libelous material.

WAPA seeks to promote and to improve the image of general aviation. It's okay to be a bit controversial, and to take a stand on things. But don't go overboard.

Bottom line: Think before you post. We don't want to be the subject of any lawsuits, be it libel or copyright.

The posting process - Getting Started

Assuming that you have Author status and that you are signed into the system, you should see a menu toward the top of the main panel, as shown below:
mainmenu.gif

Click the "NEW" menu item. Note that if you are authoring a story submitted by someone else, you would click the "n Submissions" menu. That process will be covered in a different note.

This will bring up story editor page for a new story.

Assigning topics to the story

The top part of the page is the topic assignment section, as shown in the following image:
topicassign.gif

The window lists the current topics assigned to the story, of which there are none yet. The "icon" to note is the + which will open up the topic popup hierarchy. (When you click the "+", the topic popup opens, and the icon will change to a "-" which can be used to close the window. Here is the topic hierarchy pop-up window.

topicpopup.gif

Say the story you are creating is about an antique aircraft, owned by the collins foundation that will be on display at Fitchburg Airport. The event is sponsored by the local EAA Chapter. You might add the topics: Fitchburg, Collins Foundation, EAA Chapter News, and Antique Aircraft. So using the topic popup, highlight the "Fitchburg" topic, and then press the "Add" button at the bottom of the hierarchy. Repeat for each topic applicable to the story. (If the event were a fly-in, you might also add that topic to the list.)

Once all the topics have been added, you can cick the "-" to close the window. The next step is to choose which topic should cause the story to show on the WAPA "Front Page". Select that topic from the list, as shown in this next illustration, and then click the up-arrow to move the topic up above the -^- Mainpage -^- line. This will cause the story to appear on the Mainpage or "Front Page"

storytopics.gif

A couple of additional observations on topics:

  • Topics above the -^-Mainpage-^- cause the story to show up on the WAPA Front Page, and the highest topic will show up in the list of topic icons displayed on the page header.

  • Topics above the -^-Sectional-^- line cause the topic to be included in whatever section owns those topics. You can explicitly include a story in a section by adding the nexus topic into the list of topics.

  • Topics listed anywhere above the -^-Sectional-^- or -^-Mainpage-^- will be included in the "Search" system. If a user clicks on any of these topics, or their parent topics in the hierarchy the story will be included in the search results.

  • Topics below the -^-Sectional-^- line are actually excluded from consideration. So if for example the story is about "Fitchburg" but totally unrelated to the airport, you could add the "Airports" topic and demote it to below the Sectional line, so that searches on "Airports" will not find this story.

Assigning the Title and other story attributes

The next fields are used to assign the story title, department, author, enable comments, set the story date/time, specify or create a poll, and checkboxes and links for setting other story attributes:

title dept.gif

Guidelines for these fields:

  • Story Title should be something meaningful. If the story is about an upcoming event, include the date in the title. "Upcoming Safety Seminar" is a bad title. "Safety Seminar, Feb 23, 2005 to discuss Accidents" is a much better title

  • Department is an attempt to be cute. Use something humorous here - "department of redundancy department" …

  • Comments Enabled should remain enabled. We are not currently using the friend/foe system.

  • Date/Time is used if you want to put the story off into the future. If you don't want the story to appear until tomorrow morning, set the appropriate date. This can also be used to allow some time for "second thoughts" about posting the story.

  • Poll fields will be discussed in a future article

  • Fixquotes correct typographic (curly) quotes that are often pasted in from editors like MS Word.

  • Autonode according to the slash guide, "Autonode automatically creates glossary-style links to http://everything2.com but it doesn't seem to work anymore"
And when editing a previously posted story

  • Fastforward to repost the story to the current date/time. This is handy if there is a significant change that you need to alert readers about, or if you want to remind users of an upcoming event that was posted some time in the past. TIP If a story is fastforwarded from a previous day, it will also be included in the day's automatic newsletter.

  • Attach a file to upload a file and attach it to the story. More on this later in this document.

Setting the article text.

The next edit box is used for the introductory text that will show up on the summary page.

introcopy.gif

TIP Note that even though story submissions can be in "Plain Old Text" format, the Author process must be done with a basic knowledge of HTML tags.

The introductory text should be a brief description of the story, with enough details to inform the reader without filling the front page with a single article. Many HTML tags are accepted: The list of tags is stored in a site variable "approved_tags".

  B | I | P | A | LI | OL | UL | EM | BR | TT | STRONG | BLOCKQUOTE 
  DIV | ECODE | SUP | SUB | SMALL | DL | DT | DD

Hide the reamaining story details in the following box:

extendedcopy.gif

Note that the extended text can also be uploaded by using the Browse button to select and upload a local file. This is not used to attach a file to the story, but is used to upload text for direct display in the story.

Finally, use the preview button to check that the story appears reasonable, follow links to validate them, etc.

Previewing the story

When you press preview, the story will be shown as it would appear when displayed using the read more link. It will display both the introductory and extended text. Following the story display will be a list of similar stories matched by common words from the story text.

similarstories.gif

If the words that matched are common and likely to be seen in many stories, you can exclude them from future story matching by selecting the checkbox next to the common word. This will add the word to the list of common story words. Note also the "display" checkbox. You can use that to hide the story from all access.

Just below the topic list is the current display status of the story.

displaystatus.gif

If the story does not show up in the expected locations, you can move topics up or down to change where they will display. If at some future time the story is no longer of general relevant, for example, a TFR that is no longer in effect, push the topics down to below the -^-Mainpage-^- line to remove the story from the Front Page.

Finally, next to each of the story text boxes will be the results of a spell check. Before saving the story with the Display checkbox enabled, review any reported spelling errors and correct as necessary.

spellcheck.gif

When everything looks good, make sure that the Display checkbox is checked, and press the SAVE button to save the story and publish it to the web. As long as the story is published with a story time prior to 0000 GMT (7 or 8 PM local) the story will be included in the automatic newsletter that is generated at 0200 GMT (9 or 10 PM).

Attaching a file

If you want to attach a file to the story, such as a graphic or PDF file, first you need to save the story. Un-check the "Display" checkbox and save the story to anchor it in the database, so that files can be attached. Then edit the story again. There should now be an attach_file link below the story title and department entry fields, as shown here:

attachfile.gif

When you click the attach_file link, the file upload page will open.

attachdialog.gif

Use the "Browse" button to find and upload files. When the desired files have been uploaded, click the story title that is shown just above the browse button to return to the story. The files will be listed in a box on the right side of the story. The box includes slash HTML tags that you can cut/paste into the story text.

attachedfiles.gif

TIP Consider converting Microsoft documents to the Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF). The free Openoffice.Org http://www.openoffice.org/ office suite can write directly to PDF format and can read many other popular office format documents.

File Attachment Tags

Note: The following information is taken from the slashtags.pod file shipped with slashcode.

SLASH-IMAGE: Include an image into the story.

This tag does not enclose text. Available attributes:

ID
[REQUIRED] The ID of the file in the database, provided in the "Attached Files" slashbox.

TITLE
[OPTIONAL] The enclosed text is used if not supplied. TITLE value is also used for the ALT attributed.

ALIGN
[OPTIONAL] Alignment of image (e.g., top, middle, bottom, left, right).

WIDTH
[OPTIONAL] Width of image (e.g., 200). Automatically added if left empty.

HEIGHT
[OPTIONAL] Height of image (e.g., 200). Automatically added if left empty.

TYPE
[OPTIONAL] "image", if hyphenated form not used.

The SLASH-IMAGE tag is almost the same as the SLASH-FILE tag, but with additional attributes, and uses an IMG SRC output instead of an A HREF output.


   <SLASH-IMAGE ID="SOMEID" TITLE="foo" WIDTH="200" 
                HEIGHT="200">

This is processed into something like:

   <IMG SRC="//slash.example.com/blob.pl?id=SOMEID" TITLE="foo"
                WIDTH="200" HEIGHT="200">

SLASH-FILE: Include a file in the story.

This tag encloses text. Available attributes:

ID
[REQUIRED] The ID of the file in the database, provided in the "Attached Files" slashbox.

TITLE
[OPTIONAL] The enclosed text is used if not supplied.

TYPE
[OPTIONAL] "file", if hyphenated form not used.

The SLASH-FILE tag allows linking to a file that has already been put into the Slash database, via the "Attach File" link that appears in the story editor once the story has been saved. Files attached to that story appear in the story's "Attached Files" slashbox in the story editor, along with syntax to use to include the file, something like this:

   <SLASH-FILE ID="SOMEID" TITLE="foo">foo</SLASH>

Note: This syntax, upon preview/update, will change to:

   <SLASH TYPE="file" ID="SOMEID" TITLE="foo">foo</SLASH>

This is processed into something like:

   <A HREF="//slash.example.com/blob.pl?id=SOMEID" TITLE="foo">foo</A>

One more item that shows up with each story is a Related Links box. These links are pulled from any links manually entered into the story text, and with a collection of automatic links that are included when their associated keyword is found in the story. This list is manually uploaded into a SQL table in the slash system. If you have links that you think should automatically be included whenever a story includes a triggering keyword, contact the web admin. Here is an example of the related links box.

relatedlinks.gif

Related links can also be added to the related-links box without actually adding the link to the story. Use the SLASH-RELATED tag:

This tag encloses text. Available attributes:

HREF
[REQUIRED] The URL of the link.

TYPE
[OPTIONAL] "related", if hyphenated form not used.

The SLASH-RELATED tag creates an additional entry to the bottom of a story's "Related Links" slashbox. It produces no output.

    <SLASH-RELATED HREF="http://www.example.com/">Example site</SLASH>

This produces no output in the story; rather, it adds to the "Related Links" slashbox text something like:

    &middot; <A HREF="http://www.example.com/">Example site</A><BR>
"Listen up gentlemen, or something's gonna happen that none of us wants to see. Besides that, you're (tickin') me off!" --ORD Tower

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