Contribute training documents (pdf)
Creating PDF Files [page 1][page 2][page 3]
Creating a new page
Contribute offers you several ways of creating a new page
for your website. Although all are valid methods, the most
efficient (i.e. quick & easy) way is to start with a copy of a page
you've already developed. Much like the way a teacher would make endless
dittos of an assignment, rather than write it from scratch
every time,
you'll save time if you use one of your old pages as the
starting point for a new page.
Step 1. Open your site and navigate to your starter page. If you do not have a starter page your department's homepage will do just fine. Click on the New Page icon.
Step 2. Select Copy of Current Page from the options listed on the left for New Page sources
Step 3.
You'll need to give your new page a title by replacing the
text < Enter Title > A
page title is NOT the filename, but rather the text that
appears in the along the top of the
window frame in blue whenever you're browsing a page. Here's
an example of what the SECEP History webpage title would
look like if we were to type this in for the title: SECEP
| History
Step 4.Hit OK; Contribute should now open a copy of the page you've selected.
Step 5. Before you can add your new content in, you'll need
to clear out the content from this copy and change the page
header in the green bar running along the top (if you wish
to keep it). The easiest way to remove the content is to
hit Control+A
or go to the Edit menu and choose Select All. Once you've
highlighted the content, you can delete it. You now have
a blank canvas
to begin adding your content to.
Step 6. When you're ready to save your work, simply hit the Save for Later button in the upper left. You can always come back to this document by looking in your Draft Console, located on the left side of the screen. When you're ready to Publish the page to the world wide web, hit the Publish button. You may be greeted with a warning about linking to an existing page; simply hit OK...this is warning you only that you'll need to link your new page to your site at a later date.
Next, you'll
need to give the page a filename. Usually Contribute will suggest
a filename similar to the Title you've already given the page,
with the extension .htm at the end. You can use this default
filename or create your own name.
The only a few rules to remember when coming up with your own file name are 1) do not remove the .htm extension from the end of the filename, 2) you cannot use certain characters in your filename, such as /, \, #, &, %, or ? and 3) do not leave blank spaces in the filename; if you want to place a space between two words in the filename, use the underscore ( _ )character, by pressing Shift + Minus key (-) to indicate the space...some servers and web browsers do not translate the empty space properly (have you ever seen a web link that looks like this http://www.cnn.blogspot.com/NavApp/media?value=jk77%20%20hj22 ? Those %20 are the website converting blank spaces somebody left in).
Once you've named the file and hit Publish, it will be posted to the web and you'll be greeted with a message confirming this publication.
Edit your Navigation Menu
1. Click the CHOOSE button in the upper right corner of Contribute
2. You should now be viewing your departmental folder that
contains all the pages you currently manage. One page should
stand out, as it has a different file extension (.shtm) and
should be named nav.shtm. Select this file, then hit OK
3. The navigation menu should now appear in the browser. Press the EDIT button to open it up. When the nav file is opened for editing, all the special code that controls its presentation and appearance disappear and you should be seeing the raw Bulleted List that makes up the menu.
4. to add or remove links to the menu, simply add or remove
the items from the bulleted list. To place links as a sublink
(i.e. those links that fly-out from the main menu when the mouse
hovers over them), use the Indent to organize the item in the
list, as pictured here.
5. Once you've added the text of the link on the menu, you
MUST add a hyperlink to the liked page. The example here
shows how to choose the file to link to from the Links screen.
If
you do not have a page or document to link to at the moment
you're creating the link, you'll should create it BEFORE
adding a link to the menu. If you want a to put a link up
before you
create the page it will be linking to, you can link to the
homepage temporarily and then come back and link to the correct
document
once it has been created.
