This page will talk you briefly through the job of adding news stories and information pages to the website. Happily, once you've learned how to add one kind of article to the site, you'll find all the others very similar.

In general…

As a general rule, you can add new stuff to the site by clicking — (have a guess!) — "Add new stuff"! Not hard, is it?!

When you click that link, you're given a few more options which relate to the different types of article you might want to add — e.g. a Page, Story, Blog Entry, etc. We've added instructions under each type of article to help you choose the right one.

Much of the time, however, you'll be wanting to add articles which are specific to your group. To make this easier, you can first visit your group page. Under your group menu, on the left hand side, you'll see a number of links which allow you to create articles targetted at your group — e.g. "Create Story", "Create Page", etc.

You can actually add things either way — from your Group menu, or from Add New Stuff — whichever you find most convenient.

In a bit more detail (starting with "Stories")...

Whatever type of article you're adding, the rest of the job is pretty much the same. All types of article are pretty much the same; the distinctions are in where and how they show up on the website. The rest of this page will help you fill in the various parts of a Submit Story page, with a little bit of information about other article types at the bottom.

Title: The title of your Story.

Tags: Tags are optional categories which you think your Story might fall under. You should add them as a list of comma-separated words, like "asylum, deportation, homelessness" (without the quotes). If you add Tags, links will be added to your Story that link to other Stories with the same Tag. This helps visitors find similar kinds of article.

If you type slowly, you might see tags appear underneath the box which start with the same letters as yours. If you see the word you want appear, click on it to save you typing it out again and to make sure you get the same spelling.

Body: This is the main part of your article, and you'll see you are given a selection of editing buttons to help you format your article.

Never copy and paste text directly from elsewhere into this part of the page. Instead use the "Paste as Plain Text" button. Clicking this will give you a safe box into which you can paste things, and clicking "Insert" in the 'Paste as Plain Text' box will then safely put your text into the Body of your Story. If you don't do this, you might inadvertantly copy extra font formatting which would spoil the layout of the page.

Groups: These options allow you to state who the Story is appropriate for. If no Groups are checked, your Story will be available to everybody. If you check one or more Groups, your Story will only be available to people who are logged in and are subscribers of those groups. If your Story is relevant to your group, but you also want the public to see it, click your Group name and "Public".

Comment Settings: If you can see this option, you are allowed to define the comment setting for your Story. "Disabled" means that nobody will be allowed to comment on the Story. "Read only" means that existing comments will be shown, but no new ones will be allowed. "Read/Write" means that visitors can see existing comments and add new ones.

Authoring Information: If you can see this option, you have permission to change the author of the Story (to any other registered user of the website) and the date it was created.

Publishing Options: If you can see this option, you have permission to further promote the Story.

"Promoted to front page" means a summary of the story will be shown on the main home page of the website. This will give it national visibility, so please reserve this for items that really are of national importance.

"Sticky at top of lists" will ensure the Story is always promoted to the top of any lists it appears in. Depending on where it is on the site, it might also be highlighted differently to other articles.

"Create new revision" (if you have this option) allows you to change the Story whilst storing an archived copy of the old version. This may only be useful if you want to make a change that you're not sure about, and might want to "undo" later.

Finally... when you've typed in your Story and set these various options, click "Preview" to get an idea of what your Story will look like, or "Submit" to go right ahead and publish it. The Preview option will show you how summaries of your article will look, and how the full version will look, before giving you the option to change any details and Submit it.

Other article types...

Page: Pages have an additional "Weight" option. Pages which are associated with a Group will automatically show up in that Group's menu. In this case, the Weight setting allows you to choose a rough order for this menu. Pages with bigger (heavier) weight settings will appear lower down the menu.

Yet to come...

We'll be adding more specific information here on creating Newsletter Issues, and on using the formatting buttons on Body areas.