Guide 1 - Making an Impact

Now that you’ve got your HOPE2008 local site up and running, we’ll begin by showing you how to create some new content for the site:

An Article – (sometimes called a document or page) – these are the basic building blocks that make up the information on your site. This guide for example, is an article.
An Event – dates in your community diary when HOPE2008 events are taking place can be publicised in an online calendar.

Logging in

At some point you’ll have received an email giving you a username and password to enable you to log into the site. Before you can begin updating your site you’ll need to log in as follows:

At the top of the screen (just below the banner) click the login link.
A pop-up login box will appear on screen; enter the login credentials you’ve been supplied.
Click the OK button.
Click the web office link – again this is at the top of the screen just below the banner (if you can’t see this you don’t have the relevant permissions).

The web office is the administration area where all the updates to your site are made.

Navigating the Web office

The left-hand side of the screen shows a series of folders (you can expand and collapse these folders by clicking the ‘+’ and ‘-‘ buttons). These folders are, in many ways, like the folders on your hard disk containing documents, photos, calendar events etc. but they also represent the structure of information on your site. Each folder (provided it contains at least one item of content) will appear on your menu bar.

Begin by clicking one of the folder names. The right-hand pane will update to show a summary of this folder (the number of articles, events, forums etc. it contains) and a series of tabs for the different types of information.

Updating an article

Let’s begin by updating the text in the The Vision article:

Click on the The Vision folder (you may have to expand the About Hope 08 folder to see this).
Once the right-hand pane has updated click the “Documents” tab to show the list of articles in this folder.
Click the HOPE2008 – the vision document title to begin editing.
The editor works very much like a word processor – with a number of familiar looking buttons to change the text appearance and alignment. Other buttons which you may find useful:

Insert hyperlink – highlight some text or an image and press this button to provide a link to other content (this could be another page, another website, a downloadable resource etc.)
Insert Picture – click this button to insert a picture (this could be a new picture or a picture you have previously uploaded). Once you have added the picture to your document you can right-mouse click and select image properties to set the image positioning.
Insert Table – click this button to create a table in your document.
- Form Buttons – use these buttons to add form elements to your page , such as fields for entering name, address, email address etc. Don’t forget you’ll also need a “send” button (the button on the right of this toolbar) to allow the visitor to submit the information to you. If any of these elements are present on the page you will see additional options on the document properties page for setting options such as email notifications.
- Style Selector – format your text using a number of pre-defined heading styles.

Once you’ve finished updating the page click the save button. You can check this page on the site now to see the changes!

Adding a news item

Now that you’ve got to grips with the document editor, it’s time to create a news item to be displayed in the list on your web site homepage.

Click on the News folder – you’ll find this under the About HOPE2008 folder.
Once the right-hand pane has updated click the “Documents” tab. You’ll notice this time that there are two documents inside. One of these documents HOPE2008 News has a icon illuminated on the right-hand side. This indicates that it’s the group homepage – the document that is displayed when the page is selected from the menu. Click on this document to open it.
At the bottom of this document are two components – an Articles List and an RSS Reader. The first of these components displays any other published documents within this folder as a list; the second displays news items from HOPE2008 national. You can click on either of these components to change the formatting of the list.
Click the Cancel button to return to the document list.
To begin creating a new article click the Start a new document task from the task panel, then click the An Article option.
Edit the text of your document as described in the Updating an Article section above.
Once your document is complete click the Properties tab. Enter a brief overview of the article in the description section (including a summary image if required); this information will be displayed when the document appears in an article list.
In the publishing section set when the article will appear and disappear from the site.
Check the feature on web site front page button to add this article to the new items on the homepage.
Set the publishing status at the top of the editor to published then click save.

Check the homepage to see your featured news item!

Add an event to the calendar

The calendar feature in your website provides a great way of showing upcoming events alongside an appropriate contact, event information and a map to the location.

Click on the events folder – although you can add events to any folder we’ve chosen this one as a general repository for information about events.
Once the right-hand pane has updated click the events tab. You’ll see a calendar showing events taking place this month, today is highlighted with an orange border.
Jump to the month when your event takes place, then click the add button on the appropriate date.
Enter the information for your event including the title, description and location.
The Post Code you supply will be used to generate a map to the event location – you can check that the map pin appears in the correct location by clicking Verify Post Code Location. Click the set map position directly option to manually place the pin if required.
Enter the date and time of the event (or select all day event), you can also set recurring event options on this page if required.
If you have an article promoting this event you may wish to set this using the extra link option.
Click OK to save the event.

The events page will show the next seven upcoming events (you can change this by editing the calendar component located in the group homepage document). If it’s not visible yet select “calendar” from the home menu to browse the full monthly calendar.

Final Task – Changing the Structure

Now that you’ve mastered creating content items you may want to add a new folder, or change the name of an existing one.

Click one of the folder names in the left-hand pane.
On the Summary tab you’ll see an advanced options item at the bottom – click it to expand.
Edit the name field and click save to change the folder name. You’ll also find a list of tasks for adding sub-folders, moving and re-ordering folders as well as deleting folders.