Quick Start Guide - Page 1

Login

Login to the site by entering your user name and password at the prompt in the panel on the left of the screen.

Site Navigation

All contributors issued with a user name and password will be able to add content to the Performers, Groups, People, Events or Venues folders depending on which permissions you have been given.

When login is complete, you can navigate to the area you wish to add content to by clicking on either one of the folder icons in the navigation panel on the left of the screen, or the similarly named tabs from the horizontal row at the top of the screen.

Preferences

A contributor can set up a number of personal preferences, including email and web addresses, although defaults have been set up when your account was created. You probably should only change them if you are comfortable that you understand the implications.

Adding and Editing Content

Once in the area chosen, you will find that options to add or edit content are now available from the horizontal pull-down menus and tabs found immediately below the navigation tabs at the top of the page. You can only edit content which you have created, or another contributor has chosen to share with you in order that more than one person can contribute to a particular topic. In some areas of the site the content that can be added is restricted to that which is appropriate for the context. For example, in the Performers area, only a Performer can be added (although this will have already been done for you). In the specific Performer area, you will further choices, including Photo Albums and Recordings.

Content Properties

The Properties tab allows you to add certain information related to the content you are adding or editing. You should only need  to add or edit information pertaining to creators or contributors, or possibly keywords (which will help viewers of the site use the search facility). Changing anything else will have consequences you may not expect.

Sharing

This tab gives the contributor the ability to allow other contributors add to or edit specific content, where two or more peole have chosen to collaborate on a specific topic.

SEO Properties

This is to allow you to override the default title and other information for the purpose of optimisation for web search engines (e.g Google). If you are not familiar with the concepts involved, simply ignore this function.

 Ownership

Allows you to transfer all editing and adding rights to another contributor. Note that if you do this, then you will no longer be able to edit or add to this content. If you wish to retain the ability to do so, you may first want to share the content with someone else, then change ownership with this person.

Adding Text

To add text, simply select the edit tab of the folder you are in, and you will be presented with word processor functionality to write whatever you wish. Don't forget to use the Save at the bottom of the page. You should also consider selecting Enabled for "Allow Discussion on this Item", as the intent of the project is to allow people to comment on the content that has been added, in part to correct any mistakes, and to add further information that may have been forgotten, or isn't known by any particular contributor.

Adding Images

A single image may be added where it is appropriate to the context. If you wish to add multiple images, you should first create a Photo Album, and the add images to this, as there are very powerful capabilities built into the Photo Album to manage and view images correctly. If you use the Import capability to import a zip file containing many images, so as to create an album with the least amount of work, you should:

- size the images correctly. For details, see below.

- name them correctly before zipping, as the file name you give them will be the one used in the thumbnail caption. This can be edited, but is more work.

- only use alpha-numerical characters, and the hyphen ( - ) and underscore ( _ ) characters in file names, as other characters have special meaning within the system, and will cause the import to fail ( e.g using the "&" character will cause the import to fail).

The image file format should preferably be either .jpg or .png. Please do not use .bmp format files, as they are much larger in size, and downgrade performance of the site.

Image Size Guidelines

These guidelines are for the purpose ensuring both some sort of uniformity in the layout of the site, and also to maintain performance of the site, as overlarge image files in pages can result in slow loading of the page, especially for people on dial-up connections.

Free tools for resizing images that you might want to check out are:

For Windows - Irfanview, which can be downloaded here

 

For Mac OS X - CocoView X, which can be downloaded here

 

Make sure you the version that is correct for your vesion of OS X. If you are having difficulty in installing or using any tool to resize images, please contact the site administrator.

• Performer, Group, Venue, Event Image

For portrait and landscape orientation, a maximum of 300 pixels wide, maintaining aspect ratio of original image.

• Photo Albums

A maximum of 800 x 800 pixels, preferably with a maximum file size of around 200Kbytes. The Photo Album application automatically creates thumbnails for the album when you upload your file.

 

                                                                                                                                                                Page 2