Spicing up the content (1) Rich text editing and adding links

After you've posted an article, you will want to spice it up a bit with other images, audio and video, links to downloadable files, and so on. In this first tutorial, I'll teach you how to change the text formating and add links to other webpages.

1. Go to iave.org and Login. Find the article you want to edit - I do this by going to the section I saved it in, using the navigation buttons. In this case it's the story about the board meeting, which I found on the Home page. When you've pulled up the article, you'll see, above the title, three tags: View, Edit, and Track. Go to Edit.

 2. You should be able to see a panel of buttons, similar to the formating palette on your favorite text editor, sitting below the Body. If you don't see it, open up the Input format link below the Body box and choose the Full HTML option.

3. Now you can highlight words in the text and make them bold, italicize them, change their color to the IAVE red, or make them bigger or smaller, as you wish. There's no need to do any of that to this already perfect article about the board meeting, but it could do with some links, so that's what I'm going to add now.

4. Select a word/phrase with your mouse (in this case: "IAVE board of directors") and click on the Insert/edit link button, which looks like a little chain.

5. This will bring up the Link dialog box. Enter the address of the relevant webpage (in this case http://iave.org/content/board-directors) into the Link URL box, and click Insert.

6. If you want to link to an external site, like www.francebenevolat.org, then it's best to pick Open in new window (_blank) in the Target drop-down box. This opens a new window when the link is clicked, so we don't send visitors away from our site.

7. Click Save at the bottom of the screen and we're done.

TIP: Avoid adding links to the first sentence of your article, as these appear in the homepage teaser, and will misdirect people who click on the link thinking they will be going to the article. (I discovered this after adding the Board of Directors link above).

How to add an article

Here's a simple guide for how to post an article on the new IAVE website.

1. Go to http://iave.org/user and LOGIN.

2. Go to "Content Manager" - "Create Content" and "Article".

3. If the document you want to post is in Word format, or another word processing software application, copy and paste the content into a basic text editor, like WordPad or TextEdit, to get rid of any unnecessary formatting and hidden code.

4.  Then copy and paste the "clean" text into the Body of your Article.

5. Add a Title, write the author's name under "By", Upload a picture (be careful of copyright issues), and select the appropriate SubSites and Categories depending on where you want the article to appear on the website.

6. If you want the article to appear on the front page, click that box under Publishing options. Click Save at the bottom of the page, and Voila! That should be it. Check the article to make sure the style is consistent with the other pages on the website.