_TEMPLATE: Story Title goes here... (Pic Top : Copy Bottom - EXTENDED)

Firstly, please note, don't edit me directly. I'm just a template, and need to be here to be used in future times. Instead, open up a separate browser tab, with a new news article, and switch back to this one for reference / or to cut & paste. This particular article is set up to have an image at the top of the article followed by copy underneath. This first paragraph you are reading now should always be in bold.

Secondary paragraphs shouldn't be in bold. Remember to pick a topic category AND any associated topic categories at the top of the page. Make sure 'Publish in home?' is selected as Yes, and that Comments are activated (unless theres a specific reason that they shouldn't be!). Generally, please leave display order as 'Normal'. You can use HTML and/or BBCode (using the various styling buttons above if you so wish), though I would prefer it if you try and stick to HTML for the news articles wherever possible.

If the article has more than a couple of paragraphs, I recommend that you continue to add any additional paragraphs here in this Extended Text panel. Don't replicate any of the above text in this panel as it will show twice in the full article. Any text in this panel won't be visible on the home page, and will only be accessible by clicking a read more link which will load a page up where only this news article sits, and you can continue to add any secondary images in this extended area...

As far as images go, the bit after src="" is the URL where the image resides on our server. Some admins will have full FTP access shortly and will be able to upload their own images to allocated areas on the server, just be sure to change the URL to point absolutely to your file as per the example. Until that point, or if you don't have FTP access, please either upload your image(s) to the Gallery or the Forums, make note of their file location and use that as for the src="url goes here part" of the IMG tag. Enter the width/height attributes of your picture in the IMG tag and try to avoid pictures > 500 pixels wide. Try and aim actually for about 500 pixels wide if you can and know how. There is an inline CSS style applied to the picture above to give it a top margin of 15 pixels and a bottom-margin of 20 pixels. At some point I may see if I can add a lightbox feature into Dragonfly if it will work so you can click pics in the content and view them at a larger size overlaid on the current page. Don't forget to also add a brief description of the image in the alt attribute.

Try to avoid using underlines if you can help it as many people mistake it for being hyperlinked text. Also please try and avoid using coloured text unless its particularly appropriate/necessary. Avoid using smilies too - we can keep those for the forums. If you want to some text bold and want to do it in HTML, use the tag around your text e.g. my bold text goes here. If you have a need for some italicised text use the tag around your text e.g. my italicised text goes here. Remember to use the "customcontent" class for all your paragraph tags to make use of pre-defined styles for neatness and consistency.

If you wish to add a link in to a web site or web page use this format.... I found Google to be the perfect search engine. You will notice that the link is also wrapped by a strong tag. You can also embed Youtube videos in your article easily enough too, by using the embed option on the page of the Youtube video, and cutting and pasting the iframe tag from there. The iframe tag below has had an additional inline CSS style applied to give it a top and bottom margin of 20 pixels.

If you want to time when your story is published you can use the various dropdown boxes below to schedule when you want the article to appear, this can be very handy. You can add a poll to the article if you feel its appropriate by filling in the poll information further down on this page. The said poll will only be visible on the articles own page though. Be sure to preview how your article looks and make any necessary changes and also most importantly be sure to proofread your article to make sure it makes sense, and check for grammar and typos.

• Posted by: Thoreandan
• Topic: Dragonfly™

• Printer Friendly Page |
• Send to a Friend