Note : You can also reach to this page while working with the Portal Control Panel, by just clicking the "?" circle on the top right hand corner of the control panel screen.

Help links:

1. Basics
2. Creating News/Article
3. WYSIWYG Text Area
4. Uploading Images
5. Image Placeholders
6. News/Article Types
7. Browsing News/Articles
8. Tip & Tricks

Basics :
The Portal Control Panel for writers has been designed to be simple and easy to navigate. At the top of each page, a gray navigation bar allows you to access the different features of The Portal Control Panel. At any point you may navigate to other sections of the program, but be cautious to save your work before you do so. When creating a new record or modifying an already existing one, no changes are recorded until the "Save" button is clicked.

If you accidentally go to another page or click "Cancel", you can usually click the "Back" button on your web browser, and it will remember what was last entered in the form. This functionality may or may not be available, as it is dependant on your web browser, not the Portal Control Panel.

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Creating a News/Article :
To create your first news/article, first click on "Create News/Article" in the gray navigation bar at the top of the interface. You'll be presented with a blank form for your News/Article.

Start by filling out the Title field. Enter a short abstract in the Summary field and type the main body of your news/article into the Content field. The news/article cannot be saved or previewed without belonging to a Category, so make sure to select a Category from the drop-down list.

Another field which may be available to you is the Status field. If you want to be able to preview or publish your news/article, make sure to set it to "visible".

We may switch on/off the 'filename' field, you'll be able to enter a unique filename for your news/article. For example, by typing "calendar", your news/article will be published as "calendar.shtml".

You may see a News/Article Type field on the page. This field allows you to specify where the news/article will link to from pages in which the news/article is listed. In most cases, you'll want to leave this on its default setting of "Full News/Article".

After you've filled in all the appropriate fields, you can save your news/article, preview it, or upload some images to include. Please see the next section for more information on uploading images.

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WYSIWYG Text Area :
With the WYSIWYG text box enabled for either the summary, content, or spare news/article fields you can format text without using HTML tags. Your options now include bold, italic, underline, align left/center/right, numbered lists, bulleted lists, indent right/left, text color, text highlight color, insert horizontal rule, add link, add image link, and view html source.

Please note that a WYSIWYG text box will only function in HTML mode on Windows, and only for Internet Explorer version 5.5+. All other browsers will use a regular text box to enter and edit information.

As you enter text, pressing <enter> starts a new paragraph, which leaves a blank line. For single line breaks, press <shift> + <enter>.

To enter HTML directly into the WYSIWYG text box, select the HTML button "<>", paste the HTML and select the HTML button again to view the results. The text/html is in the content text box, can also by previewed by clicking the "Preview without publishing" button. This will open a new window with the full news/article publish preview results.

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Uploading Images :
Each news/article can have up to twenty-five images associated with it, which can be inserted into the Content, Summary, and spare fields of the news/article. To upload images, click the "Upload Images" button on the news/article edit page. You'll see a list of twenty-five upload fields. You can now select files from your local computer to upload.

After you click "Save" from the upload page, you'll be sent to the "Manage Images" page, where you'll be able to see your images and enter in captions for them. This screen also allows you to erase images which you no longer require. After you've saved your changes, you'll be returned to editing the news/article. Note that any image you've uploaded will now be listed on this page under "Uploaded Images".

To erase images or modify captions that you've already uploaded, click the "Manage Images" button on the news/article edit page below the list of uploaded images.

Please note that images do not automatically get published in your news/articles. To publish your images, please read the next section on Image Placeholders.

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Image Placeholders :
You can place uploaded images in your news/articles by inserting special placeholders into the Content, Summary, or spare fields. Listed on the edit news/article page are all of the images which have been uploaded for news/article, as well as a sample placeholder for each.

To place an image in your news/article, cut-and-paste the placeholder for your image into the Content, Summary, or a spare field. The Portal Control Panel will insert your images and respective captions wherever your placeholders appear. To make the procedure even easier, you can click the "Preview" button to get a look at what the page will look like when published.

Additionally, you can control how your images are aligned by inserting slightly more advanced image placeholders. Listed below are the different modifiers:

***image1***		insert image with default alignment
***image1:left***		insert image left aligned
***image1:center***		insert image center aligned
***image1:right***		insert image right aligned
***image1:url***		insert image URL

The "default alignment" is right aligned.

The last modifier ":url" does not insert an image into your news/article. Instead, it inserts an url to the image. This placeholder is intended for use in HTML. Please see the "Tips and Tricks" section below for how to use this.

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News/Article Types :
Sometimes, you'll want a news/article to link somewhere other than a detail page. By setting the News/Article Type field within your news/article, you can change where news/article will link.
 

Setting	Description
Full News/Article	This is the default setting for news/articles and will link to a news/article detail page.
Summary Only	This setting will cause your news/article to link nowhere at all.
Internet URL	This setting can be used to direct your visitors to another url. Often this is used to link to a relevant page on your own site, or to a news/article on another site which you're paraphrasing.
Uploaded File	This setting should be used when you want to provide the body of your news/article in another format than HTML. If you have a .pdf file to use as your article's content, you'll want to use this setting.

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Browsing News/Articles :
You'll see a button in the gray navigation bar labeled "Edit News/Article", using this tab, you can modify and erase news/articles.

When browsing through news/articles, you can use the Keyword Search function to narrow down the number of entries to search through. You may also elect to only display news/articles from a specific Category, or with a specific Status. The Portal Control Panel remembers your last search settings for a while if you leave the page and return, and it may be confusing at first to only see one or two records. To show all of your records again, use the "List All" button, which resets the Keyword Search.

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Tips and Tricks :
Often, there are ways of doing things with a program which are not immediately apparent, and sometimes, you're able to use a program to do things that the program wasn't originally designed for. This section is presented to illustrate some ways you can use the Portal Control Panel to achieve different effects.

Thumbnailing



Having a smaller image link to a larger image is known as thumbnailing. You can link an image to another image by taking advantage of Image Placeholders from within the News/Article's Content or Summary field. Use the :url modifier of image placeholders to insert the full url to the uploaded image:

<a href="***image2:url***" target="blank"><img src="***image1:url***"></a>

This would treat image 1 as a thumbnail, linking it to image 2, the larger image.




More tips & tricks coming soon!

Send us your comments or including more help if so required or the above explanation is not clear or confusing, we will try to accommodate your feedback.

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