This book will contain a list of how to do things on the DFHA.ORG web site. Use it as a reference as you learn new tasks here.
In case you would like a step by step HOWTO for posting a new event on DFHA.ORG, you found the right place. This may be more verbose than it needs to be, but once you go through it once, you will just be able to do it. Posting an event is really pretty easy if you have all the information in front of you.
Got everything together? Then let's begin.
First of all, you need a user on the DFHA.ORG web site. If you haven't done so already, look down the left side of the page until you see the block that says "User Login". Below the login button is a link that says "Create New Account". Click that link, then enter your choice for a user name, mixed case and spaces are valid, but you will need to enter it exactly the same way when you login. Enter your email address and click the "Create New Account" button. Your new password and further instructions will be mailed to the address you enter.
Now that you have a user, you need to login by entering your user and password in the "User Login" box on the left side of the page. Now let's create a new event.
So you have all your information, you are logged into your DFHA account and you are looking at the DFHA home page. Click the link on the left that says "Submit Event". This will take you to a page where you fill out the fields and press the "Submit" button, and you're done! Now let's talk about each field that you need to fill out.
To get started creating and editing book pages, the first thing you have to do is create a new user. Then, once you are logged in to your account, contact the site administrator. You won't be able to access this contact form until you have an account and are logged in. So, if you're not logged in, don't bother trying. Tell the administrator who you are and that you want to create and/or edit a page for your group or campaign. You will most likely be granted access within a day or so. Then you can get started creating a page. If you click on "create content" you will now see a new type of content, "book page", which wasn't there before.
To create a new book page, click on "create content" in the menu on the left. Click on "book page" either on the left menu, or in the body of the page. This will display the "Submit Book Page" page. The page is not actually created until you click "Submit" at the bottom of the page.
Enter the title of your page, which will normally be the name of your group or campaign. This will display in the parent page of this book page as a link to the page you are editing.
The second field is called "Path Alias". This is what makes the URL of your page pretty. For example, instead of being "http://dfha.org/node/42" the URL will be "http://dfha.org/groups/DFHA". It's the same place, but it looks better when you send someone a URL. Now the recommended entry for your path alias is either "groups" or "campaigns" followed by a forward slash "/" followed by the name of your group or campaign, leaving out any spaces. In the example above, the alias is "groups/DFHA". Got it?
The next entry is titled "Parent", and is a pull down. Pull down and put your page in the hierarchy. Normally you would simply put your page under either "Progressive Groups" or "Progressive Campaigns". These will appear in the top page when someone looks at the corresponding book. You could get fancy if you want and create multiple pages for your group. For example, you could create a top page for your group which you attach to the top book page, then have sub pages that further described some aspect about your group, such as a particular advocacy cmpaign your group might be undertaking, or a related groups links page, or, well use your imagination. If you do create subpages, we recommend that you create path aliases approriately i.e. "groups/MyGroup/SubPage"
Select the Progressive Group that your page belongs in. If you're doing a page for a political campaign, then you will probably select one of the state parties. If you are a group, then your group name should already be there. If it is not, please contact the administrator, and get it added to the list. You'll be able to go back and edit this page and add your group to your pages later if it needed to be added. What this entry does is puts your page in the hierarchy of all the entries on the site. For instance, if you click on the "Progressive Groups" item in the left hand menu, then select DFA, you get all the events and book pages for both DFHA and GKCDFA. Then if you select DFHA, it's further limited down to just the pages and events for DFHA. So, if you want your book pages found when someone looks at the hierarchy, you need to select the proper category here. You can make multiple selections, but shouldn't need to do so. Multiple selections are useful if you are creating an event that is sponsored by multiple groups. Select the lowest applicable part of the hierarchy, and your page will be in all the ones above it. For example if you put your campaign in "Kansas Democratic Party", you don't need to select "Democratic Party" also, because you're already in that.
This is where you enter the text of your page. In addition to plain text, you can use an assortment of HTML tags. To see which tags you can use, see the "Input Format" item just below the body. There you will see "Filtered HTML" and "Plain Text". After each one, there is a plus sign. Click this plus sign, and you will see the allowed tags and an explanation of a few other automatic things. Any HTML tags not listed, will be stripped out of the display of the page. Entering the body text is quite straight forward if you know how to do basic HTML. There is a tips page that you might find helpful. Note that the tips page contains some stuff that won't apply to you, but it has the basics to get you going.
Be sure to add a link to your group's or campaign's web site, if you have one.
The Log message box is where you put comments about why you made a change. This is to help future authors who work on your page understand your motivations for an addition or change. They will see what you wrote in this block when they edit the page.
You can add an attachment to your page. This can be useful if you have a PDF of a flyer that you might want to make available to readers of your page. Click on the button to the right of the "Attach new file:" field. I've noticed that in some browsers this says "Browse..." and some have a button to open a folder browser, so let's just say that button of the right. Select your file, then click the "Attach" button, and your file will be uploaded to a directory on DFHA.ORG. There will be a link to this attachment at the bottom of the page. If you have an attachment on another website, such as your group's own web site, you should just put a link to that attachment in the body of the page.
After you are done editing a page, you click on the "Preview" button, and you can see what your page will look like. This is recommended after any change to make sure that you didn't mess something up, like say you didn't close a bold tag, and now your whole page is bold. With the preview you can fix any problems, then preview again, until you get it looking just the way you want it. Then click "Submit" to actually update your page.
Please note: Your page is not changed in the data base until you click the Submit button.
That's all there is to it. You should now be able to see your page. Check to make sure you can find your page from the hierarchy menu on the left, and be able to drill down from the top book pages.
If you have any questions, contact the adminstrator using the link above.