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Guide to Creating a Magazine

Some help for creating a new Magazine

From the home page go to the menu block at the top of the left hand column of the screen and click the 'Magazine' link.

The 'Magazine' page appears. This contains a list of the current year's magazines.

Click on the latest Magazine which appears just under the page header (Magazine - Designed to contain much to amuse and entertain - and updated every month.)

The Magazine page appears.

Click 'clone' to begin the creation of the new magazine.

The Magazine date will need to be changed from the existing date.  Click in the Magazine Date field.  A popup calendar will appear.  Use the Month and Year drop down menus to selct the correct month and year THEN CLICK THE FIRST OF THE MONTH. This last click is important as this is the click that actually sets the date!

There are three sections to complete (Left Column, Middle Column and Right Column).

NOTE: Since the magazine is created towards the end of the month the source items for the content to be pasted in to the magazine will already exist on the new site.  It is therefore very useful to open a separate browser window in which you navigate to the News reviews, comments etc from which you can copy the appropriate text via copy and paste.

There should be no need to go to the old site to select content for pasting! This will avoid problems with 'messy' styling and fonts.

 

A note on whitespace in articles...

just like with Word, when you type content in and press the return key you will get a new paragraph and if you press shift return you will get a line break!

If you look at an article and wish to remove 'excess' whitespace then it is usually best to go just past the whitespace you want to remove and then carefully use the backspace key to remove it.  If there is whitespace at the very top of an item click at the top of the item, press the up arrow a few times then the 'home' key to make sure you at the top then press the delete key carefully.  Remember that you can use 'undo' from the top editor bar (or press <ctrl-z>) to correct a mistake.

If whitespace continues to be a problem you can click the 'html' button on the editor bar and this will open a popup window containing the raw content of the item.  Backspace over any excess whitespace then click update.

 

Left Column:

The left column contains the News Review, Comment and Writer's Quote for the Magazine.

The News Review link and the Comment link need updating to the correct year and month.

First click on 'News Review' to put the cursor on the link which will also highlight the 'linkit' icon on the bottom row of the editor icons above.

Click the 'linkit' icon!

The Linkit popup page will appear with the current link in the 'Link to:' field (eg /news_review/2012-06).

Change the year and month to the correct values eg /news_review/2012-07 for the July 2012 news reviews)

Click 'Insert' to save the changes.

From your separate browser window select and copy the text from the appropriate news reviews and paste the new news review teasers over the existing ones.

Note that the teasers are 'bulleted lists' (as can be seen by clicking in the text and looking at the bar at the bottom of the editor window) and the pasting of new text should not change this.

Repeat the above process for the 'Comment' link and entries.

The Writer's Quote link will not need changing as this is not date sensitive so just paste in the new quote over the old.

 

Middle Column:

Use the same processes as for Left Column to click on the regular links and update them.

For 'links to recent stories' click on the link then click linkit to display the link. Update the link to the current week eg /storylinks/2012-W28 then click insert.

For 'links to stories of last week' again click on the link then click linkit to display the link. Update the link to the previous week eg if you used /storylinks/2012-W28 for 'links to recent stories' use /storylinks/2012-W27 here. Click insert.

The 'headers' of the sections have the H3 style attached to them (just highlight and select H3 from the 'paragraph' pulldown in the editor).

 

The picture

To replace the picture in the magazine click on the image to select it.

Click the 'image picker' link just below the 'Body' editor window.

This will drop down a set of fields.

To replace the picture in the Magazine select an image by clicking 'Browse Public' and selecting an image from those displayed.

This will then display the image along with a set of optional settings which you should not need to change. Click Insert image which will replace the selected image in the Magazine with the new one.

Note: Occasionally you might need to upload a brand new picture in which case click the 'Browse' button to open a window on your computer which you use to select the image for upload.  Once selected the path to the image on your PC will appear in the field.

Enter a Title (include 'Magazine - ' at front of the title) and Description in those fields whilst ignoring the others which will be fine as defaulted.

Click 'Upload' to upload the new image to WritersServices.

 

Previous Magazines.  In older Magazines there has been a 'Previous Magazines' section.  This is not actually a good idea as Drupal will automatically list and collate previous magazines and display them at the bottom of the Magazine. It is best therefore NOT to put links to previous magazines here (which will also save the effort of updating them in each Magazine!).

 

Links at bottom of column.

The links to the 'Writing...' articles (eg Writing Romance) are not normally changed between magazines.

Should you wish to change a link or add one then change / add the text for the link then highlight the text and click 'Linkit'. Linkit will show the existing link if this is a change or no link if this is a new link.  Clear the field then start typing the title of the page to which you wish to link, Linkit will drop down a list of pages that match.  Click on the link that you wish to insert.  Note that where there are two or more pages with the same name you can look at the 'path' info displayed under the name which will indicate which section the page is in (eg 'works' or 'editorial') and let you select the correct one.

 

Right Column:

Use the same processes as for Left Column  / Middle Column to click on the Right Column links and update them via Linkit.  Again use a separate browser window to navigate to the appropriate page in order to find the text to copy over the existing text.

 

SAVE the Magazine!

 

Adding a new book page or a Writing Opportunity:

To add a writing opportunity click the 'add Writing Opportunity here' link. This will open the new Writing Opportunity page with the parent page information already filled in!

To add a new page to the magazine being edited click the 'Add Page here' link.  Again this will open the new page with the parent page information already filled in.

 

 


 

You can print this page by selecting the 'print' icon at the bottom of the page which opens a formatted page in a separate tab from where you can use ctrl-p or the file -> print option... (this is also how we are making all the pages education resource friendly).