HOWTO: article submissions

A well formatted article is easier and more pleasant to read and should be easier for site users to quickly print off a readable copy. So a little extra work is worth it.

Submitting and formatting
First, take a look at a formatted article - http://libcom.org/library/intakes-history-tactics-political-reading. This will give you an idea of what we are talking about below. Also read the formatting guides for news and Library and History.

Submitting text/article
1) Click on 'create content' at top of page.
2) Click on library, blog entry, history or news. This will take you to the appropriate page.
3) Type in the title of the article in the 1st box. This should use normal sentence case. I.e. "Strike continues at Ford". Rather than "Strike Continues at Ford". Try to keep article titles as short as possible, while still explaining what the article is about. For library articles, please include the author of the text in the title like this: GI opposition the Vietnam War, - Howard Zinn
4) Please add an image to any article you post up. Try to include the most relevant picture possible. Google image search is a great way to find photographs, but please do not post up images copyrighted by big companies like the BBC or Associated press.
If you cannot find a photograph of the exact story you are covering, please use one related to the person, company, or city that is mentioned, for example. Ideally the photograph will be a good image, with the bulk of the detail in the centre of the image, so that it will be visible in our site's thumbnails. (See our submitting images guide, below for more information)
5) Choose the appropriate categories for the article in the 'regions' and 'sectors' list. (If you are unsure on the correct choice, it can be done by an editor after submission.) You can select multiple regions or sectors by using ctrl-click. Topics the article is about can be entered in the tags box, but only match tags to ones which already exist, please do not create any new tags. For more guidance see our article tagging guide.
6) Enter a brief explanation of the article in the 'Introduction' box. If appropriate, this could be the 1st paragraph of the article. Otherwise, write a short descriptive summary of around 130 characters, or one or two lines on the page. This will automatically appear at the beginning of the article in bold type in the finished submission.
7) Paste in the article itself to the 'Body' box.
8) If your article is about a particular geographical location, in the 'Location' field please click the location on the map it is about.

Formatting text

In your article, if you include subheadings, please use BB code headers for these. There are three levels of subheadings which look like this:

Subheading 1

Subheading 2

Subheading 3

Body text

To use subheadings type the following code around the text of subheading, but leaving out the spaces:
[ h2] Subheading 1 [ /h2]
[ h3] Subheading 2 [ /h3]
[ h4] Subheading 3 [ /h4]

Some articles in their original format have too many line breaks. to correct this use a site like this one; http://www.fwointl.com/FWOFormatter.html
- and set max characters to 999999 and Format. You can also use word processor' Find and replace functions to remove additional line breaks and correct any repeated errors.

Also ensure that you use (two) full line breaks for paragraphs to ensure readable text. One line break will not get caught by our automatic paragraph formatting.

If you are writing the text yourself, then short paragraphs are easiest to read, especially on computer screens, so please keep paragraphs brief.

Footnotes
Footnotes can be automatically generated at the end of articles. Where you would normally put the footnote number like [1] instead, put the text of your footnote wrapped in <fn>Footnote goes here</fn> tags. When you submit the article, Drupal will find all the footnotes and format the superscript numbers and link to them for you.

File attachments
If you would like to attach a file to your article, such as a PDF, or other images you would like to display in the article, click the File attachments link, then browse to the files on your computer. If you would like readers to be able to view and download the file, for example with PDF documents check the "list" box next to the file. If you would like them to remain hidden, for example with images you have used in the article, leave it unchecked.

The maximum upload size is 16 MB. Only files with the following extensions may be uploaded: jpg jpeg gif png txt html doc xls pdf ppt pps odt ods odp tif svg mobi epub psd zip xml docx rtf.

Adding lengthy books
To add entire books, or texts too long to be in one article, you can add a book with different chapters and sections. See Volin's Unknown revolution for example.

- Create a library or history article as normal
- fill in the fields as appropriate with the name, author and description of the book etc, then click Book outline.
- in the Book drop-down field which appears, click the second from top option, <create a new book>.
- click save.
- to add subsequent chapters click "add child page" on the book page you have just created.
- Do not add tags, regions or sectors to child pages as you will have already categorised the parent book.

Sources
Please credit sources at the end of your article with any relevant information such as author, edits or translations, in italics. e.g.
By Wildcat Germany, 2009, taken and slightly edited by libcom from www.prol-position.net

Adding tables
If the article you want to add has a table in it, you can use an online automated HTML table generator such as this one:
http://www.quackit.com/html/html_table_generator.cfm
If you put in an HTML table you need to set the input format to "normal (some HTML allowed new)"

And finally…
If you ever have any problems, or need any assistance adding formatting content there are lots of people happy and able to help you. Just make a post in our feedback and content forum.

Thank you for reading, and for making libcom.org an easier and more attractive site to use!

Appendix: Submitting images
1. Use png, gif, jpg or jpeg files only.
2. Give the file a meaningful name. Don't leave any gaps between letters/characters in file names or the file may not load.
3. Don't upload files over one MB. If you can only find a large version of a pic, various resizing applications can be found online, or download (http://sourceforge.net/projects/jpegview/ is a good one, http://gimp.org is a good one)
4. Resize large images to no more than 450 pixels wide (and around 250 pixels tall if you want sidebar thumbnail images to display correctly).
5. Do not use copyright images, and especially not copyright images from news agencies like AP.

Instructions for windows users:
To submit a main image that will appear at the top of the article, use the 'Image' box.
You will need to have the image stored locally on your computer.
Click the 'browse' button to browse your PC to find where you have stored the image. A 'file upload' window will appear.
Browse to the file on your computer, images downloaded from the internet usually default to your "Desktop" folder
Click 'Open' and the file will appear in the 'Image' field on the Libcom submissions page.
Then press 'Upload' to bring the image file from your PC onto the site and into the article.
Then you can add, if you want to, in the "title" field, a caption for your image. This caption will appear when readers hover their mouse over the image.