Adding and Formatting Articles
Articles on The Lens Flare are stored in a document management system called a "Wiki". The wiki has a unique formatting system, which helps ensure that all of the articles share a consistent look and feel, and makes it possible to do this without knowing HTML.
Pages can be edited by anybody with a wiki account on TLF (The Lens Flare). To obtain a wiki account, please contact the site's administrators (http://www.thelensflare.com/contactus.php).
| Table of contents |
Wiki Formatting
Most of the page's text can be formatted by using a series of buttons above the edit screen. Simply highlight the text you wish to format, and click a button. Examples include bold and italic text, links, headlines, images, etc. Lists are easily created by simply putting an asterisk in front of each line in the list.
A Note About Links, New Pages, and the Recently Posted list
Internal Links & New Pages
Internal links are ones that point to other pages within TLF's articles. They are created by clicking on the Ab button at the top of the edit screen and looks like this: [[Sample Internal Link]] If a link is added that hasn't been created yet, it will direct a logged in person to the page's edit screen. Once edited and saved, a new page will be created.
Punctuation should be avoided in link text and file names, if possible, because it can cause issues with browsers and web spiders depending on how they are programmed to handle special characters.
Recently Posted & Updated List
When a new page is added, it will be automatically added to the new articles list on the homepage; however there are 2 exceptions. The first exception is if a person checks the "This is a minor edit" box, and the second is when a person creates their personal user page. The reason for this is to give each user a sandbox in which to write rough drafts, and then when the page is ready to be 'published', the user can move that content to a new page.
For this reason, the workflow that seems to work best is as follows:
- An author uses their own page as a staging area.
- Several temporary links are created on this page, one for each "Work in Progress or WIP" article.
- Each edit on the WIP page is set as a minor edit so that it doesn't show up on the recently edited lists.
- Before an article is published, it should be checked for spelling and grammar issues.
- When the article is ready, the author creates a link on another permanent page that links to the new page. The author then copies and pastes their "WIP" content into the new page, thus making it appear on the new articles page.
Additional Notes:
When the new page is created, the author should write a decent summary of the page (10-20 words) because this will appear below the link on the new article lists.
Editing existing pages will cause that page to appear in recently edited lists, unless the "minor edit" box is checked on the edit screen.
TLF Guidelines
The Lens Flare tries to accommodate the largest percentage of visitors possible. For this to occur, the site needs to be viewable on screens 800x600 or larger. Pictures in articles, therefore, shouldn't be more than 500px wide (maximum 600px wide) because the layout uses up some of the width of the page.
For people using modems and for bandwidth issues, each image's file size should be considered. For example, on a modem, a 50kb picture might take 10-15 seconds to load. It is therefore recommended that most images are less than 80kb in size. If a page requires several images to be loaded and there is enough text to warrant it, consider splitting the article into a couple of pages.
About the Author sections
It is ok to write an "About the Author" section at the bottom of an article. The section should consist of a short blurb (10-30 words) about the author and may contain a link to their TLF gallery and/or their own website, as long as their website maintains good morals and standards.
