help_text.tt

<h1> Introduction</h1>

<p style="text-align:justify">

My Personal Home Page is software which allows you to create and edit a simple
web site in your web browser, which it then transfers over the internet to a
public location.  In this case the destination will be a site with the address
http://www.example.com/~[your user name].  MyPHP takes care of all the technical
details of web publishing for you so that you can concentrate on the content of
what you want to write.

</p>

<p style="text-align:justify"> Usage of MyPHP should be fairly simple.  When
you visit the home page for the editing software, you are met with a window
that has administrative menu on the right hand side, and A menu with links to
all of your pages (and maybe a couple of external pages) at the top.  In the
middle of the screen, you can edit your site. </p>

<h2> A note on editing web pages </h2>

<p style="text-align:justify">When you edit a word processor document, you can
either use styles to indicate headings, paragraphs and so on, or you can
bold/italic text and mess around with the fonts by hand.  When you edit a web
page, it's infinitely preferable to do the former. MyPHP basically forces you
to take this approach.</p>

<h2>Your first page</h2>

<p style="text-align:justify">When you open the MyPHP editing page, you're
greeted with the two menus and a big editing box.  Editing pages should be
self-explanatory.  You can add links, change the style of text, tables and most
other useful things.  Use the "Format" dropdown box to add headings and other
pre-defined styles.  Mouse over each of the icons to see what they do - a
little tooltip will show up.  You can add special characters with the button
that looks like a greek omega.  You can also add bullet points and numbered
lists, as well as changing the indent level of your text with the appropriate
buttons.</p>

<h2>Adding pages</h2>
<p style="text-align:justify">
You have up to three links in the right hand side menu to add new pages.  These
are: "Add page at top level", "Add another page at current level" and "Add page
below this one".  We'll deal with these in turn:

<ul>
<li>Add page at top level</li>
<p style="text-align:justify">
This adds a new page just below the home page.  So if your home page is at
http://example.com/ then adding a new top level page will add a new page at
http://example.com/[title you chose for the page].  </p>
<li>Add another page at current level</li>
<p style="text-align:justify">
So if you were visiting your page at http://example.com/newpage/category1 then
chosing this option while visiting that page will give you a page at
http://example.com/newpage/category2 (if you chose category2 to be the title of
the new page).
</p>

<li>Add page below this one</li>
<p style="text-align:justify">
If you chose this link from visiting http://example.com/newpage/category1,
you'd end up with the page http://example.com/newpage/category1/category2.
</p>
</ul>

</p>
</ul>
</p>
</h2>

<h2>Uploading files</h2>

<p style="text-align:justify">You can upload files using the "Upload files"
item on the right hand side menu.  This will open a new browser window.  When
you're there select the file that you're going to upload and click the "Submit"
button.  Once its finished uploading (it might take a while depending on the
size of the file).  Note that if you upload a file with the same name as
already exists on your site, the new file will over-write the new file.  Once
you've uploaded the file, it's address appears in a list below the upload form,
along with a link to it.  You can right click on the link and select the "Copy
Shortcut" (for Internet Explorer) or "Copy link Location" (for Firefox) option
to copy the url to the clipboard. </p>

<h2> Making links in documents </h2>

<p style="text-align:justify">When you want to link to another web page, image,
pdf or other document, you need its URL.  You'll need to copy the link to the
clipboard to be able make the link.  Here's how to copy different types
of link to the clip board.

<ul>
<li>Web pages</li>

<p style="text-align:justify">Copy the address of the web page in the address
bar to the clip board.  Then write the link text (<a href="#">This kind of
thing except actually a proper link</a>) and select it with the mouse.  Next
click on the link icon in the editor toolbar at the bottom, and paste the link
address into the box that says "Link URL".  If you want the link to open in a
new window (and you almost always don't), use the target dropdown to select the
"Open in new window" option.</p>

<li>Other documents (pdfs, powerpoint decks etc)</li>
<p style="text-align:justify">This depends on your web browser and the sanity
of the person that designed the site.  If you right-click on the linked of
interest in Internet explore and select "Copy Shortcut", you can then follow
the procedure for linking to a web pages as above. If you're using the Firefox
web browser, the thing to select when you right click is the rather more
sensibly named "Copy link location"</p>

<p style="text-align:justify"> Note that there are problems with some links
like this, especially with links to journal articles on academic databases.  If
you have problems with directly linking to PDF files, then you should just link
to the page that contains that link instead.  Unfortunately occasionally you
see pages that are not bookmarkable ( a link is just a kind of a bookmark
really ) due to poor web design practice.  In this case you're out of luck
unfortunately, and you should find an alternative source to link to.  </p>

<h2>Including Images</h2>

<p style="text-align:justify"> Images are slightly trickier. First you want to
find an image that's the right size for the page (around 400 pixels is good for
images which text wraps around, 500 pixels wide for full page).  If you have a
large image, just make a link to the uploaded file - don't try to display it on
the page.  There are a variety of software tools that will do this for you, or
you can use an online service like <a href="http://www.shrinkpictures.com/"
target="_blank">shirnkpictures.com</a>.  Once you have an image that is the
right size, upload it using the upload menu item, and copy the link.  Next in
the edit box, place the cursor where you want the image to be inserted, and
click on the image button (the one like a picture).  Then you have to paste the
url into the "Image URL" box.  It's also good practice to include an "image
description" - this is helpful for people who can't browse with images on,
expecially blind users.  </p>

<p style="text-align:justify"> Now things start to become a little
complicated.  You have quite a lot of control over image placement.  The
important bits are in the Appearance tab where you can select whether to align
the image left, right or centered.  If you align it left or right, you'll have
text wrapping around it, so you'll also want to set horizontal and vertical
spacing.  This is measured in pixels, and somewhere between 10 and 15 should be
sufficient to stop your text from ramming up against the images.  Note that if
your image is too big for the page, you can "shrink" it (by telling the browser
to render it smaller than it actually is) by altering the dimensions box.  This
is also in pixels.  Be sure to keep the two coordinates in proportion to each
other, otherwise your image will start look squashed.  </p>

<h3> A final note on images </h3>
<p style="text-align:justify">
If you're publishing photos, use the .jpg file format.  If you're publishing
diagrams, use the .png or .gif file format.
</p>

<h2> Wrap up</h2>
<p style="text-align:justify">

</p>