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How To Contribute Content

This is a collaborative site. You are invited to add content. All contributed content is subject to moderation. You may need the help of an administrator to do things such as creating a new page.

Publication Guidelines

We encourage you to contribute original material to this site. If you are extracting, summarizing, or referring to material from another source, always attribute your source properly and obtain the necessary permissions from the original authors. By adhering to proper publication and attribution procedures, we can ensure the site continues to function within copyright law and demonstrate good Internet citizenship.

Blog Posts

A blog post is a great choice when you want to give a report of a recent experience, pass along an interesting discovery, or impart a quick best practice or other tip. Blogs typically provide links to more complete information about the topic within the site or out on the Internet.

When you create a blog post, make sure to add tags. Assigning tags to your blog post will assure that people can find it. A tag is a word or short phrase that can serve to group similar content. Tags are generally typed in lower case, such as "water", except for specific proper names or acronyms such as "CDP". (Tags serve the same purpose for online content as index terms serve for printed books.) In the EcoCloud™ website, we use tags to find and display the blog posts that are relevant to a given topic; for example, the Blog tab under the Recycled Water topic shows only blog posts about recycled water.

Creating a Blog Post

There are two ways to get started:

1. Select Contribute Content -> Blog from the main menu
2. Or in the upper right, find the "Quick Add..." drop-down and select "Blog Post".

 Give the post a title.

• Type the content. You are editing through a WYSIWYG Rich Text Editor, which means that you don't see the HTML (unless you switch to the HTML mode).
• Enter tags at the bottom of the page editing area. If the tag has multiple words, separate them with a hyphen. For instance, blog posts about recycled water would be tagged 'recycled-water'.

How do I know which tags to apply to my new blog post?

• First, make sure to use the tag that will make your post appear in the right "Blog" tab. Click into a topic (like Recycled Water) and then click the "Blog" tab. This pops up a page that shows the tag we have already set up. Make a note of the tag and apply it to every blog post that you want to appear in this "Blog" tab.
• Then, apply whatever tags you think will help people find your post. A single blog post can have lots of tags, because the post might be relevant to more than one topic. We want to make sure each blog post is displayed wherever it might be useful.
• To see all the tags people have already used in the EcoCloud™ site: Click "All Blog Posts" at the top of any Blogs page, then scroll down till you see the "Blog Topics by Tags" list.
• To see tags from similar posts: First, find a similar post. Either click the "Blog" tab in your topic (say, under Recycled Water) or type some of the key terms from your blog post into the Search box. If you see a post that makes you think "Yeah, that's in the same category as mine," take a look at the bottom of the post -- you'll see what Tags that author used.
→ What if you don't see the Tags list at the bottom of a blog post? You might have to first click "...Continue" to display the entire blog post.

Editing Pages

We have already created quite a few pages that are ready for content to be added. Pages are usually more complex than blog posts, and we are providing a few alternative ways to fill in the content. But first, a word of warning:

CAUTION: If you change the title of a page, the EcoCloud™ site will change the page's URL, breaking all existing hyperlinks to that page. Either make a note of the new URL and fix every link (assuming you know where they all are) or, better yet, refrain from changing the title of an existing page.

Option 1: Type or paste in the WYSIWYG "Visual Mode"

Display the page you want to change, scroll to the bottom, and Edit. The Visual Mode editing window is shown by default. Here, you can type or paste content without having to know any HTML. Buttons are provided along the top of the editor for common functions such as bold font, bullets, and inserting an image. Click "Create page" to save.

Option 2: Paste HTML into the HTML Editor

If you have existing content that's already in HTML, or you are comfortable writing your new content in a tool that exports clean HTML, you can easily transfer your content to the EcoCloud™ site using this technique. When dealing with HTML content, this technique is easiest for the EcoCloud™ team and will reduce the chance of errors in translation.

Please try to follow the HTML Guidelines below. If complex HTML is submitted, with font style overrides and other tricky techniques, we'll just have to make an editing pass to remove it for stylistic consistency with our other pages.

• Display the page you want to change, scroll to the bottom, and Edit.
If the "Edit" button does not appear, you do not have editing permissions on the page; ask someone to help upgrade your access level.
• Click the "HTML Editor" tab.
• Paste in your prepared HTML content.
• Click "Update Page" to save.

Option 3: Upload content to Google Docs

If you have any email address, you can upload files to Google Docs or type your content directly into a new Google Docs document. 

The first step is to access Google Docs. 

If you have an @sustainablesv.org address, then you already have access to our Google Apps domain. Point your browser to http://www.google.com/a/sustainablesv.org, then click Docs. 

If you have an @gmail.com address, log into your Gmail account, then click the Documents link (it's in the upper left corner of the screen, above your inbox).

If you have any other type of email address, start from www.google.com. Click "more," then click Documents. Below the login fields there is a link called "Create an account now." Click it, then set up a Google account using your own email address. The screens will guide you through the process.
The only information you will have to provide is your current email address and a phone number, which Google will use ONLY to send you a confirmation code—this is for your own security! Otherwise, anyone could set up an account using your email address.
You will also be prompted for your birthday. If you don't want to provide your true date of birth, input any date that would make you more than 13 years old, the minimum to meet Google's terms of service.
If you can receive text messages, it's recommended to choose that rather than a voicemail for the confirmation code. The voicemail can be harder to decipher.
You do not have to set up a Gmail email address during this process. This is just a way to allow you to log in to the other Google properties—Documents, Sites, and much more—with whatever email address you already have.

• Click Upload for an existing file or click Create New... to type content directly into Google Docs.
• Share the file or document. Please share it with at least ecocloudcontent@sustainablesv.org.

Option 4: Email content to the Editor in Chief

The address is ecocloudcontent@sustainablesv.org.

Creating a New Page

If you see an "Add a Page" link near the upper right corner of the window, you can click it to create a new page. Give the page a title, then type or paste your content in the WYSIWG "Visual Mode" window or click the HTML Editor tab to paste in prepared HTML content. Click "Create Page" to save. 

After saving your new page, look at the URL in the window of the web browser. The URL ends in "/page/" followed by your page's generated internal name. 

Use this internal name whenever you create a link to your page, such as from a tab (administrators only) or from within another page or a blog post. 

To create a tab for your new page, follow the procedures in Modify the Tabs (administrators only), or email ecocloudcontent@sustainablesv.org and let us know you'd like a tab, and why.

Photos and Illustrations

There are two ways to add images to the site:

• In the Photos gadget on the Home page. Click "Add Photos." More details are available in Upload Photos.
• In a blog post or content page, where you might want to include a photo, diagram, or other visual element. Click the image icon at the top of the WYSIWYG editing window.

• Videos

Select Contribute Content -> Video from the main menu

• p— begin a paragraph.
• h2 ... /h2 and h3 ... /h3— two levels of titles and sections. The h1 tag is used for the title at the top of the page, like "Getting Started" at the top of this page, and it is automatically applied by the EcoCloud™ site.
• b ... /b — bold text.
• i ... /i — italic text.
• img src="URL from dummy blog post" — photo, diagram, or other image.
• a href="URL of webpage" ... /a — hyperlink.
• ulli ... /li/ul — bulleted list. Repeat the li ... /li portion for each bullet item.
• olli ... /li/ol — numbered list.

• You can also embed a video that you have previously uploaded to YouTube. Just copy the embed code provided on the YouTube site, click the Media icon at the top of the EcoCloud™ site's WYSIWYG editing window, and paste in the embed code

  HTML Guidelines

  Use only these very simple HTML tags: