Contribute Tutorial

Student Web Tour
Faculty Web Tour

Contribute is a simple web editor. It lets you browse to your web page, edit that page, and publish the updated page. It works with the more robust web editor Dreamweaver, allowing you and others in your group to select either package when creating or updating pages in your site.

Before creating or editing a page, review information and policies for posting to the College web server.

Install Contribute on Your Computer

Contact the Help Desk.

Mount the College Web Server

Before you configure or use Contribute, mount our web server on your desktop.

Windows Users

1. From the Start menu go to Run..., enter \\webpublish.haverford.edu, and click OK.
2. Log on with your email username and email password.

Macintosh OSX

1. From the Finder, click on the Go menu and select Connect to Server...
2. Type webpublish.haverford.edu in the address space and click connect.
3. Enter your email username and email password at the prompt.
4. Select either www (for files on www.haverford.edu) or wwwinternal (for restricted access files on www.haverford.edu:8080).
5. If you wish, you can create an alias for www or wwwinternal by selecting either volume from your desktop and, from the File menu, selecting Make Alias.
6. Once you create an alias to www or wwwinternal, you will only need to double-click on the alias and log into the server with your email username and email password. This mounts the Webpublish server in just one step.

Open and Configure Contribute

The first time you open Contribute it walks you through the setup process. This process is similar on Macintosh and Windows computers.

Click on Website Connection. You are prompted with a series of questions. Answers below are for the College web server, www.haverford.edu.

• Mac Only: What do you want to connect to?
  Select Website.
• What is the web Address (URL) of your web site?
  Enter http://www.haverford.edu/yourdept/
  (or http://www.haverford.edu/yourdept/:8080 for restricted access portions of your site)
• How do you connect to your server?
  Select Local/Network
• What is the network path to your web site?
  NOTE: The Webpublish server must be mounted as instructed above, and you must have the proper access to your department's directory.
  On a Mac: Browse the www server for your departmental folder
  On Window PC: Enter \\webpublish.haverford.edu\www\yourdept
  or, if you wish to post files to the internal server, www.haverford.edu:8080, enter
  \\webpublish.haverford.edu\wwwinternal\yourdept
• Enter your full name and email address
• Depending upon how your site is set up by your site administrator, you may be asked, "What role are you assigned to?". If you are unsure, select user.

Overview of the Program

After you set up your connection, you can click on that connection to enter the home page. Then link to any pages as you would from any browser. Although the screen varies as you change between and and browse mode, the program adheres to the general structure illustrated below.

Edit an Existing Page

Follow the instructions on your screen to edit a page.

1. Either surf to the desired web address or enter it (as illustrated below) and click on Edit Page button.
   
2. Edit text as you do with other word processors, using the formatting buttons at the top of your screen.
   

Add Headings

Web pages have some standard formatting terms for types of text. Section titles are best formatted with the Heading style.

Add Lists

You can add ordered or unordered lists easily from the menu bar.

Add a Hyperlink

You can add a hyperlink to another web page within your site, to an external site, or to an email address. There are several types of links you can create. For all of them, highlight the text you want to link, click on the Link drop down menu, and select the type of link desired.

Add a Picture

To add a picture, place your cursor in the desired spot, go to the Image drop down menu, and select a picture already on the web site or on your computer.

Note: Images must be in one of the following web-ready formats: GIF, JPEG, or PNG.

Edit a Picture

When you select an image within your web page, you see additional tools for editing that image. These allow you to resize, rotate, crop, sharpen, and align images. Note that while you can use the image editing buttons within Contribute, it is often best to edit the picture in a program like Photoshop. Such programs can help greatly in creating pictures that work well on the web, because the tools within the image editing software help you create a crisp, clear image with a small file size.

The last button on the image editing bar is the image properties button (illustrated above). It allows many of edits enabled by other image editing buttons, lets you put a border around your picture, and helps you add an "Alt" tag. The Alt tag allows to add a text description of your image; this is important for those with visual disabilities.

Add a Table

Web pages do not allow the use of tabs.You can align text and images using tables. By putting tables within tables, you can create many different page layouts and text alignments.

To add a table, place your insert cursor in the desired location and select the table button on your top toolbar.

Insert Rows and Columns in a Table

Once you have a table you can enlarge it by inserting columns and rows with the table row and table column buttons.

Change the Page Properties

The page property button at the end of your toolbar allows you to customize the look of your web page.

The most important page property is the page title. This is the text that appears at the top of your browser window, and the default text your audience creates a favorite or bookmark for your web page. Within the Page properties menu, select the Title/Encoding category and enter the page Title where prompted.

Check Spelling

Before you publish a page, you need to review it. The spell check tool helps with this. From the Format menu at the top of your screen, select Check Spelling...

Save, Review, Publish or Cancel

Once you are finished editing your page you can publish immediately to the web site, email it to others for review, save the draft to finish working later, or cancel your changes if you don't like them. Of course, it is wise to periodically save while still working, to prevent loss from power failures or program crashes.

All options are readily available from your toolbar.

Help and Additional Features

You will find more information about Contribute, including a helpful tutorial, in the Help menu at the top of your screen.