Adding Event Copy to the Online Kingdom Calendar
Contributed by Baroness Khalja Khorkhoi
Event autocrats have a valuable communication resource available to them in the form of the Online Kingdom Calendar. It is highly recommended that you utilize this resource to ensure the success of your event. Members may misplace their Crier at some point during the month, but one can always hop online and get information about an event if the autocrats are diligent in using this tool.
| Important Note: Adding copy to the online kingdom event page is not a substitute for sending copy to the Crier Editor. That is a separate process and must be done if official SCA business is to be conducted at your event. |
The Kingdom Calendar Deputy grants access on receipt of a completed Event Information Form (EIF). If you have included an email address on your EIF, you will receive an email containing a special URL (web address) and a special email address.
The special email address (which will look something like "vnt###@antir.sca.org"), is a tool to protect your home address from spam. This email address will be automatically included on the webpage, rather than your home address, in the event that spambots crawl the Kingdom website looking for addresses to spam.
The link will take you to the copy edit page for your event. The first thing you should do is verify that the correct event name and date are at the top of the page. If a problem exists, contact the Kingdom Calendar Officer. Take care to protect this URL, as anyone who knows it can edit the event copy on your page.
Take a moment to familiarize yourself with the Copy Edit page. It is fairly straight forward. Take special note of the warnings and instructions included on the page. Note that you are given two methods by which you can enter your copy. The first method is entry in the first text box or you may choose to use the Graphical Editor.
The second text box is for site directions and is used to generate the "Map" link at the bottom of the event copy page. Any text added to this box will modify the site directions for all events using your site. It is recommended that you check with the autocrats of the other events (if any), before making changes here.
Included at the bottom of the page is a list of valid html formatting tags that you may useful in giving your copy more emphasis and make it easier to read.
Once you add your event copy and click the "Submit" button, it will be appended to the bottom of the current web page. This is useful if you want to check the appearance of your copy. You can also access the event page that everyone else will see through the online kingdom calendar.
The most straight forward route to adding event copy is to cut and paste the text from another document into the first text box on the edit copy page. (A text box is that square with the white background. When you input over 8 lines of text, the righthand slider bar will be enabled automatically.)
You can also type your copy directly into the text box, but I don't recommend that as it isn't really meant to be a text editor. No spellcheck, you know.
When you have entered your copy, go through it to make sure you don't have any funny line breaks, spelling or grammatical errors. Clicking "Submit" will display the copy at the bottom of your screen.
If you're in the mood to pretty things up, you have a somewhat limited selection of html formatting tags to play with. If you don't know anything about formatting text for web pages, first take a look at this html primer or this introduction to html.
The box at right lists all the tags that are valid for you to use. Remember that text has to be between an open (<tag>) and a close (</tag>) tag. For instance if you want the Title of your event to appear in bold on the page, type this: <b>Event Title</b>. It will appear in your browser like this:
Event Title
If you want to center text on the page, you will use the <div> tag with the align option. For example, if you want to center your Event Title, type this: <div align="center">Event Title</div>. Your Event Title will appear in the browser like this:
You can also "nest" html formatting tags. For example, if you would like your event title to be centered and bold, type this:
<div align="center"><b>Event Title</b></div>. Your event title will appear in the browser like this:
In addition to the text formatting options available, you can also create tables to hold and format information, add links and add images to your event web page. Refer to the tutorial links above for more information on using these advanced options.
One note about links, however. When you add a link, make sure to include the entire address, including the "http://" part.
In order to use the Graphical Editor, you will need to have your javascript and active X enabled on your browser. Refer to your browsers help files for information on how to set that up.
Using the Graphical Editor is a lot like using a standard word processor. To get to it, click the "Graphical Editor" button above the first text box. It will open an additional window that looks someone like this:
From here, it's just a simple matter of typing your information and formatting it using the buttons at the top of the window. When you're done, click the "post" button.
Editing the information on this page is not a "one time use" kind of deal. You can come back here as many times as you need to, to edit or add things too it.