Adding links, pictures and files

Links and pictures may be added via the buttons at the top of edit box which has been described on the previous page.

Links are special to web pages and you may not have used them before. They enable someone to find another page on this site or elsewhere. To set up a link, you should first type in the text which is to represent the link, select it with the pointer so it appears white on black and then press the first button of the next group , which represents links of chain. You will get a popup box which needs to be filled in as below:

 

The two boxes that should be filled in are the Link URL and the Title; you may usually ignore the others. The first controls which page you go to, anywhere on the web, when someone clicks on the underlined or emphasised text that is the link.

These may be divided into two groups: local and remote. What is the difference between these? URL stands for "Universal Resource Locator" such as http://myca.org.uk/help/contributing . It consists of three parts: a program name, in this case "http", an internet address "myca.org.uk" and a file at that address "help/contributing". For a local address, one on the same server you only need the last part, the file name. For a remote address you need all three with the separating characters exactly as shown.

To find the address of a page, go to it (use a separate browser window) and look at the address field at the top of the browser page which is a single line which shows something which looks like a URL above. (If there isn't one, you need to change the options on your browser!) If it's on MyCA, then only the bit from the first single "/" onwards need be copied, otherwise use the whole lot. (The first "/" is useful because the page you are editing may itself be some way down in the file hierarchy.)

The title should be set - you might use the actual title of the page being referred to or a short explanation. This is particularly important if the link is a picture (see below) for accessibility reasons.

The other two buttons in this group allow you to break a link (click on a previously made link and hit the button) and to set an anchor. This is a local label which allows a link to go to the middle of a page. To set the anchor put the pointer at the point in the file you want to jump to, click the anchor symbol and put a short name without spaces. To refer to this in a link put it after the page name with a "#" separator. e.g. "/help/contributing#News".

Pictures

To insert a picture, we now recommend you to use the button.  With the pointer at the place where you wish to insert the picture, click on the camera button and you will get a popup menu that lists any pictures you have previously loaded and invites you to upload more if necessary. If the image is there already all you have to do is to click on it.

To upload a new image, click the Upload button. You will need to invent a title, then scroll down to the "Image" box and choose the file to be uploaded and save it. Then click on Insert in the popup you get afterwards to insert it into your page.

The image will be inserted either inline or in a paragraph by itself. You can resize it by clicking and dragging on the bottom right corner, and there are various options that can be selected to align it in different ways.

Large pictures

Using the camera icon, it is possible to load pictures larger than can be displayed on the site - the maximum width is currently 640 pixels to avoid breaking the layout. But you will be required to specify the dimensions to be less than or equal to this maximum.

At the stage when you are about to do the insertion (see picture right) you will need to select the "Other" option on the first button where "Preview" appears originally. An extra two size boxes will appear as shown. In this case the image has a width of 1280, twice the maximum of 640. You can accept the suggested width of 640 or change that to a lower figure (e.g. 400).  Hit the tab key and the height box will change to fit the proportions of the photo.

You may also change the alignment of the photo using the drop-down box on the right. Adding the optional title puts a caption below the photo. Then click the Insert button.

If you are loading a file containing pictures, please reduce them in size before loading. You can do this in MS Word (versions after 2002) by selecting a picture then selecting Pictures >> Compress on the Format menu. Then select "Web" and "All pictures in document" and click Ok.

File Uploads

You may wish to make a pre-prepared file available to other members. We recommend Acrobat PDF files for most purposes as this can be consistently printed out and the reader is free, whereas for most other formats you need other proprietary software. To create PDFs, download the free print driver at PDF995.com or use the export facility in the free LibreOffice. 

To load a file, move to the bottom of the page where the edit window appears and you will see the File Attachments prompt mentioned earlier. Click on this and you will see a set of options that in the general case looks something like the following:

The three boxes at the top show previous attachments for this page and the Attach new file box allows you to load a new file. Click on Browse to find a file on your local computer and then click Attach to add it to the list of files above. You can then change the description to anything you want.

If you were to save the page taking no further action (i.e. without uploading a new file), the files would be displayed at the bottom of the page in a list as shown below. Notice the file which doesn't have a tick in the List box does not appear, whereas the two which do have the file size listed alongside.

You do have another option for displaying uploaded files which is more in keeping with normal web style. That is to make a link in the text of the page which will download the file when it is clicked on. This takes an extra step after you have clicked Attach as follows.

Note the uploaded name of the file as it is listed below the description and copy the part that occurs after "myca.org.uk", e.g. "/system/files/Draft+Minutes+of+meeting++16.04.07.doc". Then use this as the target of a link in the text as described earlier.

You will see that spaces in the file name have been replaced in this case by the + symbol. Spaces are not allowed in urls and are generally best avoided as they are treated inconsistently and cause problems - notice there is a double space at one point in this filename.

If you insert a link in this way you can then un-tick the "List" box opposite the file name. If for any reason you want to delete a previously uploaded file from the system, put a tick in the Delete box in front of the file name and afterwards click Save. Do not click the Delete button that will appear if you are editing a previously submitted page. This will delete the entire page and it will be very difficult to get back!