First section is on how to post to the blog on the main website, and the second section is what it means to be the moderator of a group on the forum. The essential difference in the way to use the website and forum: the website is to advertise events (that you don't wish people to comment on), and the forum is to start discussions (that you do want people to comment on).
How to post to Transition Brighton and Hove website blog
1. Firstly, you'll need to receive an invite email from Chris, the website person. When you've got the email, click the link.
2. Posting to the website requires a different log on from the forum. You need to have a Google account – if you do not already have a Google account when you click the link in the email, you'll now be invited to create one. Once you have, you'll be able to post to the Transition B&H blog, and in future you can log in by clicking on the 'Sign In' link in the top right of the main website page.
3. Sign in to Blogger (you can do this from the link in the email, or go to www.blogger.com), and this will take you to your Dashboard. Click on New Post.
4. Title of your post is self-explanatory – if it's an event on a particular day, put the date in the title as well. Ignore the Link field.
5. In the content field, click on the 'Edit HTML' tag, then you'll see this: {span class="fullpost"}{/span}. (NB: ALL POINTY BRACKETS HAVE BEEN REPLACED BY CURLY BRACKETS IN THIS POST TO AVOID THE FORMATTING BEING IMPLEMENTED. WHEREVER CURLY BRACKETS ARE USED HERE, YOU NEED TO USE POINTY BRACKETS, ABOVE THE COMMA AND FULL STOP ON THE KEYBOARD). This is for identifying which of the first few lines of the content you want listed in the brief summary of the post on the main page. The {span class="fullpost"} part goes after the lines you want to appear in the summary, and the {/span} goes at the end of the content
e.g. Notes from network meeting, taken by Chris Callard {span class="fullpost"}
[the rest of the content]{/span}
Best to keep as few lines as possible in the summary, so that more entries can be viewed on a page
6. Styling the content: if you want to specify headings in the content, you need to put the a tag {h2} at the beginning of the heading and {/h2} at the end. This {h2} tag puts empty space before and after the heading, so you might want to delete some of the paragraph breaks. You can make things bold by tagging either side with {b} and {/b} and italic with {i} and {/i}. If you know more HTML you can use other tags as well.
7. Click on Post Options.
Under 'Reader Comments', click 'Don't allow, hide existing' (so that people don't leave comments on posts, I'm trying to make sure all comments are in one place on the forum so it doesn't become confusing)
In the 'Labels for this post' field, enter any labels that are relevant to the post (Food, Energy, etc) The obvious one is if the post is relevant to a particular Function Group. You can see which labels are already used in the right hand column on the main page of the website, if you start to type one of these it will suggest the whole word for you. You can create a new label that hasn't been used before just by typing it, but I'm trying to keep the labels matching the categories in the forum to keep it simple.
In 'Post time and date' enter the date for which this post is relevant (there will then be a link in the calendar). If it is an event the date is obvious – if not, but the content is just information (e.g. climate change links) give it a past date of 25/07/07. That way it won't appear in the recent calendar listings.
8. Click Publish Post. You can now find the post on the website (either on the opening page if it's recent or via the calendar). If you click on the link for the post you'll be able to see its individual web address in the address bar at the top. This can then be linked to, from other pages on the website, in the forum, wherever.
What to do as moderator of a forum category
Being moderator of a function group category on the forum means two things:
Firstly you are responsible for moderating the discussions on your particular category. If (when logged into the forum) you look in the bottom left hand corner, you'll see four symbols. Clicking on these allow you to:
1) Delete the discussion
2) Lock the discussions so that no more posts can be made (if for example it's becoming abusive – this doesn't happen very often!)
3) Move the discussion to a different category (if it is becoming irrelevant to your category
4) Split the discussion into two separate discussions if needs be
Secondly, as a usergroup moderator you will be sent a list of email addresses of people who have expressed interest in your group, which you can use as you need for arranging meetings, etc (you can also see a list of these members by clicking on 'Usergroup' in the top row of the forum site, and then selecting your particular usergroup. Their email addresses won't be visible here for security reasons.)
Each time someone new registers with the group, you'll be sent their email address.
Moderators' notes on how to post to website/forum
