Writing and Styling pages

Using the html editor to style text

Don't get into the habit of trying to style your page (make it look attractve, with different fonts, colours etc) in Word, then upload them to the server. Word, and other programmes, produce loads of unnecessary code - sometimes so much that you are unable to update the page.

Using the styling tool within the html editor is not only easy, it will produce consistent results, giving a unified look to your pages.

For best results, write your article directly in the editor - perhaps mark the page as 'inactive' until you're happy with the results.

Do a bit at  time, updating as you go. Warning - if you spend more than 20 minutes on a page without hitting the 'update' button, all your work will be lost, as you will be 'timed out' by the server and need to log in again. This is because the server hasn't detected any activity (moving from page to page - it can't tell that you're writing) so assumes you are no longer there and logs you out as a security measure.

However, we know that this isn't always convenient, so if you have prepare something in another programme, do the following to remove all the unncessary code (only necessary if you have tried to make the page look 'fancy' in your programme):

1. Open your docment
2. Select All (use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+A, which is much quicker) [Use Cmd+ instead of Ctrl+ if using a Mac]
3. Copy the selected text - Ctrl+C
4. Open Notepad on your computer (Windows - there will be a Mac equivalent)
5. Paste the copied text - CTRL+V. This will remove all the formatting from your word-processed document
6. Seect All (Ctrl+A) and Copy (Ctrl+C) again
   
7. Switch to the page you're adding/updating and click in the html editor field.
8. Paste the copied text - CTRL+V
   

You will now have 'clean code in the page. If you haven't done anything 'fancy' to the page, you can paste (Ctrl+V) direct.

The following video shows you how to simply style your pages