How to create a feature and basic HTML

How To Be A Feature Editor
As a feature editor your duty is naturally to publish features. To do this simply involves going to the publish page and publishing your story. Note that at first all features will be published in hidden mode, this means that only editors can see them, and that you can re-edit a feature several times until you're happy with it (Editing hidden features won't send reports to the editorial actions lists). Once finished you can hit the unhide link to make a feature live to the public.

Bear in mind at all times that as an editor you can place raw html into your stories. If you code this incorrectly it could mess up the whole page. For this reason it is essential that after publishing a feature you inspect how it looks on the feature page, the newswire summary page and the newswire story page. Only then should you unhide it and let it go live.

Using Links
If you are publishing a feature which contains links to items on the newswire, then prior to editing your feature you should trawl through the newswire and add these items to your clipboard. Then once you are editing the feature you can use the clipboard to paste the links into it.

Using Images From The Newswire
If you are publishing a feature and you wish to include an image in it which is already on the newswire, then copy it to your clipboard and when editing the feature you can paste the link in. Once pasted you can adjust the alignment or the width of the image to display it at a smaller scale if need.

Using Newly Uploaded Images
If you are publishing a feature and you wish to include an image in it which you need to upload, you should first publish the feature without the image tag in your story content and upload the image using the relevant form field when publishing the story. Then add the image to your clipboard, edit the feature again and paste it in. At no point should you manually copy anything onto the server, all attachments should go via the upload form.

Writing Long Features
If your feature is more than just a small short piece you can use the "extra text" field. Anything which goes in here will not go on the front page but will appear on the newswire version of the feature, and on the front page a link will be shown indicating the story is continued on the newswire.

Upgrading Stories To Features
A story may be published on the newswire which you want to upgrade to a feature. To do this, click the upgrade feature button beside the story. This will create a temporary copy of the story. The copy is changed to a feature and its text is redistributed accordingly. It will also hide the copied story to allow you to edit it without the public seeing what your doing as well as updating the time it was posted to the current time so that it goes to the top of the front page. Once you've created this upgraded copy you should go in and edit it to add your feature page HTML. Once your editing is complete you may hit the unhide button which will merge your changes back into the original story, and delete the temporary copy.

Feature Display Settings
When editing features you will notice several checkboxes allowing you to modify the appearance of the summary. This is useful if your feature consists of complex html like a blog or razorwire, or contains images aligned to the left or right.

---

Basic HTML for features

Theres are numerous "tags" used in HTML, for formatting stories and features in Indymedia you only need a few of them, links to full documents on HTML are listed below. Infact the purpose of editing the features is to make them easier to read, (by giving the text better sections and headings) to highlight important points and give them a weight they deserve.

It is useful when learning HTML to view examples you can do this in most browser by going to the view menu and choosing view source, you can also crib tags from previous features by choosing to edit them and copy and pasting the tags but be careful not to alter them.

Note When you publish a story in editorial mode it does not automatically put in paragraph breaks for you.

You can use <p> to seperate chunks of texts. You can also use <br> which breaks the line.

Example<P>

Example <BR>
Example

HTML works on the basis of tags which need to be opened and closed eg <B>Bold</B>

Basic Formatting

<B>Bold</B>

<I>Italic</I>

<blockquote>

Quote

</blockquote>

You can use tags like the italic tag inconjuntion with another tag <B><I>Italic</I></B> but they can't cross over like so <I><B>Italic</I></B>

test

Hyperlinks

<a href="http://www.indymedia.ie">Indymedia Ireland</a> will be seen as this

Indymedia Ireland

It is important to include the "http://" and the "www.".

Feature specific tags

Including an image on the front page...

Insert code similar to this line above the front page text...

<img src="http://www.indymedia.ie/attachments/nov2004/nickveronica.jpg" alt="banners support Mary Kelly in Shop St., Galway" align="right" hspace="8" vspace="5" width="230" border="1">

align="right" image is aliged to the right of the page and the text. Options: left,center

hspace and vspace force a gap between the image and anything beside or below it for formatting purposes.

alt="Text that appears if an image doesn't load, also needed for accesibility"

border=1 a black border of width 1 is placed around the image.

width="230" this is the pixel width of an image, around 200 is a goodstart for fitting an image on the front page, just using the width tag will display the image at its normal ratio aspect but you can also specify height if you wish.

You can also intersperse image throughout the article like in this feature

Tables
For better structured features...HTML tables primer

There are a couple of different types of feature formats we've used so far, here's some examples please copy or improve on them...

Blog
Breaking News Blog
Interview with Quote Pictue Boxes
Photos from multiple reports

Enjoyable description of basic HTML for op
HTML Primer
Special Characters in HTML

---

interesting/well made features
Indymedia Ireland Archive on the battle between Coke and Colombian workers - http://www.indymedia.ie/newswire.php?search_text=sinaltrainal&button=Search+%3E%3E
http://www.indymedia.ie/newswire.php?story_id=66917 Vanunu interview, with quote/picture boxes
http://www.indymedia.ie/newswire.php?story_id=64909 Mayday Review
http://www.indymedia.ie/newswire.php?story_id=64730 Mayday Blog
http://www.indymedia.ie/newswire.php?story_id=64580 Photos and Sound from Speakers Square
http://www.indymedia.ie/newswire.php?story_id=62295 Shannon Direct Action feature example of different formatting
http://www.indymedia.ie/newswire.php?story_id=62265 Palestinfe feature different formatting
http://www.indymedia.ie/index.php?results_offset=150 The Bintifada a blog of our own stories
http://www.indymedia.ie/newswire.php?story_id=60055 How to highlight photos from different reports
http://www.indymedia.ie/newswire.php?story_id=60046 Large Razorwire/Blog from the official start of the second gulf war
http://www.indymedia.ie/newswire.php?story_id=60013 Breaking news Blog
http://www.indymedia.ie/newswire.php?story_id=60068 Highlights the multple antiwar events

-- PaulCummins - 30 Nov 2004 initiated page on how to write features and format with HTML -- PaulCummins - 02 Dec 2004 Continous Tinkering added comments section down the bottom linkingto well made features etc