We have deliberately set-up this blog to be as user-friendly as possible which means that some of the so-called 'security' features are disabled to encourage greater participation.
Comments
For the moment, anybody can submit comments without pre-registration and these will posted immediately.
However, any inappropriate comments will be deleted.
If you don't have a Typepad account, just type in your name with your comment and then click preview/post, as required.
If you do have a Typepad account, you can log-in to display your standard 'signature' link on the comment.
Original Articles
In order for you to post original articles, we need to set you up as an author which is a fairly simple process—if you don't have a (FREE) Typepad account, you can set one up as part of that process.
Just send us an email to siteadmin@propellerclublondon.org.uk and we will initiate the process.
To submit a post, you first log into www.typepad.com which shows a list of blogs for which you have posting privileges.
Click on the relevant blog title and then on the 'compose' tab and start typing.
To amend an existing post, click on the 'list posts' link and click on the relevant post.
For convenience, the blog is organised into categories which may be selected from a drop-down list.
It is probably easiest to use the simple word-processing facility provided by Typepad, which has basic controls such as bold, italic, bullet points, numbered-lists and a spell-checker.
Font size and typeface are set for the site though you can increase/decrease selected text size and you can change colour.
If you want to make more-complex format changes than allowed by these controls, you can go into the HTML view and change the code directly—unless you really know what you are doing, DON'T.
Copying and Pasting from other Applications
If you want to write the article using other software such as Microsoft Word, best to save it as plain text and close/re-open the file before pasting into Typepad or the background code may conflict with the standard settings of the blog, leaving you with lots of niggly formatting problems.
Pictures
To insert a picture, place the cursor at the beginning of a paragraph and click the 'insert image' link.
By default, a 'thumbnail' picture of 270 pixels wide will be displayed in the posting and the main photo will be displayed by clicking on the thumbnail.
These settings can be changed by selecting 'use custom settings' when uploading the picture.
Do resize any large picture before posting—I suggest about 750 pixels wide to accommodate the 800 x 600 screen resolution still used by many people.
With small pictures of less than 270 pixels, do disable the 'thumbnail' setting or you will get a picture of about the same size but inferior quality.
Only the Site Administrator can post pictures to the Gallery Photo album—any photos for the album should be sent, with appopriate captions, to siteadmin@propellerclublondon.org.uk.
Posting
By default, the posting status (bottom left in the posting window) is set to 'draft' which allows you to save your work without putting it on-line.
You can also use the 'preview' button to get a rough idea of layout but you can only see the full result by publishing and then viewing with the 'view post' or 'view weblog' options at the the top of the posting window.
When you are ready to post, just select 'post now' in the posting status and each subsequent save, of that article, will post directly on-line.
Help and Support
Actually, the on-line 'help' documentation from Typepad is about the best I have seen and their email support people also respond very quickly with accurate answers.
You should find everything you need there but do feel free to email siteadmin@propellerclublondon.org.uk with any technical issues.
Regards
Jim Bellew
president@propellerclublondon.org.uk
