How to contribute to the guide

Contributed by Declan Murphy

To contribute to the guide, all you need is some (accurate) information for an article, a photo or two, and about 30 minutes to write it up in HTML format. For this we'll usually pay 3000 yen. It will be less if we have to edit everything, a little more if its ready for loading onto the site. There's only one catch, that is we want you to use the following HTML code. Why? Because it makes the pages easy to navigate, nice and light and easy to maintain.

What can I write about?

Pretty much anything except that it has to be useful to students and foreign residents of Okazaki.
If you have an idea for a new category in the index page, or want to add a new file to an existing category (for example a new restaurant into the restaurant section), just write a quick email to guidebook@yamasa.org or drop by the office. If we OK your chosen theme or subject, then you should be able to start almost immediately.

But I don't know how to write HTML!

Its easy. (At least the source code we will be using is easy...)

Declan's five-minute HTML tutorial.

You already know how to write legal HTML:

Declan Murphy is a very ugly gaijin

...is a perfectly acceptable HTML document. (Though it is not a good way to win friends in low places) Type it up in the text editor (if your using the Japanese OS computers at Yamasa, use the "メモ帳" - you'll find it by clicking the "スタート" button at the bottom left of your screen, open up "プログラム", open up "アクセサリ" and you'll see it listed thus - "メモ帳", you then save what you type as index.html and you have a html document that I can load onto the web server.Yamasa's Web server can serve it. A user with Netscape Navigator or whatever can view it. A search engine can index it. You get paid. (Though for different subject matter)

If you want something more expressive... For example if you want the word very to be in italics:

Declan Murphy is a very ugly gaijin.

HTML stands for Hypertext Markup Language. The is a markup. It tells the browser to start rendering words in italics. The closes the element and stops the italics. There are a few dozen more tags in HTML. The easiest way to learn them is just to look at the View Source from Netscape Navigator when visiting sites whose formatting you like. This is usually how I learn markup.

Document Structure

You should try to make sure that you close every element that you open. So if you emphasize a word in italics, make sure you close the element. Tags can overlap, but you should close the most recently opened before therest, e.g., for something both boldface and italic

Declan Murphy is a very ugly gaijin.

If you forget to write the to close the element, then the rest of the document will be in boldface. You can use elements as paragraph separators.

Here's the source HTML I suggest you use to start an article for the guidebook:


  <html>
  <head>
  <title>Write the title of your article here</title>
  </head>
  <body bgcolor=white text=black>
  <h2>Write the title of your article here as well</h2>
  by <a href="your_name.html">Your Name</a>
  <hr>
  Write a quick introduction here...
  <a href="declans_mugshot.jpg">
  <img hspace=5 vspace=5 align=right HEIGHT=134 WIDTH=179 src="declans_mugshot_smallsize.jpg"  
  ALT="Write something about the photograph (photo: Write your name here if you want credit for the photo)">
  </a>
  <h3>Your First Subheading</h3>
  Write some more text, anything but Declan Murphy is a <B><I>very</I></B> ugly gaijin please!
  <p>
  Write some more snappy scintillating text here...
  <h3>Your Second subheading - if you need one</h3>
  Write your concluding text here...
  <hr>
  <p>
  <center>
  <a href="mailto:guidebook@yamasa.org">Comments? Feedback? Whatever! </a> OR 
  <a href="contribute.html">Contribute to the guide. </a>
  <p>
  <center><a href="disclaimer.html">Disclaimer/Copyright Info</a>
  </center>
  </body>
  </html>

Does it look difficult??? Click here if you want to see how the above source code will look rendered by a browser.

What you need to do is type your text into the spaces that ARE NOT between the parentheses < > and then save it. Finito!

All in all its pretty easy. The only complicated bit (ie it may take you about 20 minutes in total to learn) is the photo. If you don't have a digital camera, or don't know how to adjust the size of your images, we'll do it for you. If you do have the know-how, please do it yourself as below. Why? Because you'll get paid more.

Note the source code for inserting photos...

  
<a href="declans_mugshot.jpg">  <img hspace=5 vspace=5 align=right 
HEIGHT=134 WIDTH=179 src="declans_mugshot_smallsize.jpg" 
ALT="Write something about the photograph (photo: Write your 
name here if you want credit for the photo)">  </a>

You don't want the beautiful photo to be pushing your text around. Also you don't want to inconvenience your readers by forcing them to wait while their browser loads a huge jpeg. Make a small version, write a comment in the ALT="" and hyperlink it to the larger version.

This way the text will just flow around the photo, somebody who is surfing the web with the image function on their browser turned off will at least know what they are missing (or if your photo really sucks, what they are not missing), and nobody has to wait for your large photo to download unless they elect to (they can elect to do so by clicking on the hyperlink.)

Click on the photo in the sample if you want an easier to understand example of what I'm trying to say...

Of course, it could be a lot more complicated than the above. But for now, this will do. Tutorial finished. Please contribute an article!

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