Contribute Article

Getting started
When you first open Contribute, the screen displays options for learning more about the program or editing your pages. You will no doubt want to read the "learn more" section the first time, but once you have done that, check the "Don’t show this page on start up" option. The handy How Do I panel will remain on the side panel for reference, so you can quickly get answers to your questions.

At this point, we recommend using the quick 10-minute tutorial in the How Do I panel. This tutorial shows you an example of editing a sample web page, creating new tables, and publishing your page. This brief exercise will give you a good idea of how Contribute works before you work with your own website.

Upon completing the tutorial, you are ready to get moving with your site. Done that? Let’s go.

Setting up the site
There are two ways to set up a site in Contribute. You'll either use a connection key that your web developer sent you, or you'll set up the connection yourself with the Contribute Connection Wizard. Don’t panic! You can do it!

First, if you have an e-mail with a connection key, open the e-mail and double-click it. Enter your name, e-mail address, and connection password in the appropriate spaces. The home page of your site will appear in the browser. Now you are ready to edit.

Second, if you do not have a connection key, you will set up the connection yourself with the Contribute Connection Wizard, which makes makes this task painless. Click the "Create a Connection" button at the top of the Contribute browser. The Connection Wizard appears. If you do not see this button, but instead see the buttons for Edit Page and Create Page, then select Edit > My Connections. Click New in the My Connections dialog box to open the Connection Wizard.

The Connection Wizard is easy to understand. Since you do not have a connection key, select Next to begin. Enter your name and e-mail address on the first screen and click Next.

Fill in the URL or web address for your website on the next screen. Click Next.

The Connection Wizard’s next screen asks for information about your Internet connection. Select FTP from the pop-up menu if this is a live remote site. FTP text boxes appear; type your FTP address, login, and password information. If this is a local site on your computer, an additional text box appears, asking you to specify the path to the site; you can use the Browse button to navigate to this folder. When you locate it, click the Select button, which will specify the path in the text box. Click Next.

If you have made a mistake, an Alert dialog box informs you that Contribute cannot verify the information you have entered and to contact your Site Administrator. If you did not see an Alert dialog box, you can proceed. Select User for your group and click Next. Your information appears. Congratulations! You've connected to a site! Click Done and close the connection dialog box.

Editing pages
The Contribute browser displays your site's home page. Click the Edit button at the top of the Contribute browser to turn it into the Contribute editor. Now you can make your changes on the displayed page, such as add or delete text, and more.

The text toolbar at the top of the editor works very much like those in Microsoft Word or any other editor. You can italicize, bold , or change the font or color of your text.

It is just as easy to create a hyperlink on your page. A hyperlink is text that normally appears underlined (or may not if your page has a CSS style sheet attached). When you click the underlined text, it goes to the linked page. To create a hyperlink, select the text you would like to link, and then click the icon that looks like a chain at the top of the Contribute editor.

The hyperlink pop-up menu options allow you to link your text to:

• a draft or recent page within your site
• a new page that you created
• a web page you specify or browse to
• an e-mail address
• a file on your computer

If you don’t know which option to select or change your mind during the process, do not despair. The Insert Link dialogue box will give you the opportunity to change your mind! Notice when you select an option, the dialog box displays text boxes corresponding to each type of link.

Now you may be wondering about pictures. Not to worry, with Contribute, you can add images to spruce things up. Select the Image button (the tree icon) at the top of the browser; this opens the Image dialog box. You have two choices: selecting the image file from your computer or typing the URL for the image on the web. Using the Insert Image dialog box is easy. Browse to the directory that contains your image and specify the image file. If you are unsure, Contribute gives you an image preview window so you can select the image you want.

Now your page has text and images, but you may wish to change its layout. You can use Contribute to insert a table into your page. Tables are containers that format the text and images in columns and rows. Placing your image inside a table cell will allow you to place it correctly within your page so it does not overlap with text on the page; and placing text inside a table cell allows you greater flexibility in formatting it into columns, too.

Decide in advance how you want to layout the table so that you will be able to add the rows and columns quickly with few changes. Select Insert Table located at the top of the Contribute browser.

Next, specify cell padding and cell spacing. Cell padding governs the number of pixels between the border and the content. Cell spacing determines the number of pixels between cells. Finally, with Contribute you can specify table headers in several orientations to polish the look of your table.

Publishing your page
We have now walked through the basic editing capabilities in Contribute. Now that you have what you want, it is time to finish your page and upload it to your website. You're in the home stretch!

Contribute gives you two options to finish your work session. If you are not quite ready to show the world, you can select Save for Later. Just as the option implies, Contribute will save the work to your computer and close the page, but it won't upload the page to the remote website. That way, you can work on the page later.

If you’re ready to show the public users, however, select Publish. Since you are already connected to the website, in just a few seconds a reward message will appear: Congratulations! You've published your page on the website.

You have just uncovered a huge menu and a great feature of Contribute! So many choices. You will notice that you can specify your other Contribute sites here, so be careful to select an option for the site you are currently editing.

The first option, "Copy of Current Page," allows you to make a quick copy of the format currently used. Rename the current page and make a few quick changes to the text and graphics. Very quickly, you have a new page that looks consistent with the rest of the website.

The second option, "Blank Web Page," tells Contribute that you want to make something totally different than the existing page.

The next option, the "Sample Web Pages" folder, gives you a huge selection of pre-made pages that you can quickly customize in Contribute for a fast, professional style. This feature is a time saver. Take a minute to look through the available pre-made templates and preview the page inside the dialogue box. There are a lot of different types of pages, in three basic color schemes: Silver, Forest and Sky. Pretty cool, huh?

The last option is a folder called "Templates," which contains a sample supplier template. Your developer can create customized templates for your site and store them in this folder, thereby helping users create new pages that match the look and feel of your website a snap.

Once you have selected your page option, double-click it to send the option to the preview area. Give your page a title and click OK. Now you are ready to create tables, text, and images on the page, just as you did when you edited pages. You can add any number of pages in the same way, maintaining and creating pages quickly and easily.

In this tutorial, we learned how to create a connection to the website using either a connection key received from the Site Administrator or to use the Connection Wizard to create a new connection. We discussed editing existing web pages and learned how to add text and images. We also learned how to make simple format changes and to incorporate tables into our pages for structure and stability. Finally, we learned how to publish edited pages and to create new pages that maintain a consistent style with the rest of the site. And all that in just 10 minutes!

About the author
Nancy Gill is the owner of Web Wish Productions, a web design company she started in 1996 in Central California. Web Wish Productions now services clients all over the United States. During the first few years, Nancy worked exclusively in Notepad (before discovering Macromedia Dreamweaver in 1999). She moved into data-driven UltraDev as soon as version 1.0 hit the shelves. Nancy is currently a Team Macromedia member. Future plans include venturing farther into multimedia, including an ambitious TV/web entertainment project and an effort to team Dreamweaver MX with the capabilities of Macromedia Flash.