Tech Help

Here's the basic structure:

1. Main Site - https://sites.google.com/site/solondeer/home
   The first stop for the public
   
2. Blog - http://solondeer.blogspot.com/
   More detailed info
   
3. NewsBlog - http://solondeernews.blogspot.com/
   News, Letters to the Editor, etc.
   
4. Private Working Blog - http://solondeerprivwork.blogspot.com/
   A staging area for ideas, from rough draft to final
5. solondeer@gmail.com is forwarded to solondeer googlegroups which can be subscribed to by any contributor
   

Currently our working web site is not secured, when the city catches on, I will turn off "Anyone Viewing" and require a login.  I will invite you as a contributor to the working blog.

Take a look at Work Blog Label Help to see an introduction.

Take a look at Work Blog Label Tech to see descriptions to the Technical Structure of this group of web services.

The Work Blog contains 90+ ideas...  What's suitable for the web is different than what's suitable as written info.  There's also the Audience issue, much of this is written by Animal Activists and our target is the apathetic uninformed average Joe voter.  I see our goal as breaking this info into a hierarchy, major point, summary, and full detail.  Our target audience may not want to read a lot, so the Main site has to be easy major points.

See Labels WebNow , Hot , and Active for items that need work.

Feel free to comment on any post or to add a new post if you have a completely new topic or issue on the work blog.

Post any technical comments here.

Labels Defined

Copy public list?  There needs to be some correlation with the Article Site Blog labels, but this site will have more Labels to categorize issues that are not for the public.

Clicking on the Label on the sidebar will subset the posts down to the specific category.

Working Issues

• Active - All issues being worked on, items needing discussion, strategy, but not really content destined for a public site (as ActiveArticle).
  Specifically excludes Labels - Ann, Help, Tech, and VerArchive
  Tag new posts with Active, when post content is complete, Active Label will be removed and VerArchive will be added
• ActiveArticle - All web content being worked on, as active, but items needing editing for publication.
• Ann - Announcement to working group
• Help - Help Info
• Tech - Technical Web details
  
• NewsBlog - News, Letters, Editorials, or Comments for the News Blog
• Hot - Hot / Time sensitive Issue
• Link - Info on URL Links to other sites
• Strategy - How we are going to handle an issue (vs the content)
• Web - General content for the web
• WebNow - High priority web content (from ActiveArticle)
• UnCat - Uncategorized, use if you are uncertain how to categorize, I'll periodically review these labels and find an appropriate Label.

Content Categories

• DVA - Deer Vehicle Accidents
• Garden - Issues related to deer damage to gardens or understory
• Hunting - specifically related to bow hunting
• Lethal - general all lethal issues
• News - News accounts
• Non-Lethal
• Research - Detailed research papers
• Video - Videos

Draft Version Status

• VerRough 
• VerFirst
• VerSecond
• VerFinal
• VerArchive - No longer requires action, Active/ActiveArticle Label removed
• VerUpdate - Designates that the post has been updated

HTML Editor - PSPad

PSPad is an HTML coding editor found here.

By doing an Edit Page then HTML on Google Sites or Edit HTML on Blogger you can see the HTML code, if its lengthy, you may want to select it all (CTL-A), copy it all (CTL-C) and then paste (CTL-V) it into another HTML editor where you can use its power to update it.

PSPAD has a syntax highlighter that will show you the show the other part of paired tags (bright blue) or show you it is an unmaatched tag (in Red).

·	Open new HTML document. This will also load the clip definition file for HTML, including syntax highlighting.

·	Press CTRL+SPACE, choose html (or write html and press SHIFT+SPACE) - you get HTML page base structure

·	Use other clips (CTRL+SPACE) or their assigned shortcuts (chapter about clips) to write what you need.

·	Create or open other pages

·

I recommend you use clips shortcuts like CTRL+Enter, CTRL+B, CTRL+I, .... See what these hotkeys do at: Settings / Clips Hotkeys, (This is empty if there are not shortcuts assigned in the .DEF file for this file type.) For example, when you are in an HTML document, CTRL+B creates a set of bold tags <b></b> with your cursor in the middle of them. If you select your text before hitting CTRL+B, the text will be surrounded by the bold tags.

·	Mark main HTML page (index.html) as "Main page" - Ctrl+M for better visibility.

·	Press F10 anytime to see result of your work in the default application, which in this case is the built-in browser.

·	Press SHIFT+CTRL+E to see Code Explorer for better code orientation

How to effectively use program

·	after selecting a block of lines, you can increase or decrease indentation - SHIFT+CTRL+U SHIFT+CTRL+I or Tab / Shift+Tab

·	use clips (CTRL+SPACE)

·	Use hotkeys. Intead Ctrl+Space, select "B" tag, you can select your text and press Ctrl+B (in HTML document).

·	you can use UNDO and REDO at any time

·	you can simply reopen file before you save it, if you are not happy with your changes Ctrl+R

·	use bookmarks for quick orientation in code CTRL+LEFT/Right, CTRL+DOWN/Up

·	use context menu - right mouse button

·	use help. Try pressing F1 in various contexts: in the Projects window, in a dialog box, when you mouse has highlighted a pull down menu item.

·	explore and try the various menu tools. Some functions can save you a lot of work

Sites Navigation

There are five options for site navigation...

1. Default - automatic sidebar
   as new pages are added, they appear alphabetically on the sidebar
2. Manual sidebar - new pages won't appear until added
3. Horizontal navigation (tabs) - no auto option, must add new pages
4. No navigation - all linking must be done internally on page content
5. Manual Sidebar and horizontal navigation - you wouldn't put the same info on both navigation areas, it would be a dual navigation process

Options 2,3,5 require ownership authority so they can select, "other options", "manage sites", "site layout".  At the bottom of the sidebar, click "edit sidebar" to add, delete, or move pages.  These options also allow you to add URLs that are not part of Google Sites.


To select option 2, you must click "change layout" and then deselect automatic updating.

To select option 3, you must click "change layout" and then select"horizontal navigation", you  can change the style of them by selecting "tabs" or 'Boxes"

The sidebar can have many entries as they will appear under each other.  The horizontal navigation can have levels that will show up by hovering over a tab.  If there are too many tabs or if their names are too long, it will cause a second row of tabs to appear.

Sites Page Content Layout

You can think of the layout in a hierarchy as follows:

1. Site Layout - Highest level, applies to all pages
2. Page Layout - Header, optional Horizontal Navigation (tabs), Sidebar, Content Box, optional footer.
3. Content Layout - Where the major amount of your customizable content exists

Google sites typically has one large box for content, this is known as one column (simple).  The designation "simple" means one row, one column.

This is NOT controlled by the "other actions" top right button.  Site Layout affects all pages in the site.  This page layout is found by editing a page and then clicking "layout" in the action tabs above the toolbar.

There's also two column and three column.  And there's also "non-simple" versions that have a header and footer that are one long horizontal row (1 column) with one, two, and three columns. 

There's also sidebar layouts, these are narrow columns vs equal width columns.  There is a right, left, and both sidebar versions, all of them have a header and footer box.

See a description of this feature here.

Email vs Blogger

Email presents many organiztion challenges.

When email is copied over to Blogger or Sites it may contain formatting that isn't consistent with the other web content.  If you copy it with formatting than you must try to reformat it to be consistent, either with the WYSIWIG tools or by going into raw HTML and removing the inconsistent code.

Once copied you can remove formatting with the Tx WYSIWIG tool.

However there may be some formatting you want to keep which means if you remove it you'll have to look at the original line by line and reapply the selected formatting.

By composing directly in Blogger the author applies the formatting with Google while writing it making it more consistent and not requiring more post-formatting.

CSS Code

It becomes necessary to override Google's code with CSS to get the desired effect:
http://www.w3schools.com/css/

General use of inline CSS is via span or div tag using style statement

span style="css code;css code"
css code keyword parms are separated from values by a colon : and from each other by a semi colon ;


Font

Google uses old HTML font code for size (normal, large, x-large) which offers little granularity and at larger sizes overlaps the font for strange displays.

http://www.w3schools.com/css/css_font.asp
font-size:18px;
font-weight:bold

Line-height

At larger fonts, the letters tend to overlap, even with CSS coded fonts, the line height can be used to improve the separation.  This can be specified in px or as a multiplier number of at least 1.2.

http://www.w3schools.com/css/pr_dim_line-height.asp

Margin

http://www.w3schools.com/css/css_margin.asp
margin:25px 50px 75px 100px;

• top margin is 25px
• right margin is 50px
• bottom margin is 75px
• left margin is 100px

Right margin is useful override for left justified photo with wrap on.

The box model rule is useful to learn.
http://www.w3schools.com/css/css_boxmodel.asp 

Indenting

Google Sites has an indent feature
Blogger only has the blockqoute feature
You can cause an indent by using the div tag with a margin CSS specifying px indent

xx

ScribD embedded documents

It appears that the full screen option on the embedded docs is no longer available.

There is also some kind of archive feature that needs attention to keep your docs available.

There are 3 ways to embed documents:

HTML 5

Letter to Solon City Council2

Flash

Letter to Solon City Council2

Wordpress

[scribd id=52466281 key=key-26son81uwadj9xfkty49 mode=list]

Document Storage

Our main file storage is on the ScribD service and can be found here - scribd.com/solondeer/ ,

Should we add this link to all sidebars?

Should we have a Files or Document page on the Main Site which points to ScribD and has its own file attachments?  Or have everything on ScribD?

We have several options for document storage

1. ScribD
   Isn't part of Google Apps, well suited for public documents, not suited for private docs because of separate ID.
   
2. Google Docs
   -- Is part of Google Apps, embed is not well developed.  Suitable for private Docs as Contributors will have Google ID.
   -- Forms option suitable for surveys, petitions, and databases
   -- Suitable for collaborative docs where multiple contributors edit a document (vs the blog where you can only edit your own posts)
   
3. Files Page on the Main Site
   There is a special page format for files, click here for example.
   
4. Attachment to a Main Site Page
   Each regular page (not Home, Announcement pages) can have a file attachment, see this page.

Google Petition

An example of Google Forms is used at Broadview Hts.

http://sites.google.com/site/broadviewdeer/petition

Stay tuned to this site and I'll put up a prototype.  They had just one big free form field which isn't conducive to processing it...  In the mean time comment here at  http://solondeerprivwork.blogspot.com/2011/03/petitioningsurveying.html

I verified they are indeed using embedded Goggle Docs Forms.

Our form will collect the following fields

1. First Name
2. Last Name
3. Address
4. email
5. maybe phone #
   
6. Yard Sign (check box)
   
7. Help us (check box)
   

By collecting separate fields we can sort by name and match voter registration, sort by street for petition canvassing, filter by check boxes for Yard Sign and Help us, etc...

You can see from their site that calling it a petition caused confusion, so we'll avoid that problem.  We'll also have some language to assure them of privacy and that we won't spam them.

Posted 2/27/11

---

To see what it looks like, see below, try it out...
To see what it would look like on the main site, click here.

Good News - this works on both the main site and the blog.  It can be used for building a supporter database or taking a survey (has multiple choice ability).  Information captured in a spreadsheet that the visitor doesn't see.

Bad News - Doesn't allow formatting the form (ala MS Access Form Designer)
Doesn't automatically collect email addresses

Should we make email req'd?
Should we ask phone number?

Need introduction/instruction text
Introduction must address privacy/spam concerns
Can have help tip with each question

There are some technical problems with this Google facility, I have done some coding and think I have a work around...  This link is using Google, this link is my work around...

---

Web Services

Main Site - Highest level view for widest audience.

Articles (Public Blog) - Next level of detail for those interested in the cause.  This service has more ability to organize and find content.   (Add Search Widget)

News Blog - Selection of Letters to the Editor, comments, emails etc.  (Add Search Widget)

Work Blog (this site) - Private for working members only who will be actively reviewing and contributing content.  (Not Indexed, No Search Widget, can search from Dashboard).

ScribD - public document storage of PDFs

Count Down

The Main Web Site (and possibly the companion Blog) will have a countdown to the next major event.  Currently the countdown is until the Safety Meeting / Web Site Launch, then it will be to next Council meeting or other important event.

Petitions

The MetroParks Petition is using Change.org, it looks good.

When someone "signs" the petition an email is sent with their name to the "target" of the petition.

http://www.change.org/petitions/stop-cleveland-metroparks-annual-deer-slaughter-2

Web Security

Right now the city doesn't know we're out here, I hope.  But as we go forward this work site will become more sensitive and the city will undoubtedly monitor it as they do the cleveland.com Solon forum (I know, I've been personally contacted by city officials for saying things they don't like).

The good news is that the bulk of the web services are under Google Apps, so once someone is registered to a Google Account, I can grant them access to the various services.  There are two ways to be registered, if you have a gmail account, you already are.  If not you can register your own email address to Google Accounts.  Then you can log in to Goggle Apps and have authority to move to the various services under that one ID.

This site has been deliberately removed from search engines.

At some point soon I'd like to meet with the most active contributors to walk you through the Account Registration and the various services.

Blogger Pages

Use of Pages Feature

• For Welcome & How to use
• Legal
• Contact

Web Help

Invite other city IT help to this site, label Web to comment on open items.

Twitter

Could have an account.  Mentioned on site home page or sidebar.

RSS feeds on site aren't working and seem delayed on blogger.

Blogger

Explain this Work Blog (this site).

Explain Public Blogger for both internal use and public.

Petitions

Hi,
I'm getting caught up on the last few days of emails and came across one of many I get regarding signing a petition.  This one is about the cutting of funding for public radio and tv, but could be an idea for collecting signatures for our purposes.

Could we do this?  Is it too much work?  Are the signatures legal for our purposes?

Web Services

See this site:

CITIZENS FOR SAFE, ETHICAL AND RATIONAL APPROACHES TO REDUCING DEER-HUMAN CONFLICT
http://www.cayugadeer.org | contact@cayugadeer.org


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Sign our Online Petition! http://www.cayugadeer.org/petition
Petition is hosted on http://www.change.org/
http://www.change.org/how-to-write-a-petition

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