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Basic Navigation
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Once you are logged in the site, you will be automatically directed to the main page. Notice that the main page has the menu on the left, the link to “Biography” and "Family History", and a link to begin writing your stories.
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The Menu on the left hand side has the following information:
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"Helpful Hints and Suggested Beginnings” – this section provides ideas on how to start yor writing process.
- "Help with the System" – you are currently reading this section.
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“Life Cycle and other events to recall”, “History Timeline”, “List of Inventions”, “List of Famous People”, “Helpful Hints and Suggested Beginnings”, “Memorable People, and “Auxiliary Stories”, are all pages that you may visit to help you while you are writing. These sections have been set up with information for all of our members to help them start and enrich their journal writing experience.
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“How to save your work and protect it from loss” is a section that clarifies what you would need to do when you have finished writing an article and would like to save it in your journal.
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“How to find your work” has detailed information regarding the structure of our memoir-writing service.
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The “How To” section has a list of Frequently Asked questions that our members have asked since we first created the website and that are not already answered in this section.
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“Family History” is a section that will allow you to add personal information about yourself and let you list your close relatives.
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To add a new person, simply click the “add” link below each of the three headings and you will get a new window where you can fill out all of the information. Clicking the “add” button on the new window will add that family member to the list.
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To edit or remove existing members simply click “edit” or “delete” links to the right of any of the members that you have already added.
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Adding, deleting, and modifying chapters, books and stories.
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We have set up our system in such a way so as to let you easily organize your memoirs. There are three levels of categorization that we have created:
i. “Book” – this is the highest level
ii. “Chapter” – a subcategory of a book
iii. Story– The journal entry where you would write.
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When you just create an account, we have predefined books to help you start. Once you click on step 3 (write your first story), you can see all of them in the dropdown menu that is right below the phrase “Select an existing book”. Choosing one from the dropdown and pressing “select” will take you to that book and any entry that is already written in it. If you chose the “early years”, you would see that selection in the dropdown and you would see it below.
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To add a new chapter, once you have selected a book, a dropdown with existing chapters will appear. You may select one of the existing onces, or, if there are none, you may create a new one. You may change the name of the book at a later point.
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To Create an story, simply follow the same steps as creating a book or a chapter.
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Using the Online Editor
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Once you have added an article you will see its name with an “*” and underlined. Clicking on it will show you what has been written in it.
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On the next screen you may view the article or you may decide to edit it by clicking the “write/edit” button. If you are just starting to write it, you will not see any text.
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Once you click edit, the system will load the online text editor where you will be able to write text, upload images, and many other things that will help you in your memoir writing experience.
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Below is a screenshot of the editor tool bar with descriptions of what each of the features does.
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The scissors icon will perform the “Cut” operation on any selected text.
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The icon with the two documents overlapping each other to the right of the “cut” icon is the “Copy” command. It will copy all of the text that you have selected.
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The next icon is “Paste” – which will paste any text that you have copied or cut from a different location. When you paste something in, please be sure to click on the location in the journal entry where the pasted information should go.
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“Paste as pain text” will allow you to paste text without having to worry that it was a different font or style. The pasted text will automatically be changed to the default text.
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Any time you are pasting from Microsoft® Word, you should use the “Paste from Word” button. This will let you paste all of the styles correctly.
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The icon “new page” will clear all of the text and graphics in your editor.
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The icon “select all” will select everything on the page.
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The icon “insert/edit link” (the globe with a paper clip) will allow you to add a link to a different website. Simply select the words that you would like to have link to another location, click the “insert/edit link” button, you will get a popup.
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The “link to” dropdown should always say “external web page” if you are creating a link to another website.
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"View in” will let you specify if you would like the linked website to open in a new window, the same window, or a popup.
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“Alternative text” should be the same as the words that you highlighted when you clicked on “insert/edit link”.
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Protocol for all sites should be “http” (the default), but you may choose to change it as you see fit.
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The “address” line is the path of the website to which you would like to link.
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“Remove link” will remove any links for all selected text.
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The “Insert/Edit Image” button will let you upload an image into your journal entry.
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Once you click on the “Insert/Edit Image” link, you will get a popup with image properties. Click on the “Browse Server” to open your own personal folder with all of the images that you have uploaded. If you are just starting out, you may not have any.
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To add a new image, once you click on the “browse server” button and a new window opens, there will be a “browse” button on the bottom right. Clicking on it will let you browse your computer for that photograph or image that you want to include in this journal entry. Once you have found it, click the “upload” button to add it to the list above.
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To select an image, click on a name of an image from the existing list of the images that you have uploaded. This window will close and you will see the selected image in the “preview” box of the first popup that you opened when you clicked on “Insert/Edit Image”. Click ok to insert it into the text.
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If you would like to insert a special character into the text, click on the “Insert Special Character” icon. You will get a popup where you can click on the character that you need.
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The “find” button will let you find text in the journal entry.
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The “replace” button will let you replace all or several instances of text for something else. For example, replace every instance of the word “car” with “automobile”.
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The next item is the “insert horizontal line”. This can be used as a separator between two parts of the journal entry.
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“?” button will display these instructions.
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The second line of the editor is a number of standard controls that are present in all text editors such as Microsoft ® Word.
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The “Font” dropdown will allow you to modify the font of the selected text.
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“Size” will let you modify the font size.
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The eraser icon will clear all formatting for all of the text that you have selected.
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The print icon will allow you to print this page
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The last icon on the last line is the spell checker. The first time you run it, it will install a file on your computer so that it may use it to check the spelling of your journal entry.
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Changing your Account Settings
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To change your account settings, click on the “My Account” link in the center of the top menu. You will be able to modify any of your settings from here.
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Logging Out
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Simply click the logout link that is located on the top right of your screen – next to the “My Account” link.
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