How to Submit An Article or Blog Post By Drew Wells @ 1:13 PM

To submit an article, register on our community site and then click here to submit an article. The article will be reviewed and you will be notified if it's published.

Please follow these instructions on how to submit an article/blog post to this website. You can leave these instructions open in another browser window and refer to them while creating your article/post.

1. If you don't already have one, create an account on the aqCommunity site.
2. Login to the aqCommunity site.
3. Create an article (the link on the home page is called suggest an article.)
4. For a long article, check the "article" category and any others that are appropriate.
5. For a blog post, check the "blog" category and any others that are appropriate.
   
6. Do not check "Upcoming AQA events" or "Quick Links" categories. 
7. For shorter articles/blog posts, put all content in the summary text box.
8. For long articles, enter a shorter summary in the text box on the summary tab. Usually, this is the first paragraph or so of the article repeated, but other forms are ok.
9. Enter/paste the main body of the article in the text box on the Details tab.
10. Important: Remove Word text formatting from the article.
11. Click the Word document text icon on the edit box toolbar to remove the Word HTML formatting.
12. Alternately, you can paste the text into notepad, then select all and copy from notepad to remove Word's non-standard HTML formatting.
    
13. Format the article text. Important: Items must have fairly simple formatting to ensure that they will display correclty on the site. Allowed formatting is described below. (see below)
14. Resize and upload any images for the article. (see below)
15.  Insert image tags for your uploaded images. (see below)
16. Zip and upload any non-images files related to the article. (see below)
17.  Insert links for any included files images. (see below)
18. Click the Save Article button at the bottom of the summary tab.
19. Preview the article. (see below)
20. View your article list.
21. Click the blue pencil icon to the left of the title to edit the article.
22. Correct any problems in the text.
23. Click the Publish button at the bottom of the summary tab to save your article and notify the editors that it is available for review. Note: If you have publishing permission then this action will make your item public. Just click the Save button and send an email to your editor(s) if your item is ready to be proofed or reviewed.
    
24. Check the blog front page to confirm that your item was published or to confirm that it was not published if you did not mean to make it public yet.
    

Format Article Text

   The only formatting normally accepted in articles is:
    Bold / Italic / Underline
    Normal

      Heading 2

      Heading 3

    Blockquote

    Simple tables
    Source code listings

Bold/Italic/Underline

 Select the text and use the toolbar menu to format, or edit the HTML and surround with <b>, <strong>, <u> tags.

Normal and Headings

Place the cursor in the paragraph to be formatted and select Normal, Heading 2 or Heading 3 from the paragraph drop down menu. Or edit the HTML source (bottom tab) and surround the text in <P>, <H2> or <H3> tags. Format section headers as <h2>, for example, <H2>This is a section head</H2>.

Blockquotes

There is no toolbar item for blockquotes so you will need to insert the tags manually in the HTML. Edit the HTML source (bottom tab) and surround the text in <BLOCKQUOTE> tags. For example, <H2>This is a blockquote<br>about blockquotes.</H2>.

Simple tables

Edit the HTML to add simple tables. Tables should not be wider than 500 pixels.

Formatted Source code listings

Source code listings must be formatted in HTML. Here are instructions on how to add source code listings to your article/post. It can be helpful to add markers in your original text before pasting it in the edit box like ***listing ***endlisting so you can find the spots to add the formatting tags. Be sure to remove the markers before submitting to the editors.

Images

Here are detailed instructions on how to add images to your article/post. It can be helpful to add markers in your original text before pasting it in the edit box like ***image1 ***image2 so you can find the spots to add the formatting tags. Be sure to remove the markers before submitting to the editors.

Files

File attachments should be archived as zip files. All files should be included in one zip file unless the archive would be extremely large. A readme.txt text file should be included with a basic description of the file and a pointer to the related article.
Use the upload instructions in the how to add images article to upload the files.

The URL for the files will be:
  http://www.automatedqa.com/images/blog/(your file name)
For example, a post about a new log viewer utility includes the executable and source in one archive:
  http://www.automatedqa.com/images/blog/TCLogViewer.zip

How to Preview An Article

There is no formal article preview feature, however you can hack an article view  URL to see how your saved article looks in the site formatting.

First edit your article and click Save at the bottom of the summary tab.

Now, find your article id by viewing your article list and looking at the URL for the article you're working on. Use the blue pencil URL next to the article title or edit the article and see the URL in the address bar. The number after the words articleId at the end of the URL is the article ID.

For example, here is the view link for article ID #5:
http://www.automatedqa.com/community/Home/Articles/tabid/38/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/5/Default.aspx
Notice the end of the URL - articleId/5/Default.aspx
The article ID, 5, is after articleID and before default.aspx.
You can change that number to preview your article.

Now, you have your article id, you can load another article and change the article ID to preview your saved article.

Open this link in a new browser:
Any article link
The first number after the string /articleID/ in the URL is the article ID.
Edit the URL in the address bar to use your article ID instead.
So this URL,
   http://.../ArticleView/articleId/5/Default.aspx
becomes
   http://.../ArticleView/articleId/YOUR ID/Default.aspx
For example,
   http://.../ArticleView/articleId/169/Default.aspx

Other Notes

Publish date and time should not be changed.
Featured should be unchecked.
Link type should be none.