Posting on HKStories

The very beginning:

  • Go to the Hong Kong Stories site and log in. If for some reason you haven’t yet registered, click on the link that says “Register” on the left-hand column. We will promote you to editor status so that you can post your story in draft form, but you have to register first.
  • Log in with the username and password you have chosen.
  • NOTE: All students in the class are given “Editor” status on HKStories. That means you can post drafts and you can edit each other’s work. But you will be unable to publish anything to the live site. The final act of publishing your story so that it becomes publicly visible will be done by your instructor.

Creating a story:

  • Look at the left-hand column of the website, under “HK Explorer.” All of the topic “Sections” are listed there.
  • Locate this semester’s story cluster, which is at the top of the left-hand menu (the website also contains menu clusters from past semesters – you do not need to concern yourself with those).
  • Locate the correct “Section” where your story belongs. If you don’t remember, check here.
  • Click on the link for the Section where your story will be located.

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  • Once you have entered your section, you will see an icon with a link that says “new.” Click on it to create a new story page.

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  • After clicking on the “New” link you will enter an “Add Content” page. This is the unique “Content item” for your story.
  • See the box labeled “Title.” The title you type in that box will be the title of your story.
  • See the drop-down menu box labeled “Category.” Each student has been assigned a unique “Category” to identify their story in the Joomla system. Make sure you use the correct category for your story or you will create problems for your classmates. You can check it on the wiki here.

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  • Start entering your text, as you would do in a blog post. REMEMBER: DO NOT COPY AND PASTE FROM A WORD DOCUMENT OR THE FORMAT WILL COME OUT FUNNY. If you have written your text offline (which is a good idea anyway so nothing gets accidentally deleted or lost), write it in a “text-only” file before you copy it into HKStories so that you do not encounter problems with formatting. Do your formatting after you’ve copied over your text. NEVER TRY TO DO YOUR FORMATTING FIRST IN MICROSOFT WORD!!!
  • You can add links the same way you do on your blog. However in Jooma, after you highlight your words to be linked and click on the chain link icon, the box that pops up may look a little complicated than on your blogging system. Ignore most of fields. Just paste in the URL of the site you are linking to in the URL box. Also, in the “Target” box select “Open in this window/frame instead of “Open in new window” which is the default. Then click “Insert” and your link will be added.

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  • WARNING: Be sure to save frequently. Sometimes, for some reason, due to a bug in the software probably, if you type a very long text without saving, only a portion of it will be saved. This is also another good reason to copy and paste everything into a text document offline, just in case there are problems. You don’t want to lose your work!!
  • After you save, you can see how the story will look like when published, but actually it is still in “draft” form and not visible to the public.
  • See the little icon next to the title of my draft? Click on that to re-open your story and continue adding content.

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When the page is saved and you are logged in, it will now appear in your project’s special Category page. (NOTE: This page will only be visible when you are logged into the system, because it is for editing purposes only. Your story will be publicly displayed in a different format.)

In the next section of our custom HKStories guide I will explain how to handle photos.