Any user that is authorized to make posts to the various school websites is also capable of uploading images to be a part of their posts. In order to do so you have to first make sure that you have the “Visual Rich Editor” Disabled when you write posts. The visual rich editor is a clever idea but it is poorly implemented and I suggest not using it. It should be turned off by default, but if not you may turn it off by logging in, going to your profile under “users” and clicking off the option under “Personal Options” near the bottom left of the page that says “Use the visual rich editor when writing.” If you do not know what the visual rich editor is, don’t sweat it. You can tell if it is turned on simply by going to write > page. If the editor opens up with a row of buttons called “quicktags” across the top you are in luck: the visual rich editor is already disabled for you. Notice at the right-hand end of this row of quicktag buttons one is labeled “IImage Browser.” This is the button that you will use to insert images.

First. make or get the images that you want to use on your local machine. Make sure that they are no wider than 500 pixels and 72 dpi. You can do this in photoshop or some other image editor. Your images should be saved as jpgs. Then:

To upload and insert an image:

1. In the editing window, place your cursor where you would like the image to appear.
2. Click on the IImage Browser button in the Quicktags menu.
3. A window pops up. This window allows you to browse through the existing directories (folders) and to make new ones. You will see that the file structure is currently set up like this:

   [root] />about | academic-units | admissions | events | news | people | sidebar | special-programs |

4. Note: [root] is the main directory on the web server where images will be stored.

   about | academic-units | admissions | events | news | people | sidebar | special-programs | are all subdirectories in the root. New directories should be created as needed, and should follow the submenu hierarchy established in the menu structure. This will allow for lots of people that are working together to make sense out of where images might be stored.

5. Before uploading an image, make sure that you are in the correct directory in which you would like to upload the image. For example, if you are adding an image to your blog post, click on “people” and then click on “faculty”. If a directory does not yet exist for you, click on the “Create Dir” button while in the “faculty” section of the directory structure. Add a name for the directory. Remember: your directory should not have any spaces in its name (use dashes “-“ instead) and should all be lower case. So it should look something like jane-doe. Note that when you create a new directory it DOES NOT automatically open that new directory; to upload an image to the new directory you must first click on the name of that directory in the directory structure menu.

   When you are ready to post, your directory path should look something like:
   [root] /people/faculty/your name/>

6. When you are finally in the directory you want, click on the “Upload” button. If you know the path to the image you want, enter it in the area provided. Otherwise browse for it.
7. When you have the image that you want, click on the new “upload” button that is right next to the “browse” button (this is different than the first upload button).
8. If all went well, you should now see the image in the window.
9. Now click on the image. You get options to include the image in a post.
10. Click on the radio button that best describes what you would like to do. This will most often be one of the following:

    Image: Aligned Left

    Image: Aligned right

    Image: Aligned Center

    Each of these options does what it says: It will either insert the image justified left, justified right, or centered. It also styles the image so that the text will flow neatly around it if it is justified right or left. Images that are no wider than about 250~275 pixels wide seem to work well justified; if you want an image larger it should be centered and again no wider than 500 pixels.

11. Enter a description. This is just the text that will show up if a viewer hovers over the image with their pointer for a few seconds. Leave it blank if you wish.
12. Click on “get the code”
13. You can see the html code that will be used to insert the image in your post/page. If you know html, you may include in this code any other special formatting that you wish.
14. Finally click on “add it to the post!”
15. Close the window – it stays open just in case you want to add more images.
16. You should now see your post edit window with the appropriate code added. Note - you don’t yet see the image, only the code that will insert the image when you publish the post.
17. When you publish the post, your image should show up appropriately formatted.

One Macintosh caveat: Safari has a non standards-compliant implementation of javascript. It does not understand where to insert the code in your post, so no matter where your cursor is it inserts the code at the end of the post. All you have to do is select all of the code that is added and copy/paste it to wherever you would like the image to wind up in the text. If you do not already, you really should consider switching over to the Firefox browser, no matter what kind of computer you use.

Note in the window that you may also delete files from the server via this interface.

A couple of other caveats:

1. Images should not be wider than 500 pixels wide, or they will crowd over onto the right hand menu (the horizontal rule under the post name is 500px wide, so 500px images centered line up cleanly with the text).
2. You cannot delete directories once you create them via this interface nor can you upload multiple files via this interface. To do either of those you must use ftp from any location (using wsftp. cuteftp. DreamWeaver, etc) If you want to have this level of access let me know and we will get you set up. Remember though, that if there are any files or directories that are currently in use by any pages/posts in WordPress and you delete/rename/move them their links will be broken and will need to be fixed. SO, when you make new directories, really BE SURE that the hierarchy that you use is good and appropriate.

Happy Posting!

Now there is a new way to interface with the dynamic content on the auSoA website: Podcasting. Podcasts are audio broadcasts created and stored digitally on the Internet. Instead of being broadcast over the airwaves once and lost, like with traditional radio, podcasts are created to be stored and played at the user’s convenience. Think of them sort of as radio shows waiting to be downloaded.

Each new post on the auSoA website has its own podcast created when it is saved; so it is instantly ready for download. To listen to a specific podcast, simply click on the podcast link in the head or footer of the post, depending on which view you are in. You probably already have a media player on your computer that can play the podcast, but if you don’t you should be prompted to download one.

You can also grab the most recent 15 auSoA podcasts at one time by using a “Media Aggregator” in conjunction with podcasts. A media aggregator is simply an application that allows you to select and download audio files from a wide variety of sources on the Internet to your desktop, much like an RSS aggregator . In fact, the podcast link for auSoA actually uses an RSS feed that has links to the appropriate mp3 files. A good aggregator will allow you schedule these downloads when it is convenient and also automatically copy them to your iPod or other mp3 player for playback later. There are many good media aggregators out there; I highly recommend “Juice” (formerly iPodder). It works on Windows, Macintosh and Unix, and is completely free and open-source developed.

To subscribe to the auSoA podcast link, simply go to the home page, scroll down in the sidebar to the “Feeds” section and click on the “Podcast” link. This will open a new window from which you can copy and paste the URI from the address bar into your media aggregator. Now you can automatically download the most recent auSoA posts to your mp3 player, set it to play at 7am in the morning using its alarm feature, and awake to the soothing wisdom of school head Bruce Lindsey. Neat!

Interested in creating your own podcasts? A great place to start is with this step-by-step tutorial at engadget.com

The idea behind RSS (Real Simple Syndication) Feeds is very clever: instead of all of the changes to a site being pushed out to you, you (or rather your automated agent) can instead go to the site and get only what you want. Better yet, you can go to multiple sites and get only the pieces and parts that you want from each and reassemble the content into a personalized stream of information. This is called aggregating, and to do it all you need is a site with robust rss feeds and a good news aggregator. The auSoA Website has provided you with the RSS feeds, now all you need is to find and install a good aggregator. Sounds easy, right? well I can tell you after the past couple of days of experimenting, it is not! There are just too many choices out there, all offering slightly different services. I will try to break down a couple of options though that I think are worth trying out.

1. View all of your subscriptions directly in your web browser.
   This is the most straight forward of all the methods listed here. While there are a lot of ways to accomplish this in most modern browsers, perhaps the easiest (and slickest) is with the FireFox browser. FireFox can auto detect most feeds, and provide a shortcut for subscribing. whenever FireFox auto-detects a feed you will see this symbol: in the address bar of the page or in the bottom right-hand corner of the page (depending on the version of FireFox you are using).

   You can add the feed(s) by clicking the orange icon and subscribing to one. If there is more then one RSS feed, Firefox shows a list from which you can pick one.

   To get a choice of where to add the Live Bookmark; most like to add it to the Bookmarks Tool bar Folder, normally shown under the navigation tool bar. This allows you to have a quick peek at recent events with just one mouse click.

   If you know a site has an RSS feed, but the orange icon doesn’t show up, you can add the feed manually. Select “New Live Bookmark…” in the Bookmarks Manager and enter the URL and other information of the feed.

2. Using a local application to aggregate feeds.
   This is the most robust way to view rss feeds from a variety of online sources, not just auSoA. First, you have to choose an rss reader application, and there are almost too many from which to choose! Some are free, while others require a small fee to purchase. each one offers a little different palette of options and services, so it is best to try several out. here is a list of some of the most popular News Readers, but feel free to Google around find others.

   Please leave comments here if you have questions or comments about these or any other readers.

Free RSS Aggregators For the PC:
Mozilla Thunderbird
Omea Reader
Awasu Personal Reader
SharpReader
RSS Bandit

Paid RSS Aggregators for the PC:
Newsgator Business & Outlook Edition
Newzcrawler
FeedDemon

RSS Aggregators for the Mac:
Mozilla Thunderbird
Shrook
Pulp Fiction
NetNewsWire (scroll down to the bottom of the page for a free “lite” version)
NewsFire
PixelNews