the newts.net

The definitive ‘HOW TO’ guide for beginners!

1. Register

Register by clicking ‘register’ at the top of the right hand menu bar under ‘Members’. Or click here.

Pick a Log In name (Your name on the site), a password and finally enter your email address.

And if all’s well you should get the Registration Complete screen.

2. Once registered you can Log In.

Do this by clicking ‘login’ at the bottom of the registration complete form or in future use ‘login’ in the menu bar on the right or click here. Enter your login name and password.
Go to ‘My Profile’ and fill in your details. You can also change your password here.
(You can’t post messages until I up your permission level to do so.)

3. Posting messages.

Once your permissions have been upped to allow you to post, when you log in you will now see this screen:

A) Write the title of your story here.
B) Write your story here.
C) Choose a category that your story falls in to. You can pick more than one category.
D) Click ‘Publish’ and your story will be uploaded to the newts.net.
E) Click ‘View Site’ to return to the newts where your story will appear at the top of the page!
That is it for basic posting of a story. Simple hey! For more advanced stuff keep reading:

4. Text decoration.

You can add decoration to your text using the ‘Quicktags’ (F). Text decoration includes:
Bold / Italic / Strikethrough.

To make a word bold highlight it using left click+hold on the left mouse button and click str in the Quicktags.
To make a word appear in italics highlight it using left click+hold on the left mouse button and click em in the Quicktags.
To strikethrough a word highlight it using left click+hold on the left mouse button and click del in the Quicktags.

5. Other text effects include: ul & b-quote.

Highlighting text and clicking ul will give you an enlarged, bold header like this…

ul Header.

and highlighting text and clicking b-quote will give you text in a block quote like this…

This is text written in a Block Quote.
A little like Bullet points, it’s useful
for highlighting IMPORTANT text.

6. Linking to other websites.

You can post a link to other sites using ‘link’ in the quick tags. Highlight in the usual way, the text that you want to be the link within your story. You can use one word as the link or an entire phrase or paragraph, that’s up to you. Once highlighted, click ‘link’ in the Quicktags and you will see:

Type in the address of what you want to link to in the box like…

And when you’re done click ‘ok’

So for instance, if I was writing about something I saw on the website b3ta and I wanted to leave a link to it I could just highlight the word b3ta, or I could highlight this whole phrase, or I could just say click here.
Which ever one you click, you’ll end up at the same place… b3ta. Just remember to come back and read the rest of the how to guide to see how to post a picture!

[TIP] —> When you find a site you want to link to, right click it in the address bar and copy the address. You can right click and paste the address in the box when asked to using the link button. This is especially handy for long adresses and it also prevents misspellings and typos.

7. Posting a Picture.

To post a picture, like posting a link, you need to know the address of the picture. To find this out you right click the pic and go to properties. This will then tell you the address (URL) of the pic. Like link addresses it makes good sense to highlight and copy this address. You’re then ready to paste it when asked for it.

Once you’ve got the address of the pic copied, put the cursor where you want the pic to appear and click img (image). You should see this…

Paste or type the adress of the image in the box… the image I want to post is at http://www.thenewts.net/images/blog/howto/lost.jpg so…

and click ‘ok’. You will then get another box appear like this one:

Type a description of your image in this box… My description is:

That’s it for the images! You can continue to write your story under the pictures and then once you’ve finished click ‘Publish’ then ‘View site’ as you would normally and you should then see your post including the pictures on the site.

Oh and the picture in the demo…

And the story behind the pic is here.

IMPORTANT POINTS TO NOTE WITH PICTURES…

Pictures take time to load up. The bigger and better quality a picture is the longer it will take to load. This may not be too much of a problem for users with broadband (500k +) but can be infuriating for dial up users who have to wait ages for pictures to load before they can use the website. We’ve all done it ourselves… site takes for ever to load… close it and try somewhere else.
So keep picture sizes as small as possible. I aim for icons and .gif’s to be 15k or lower. jpg’s and any other larger pics posted on the site need to be not much more than 30k. If you have pictures bigger than this either crop them and slim their file size down using a photo editing program, or post a link to them instead of the picture itself.

If you have a picture that isn’t already on a website, I can host it for you and upload it to the newts.net where you can link to it in the blog.

Another way round the BIG picture problem is to make a smaller picture or ‘icon’ out of your big pic, then have the icon link to the bigger pic. That way you only have to post the small pic on the site, but clicking it will take viewers to the bigger pic…

This is the (6k) Icon that when clicked…

…Takes you to the (227k) bigger picture.