Contribute

Initial Setup

Notice about SFTP

We've switched from FTP to SFTP. To change your existing Contribute settings, follow the following steps.

Go to Contribute-->My Connections from the menu.
Select the site to update (if you have more than one site.)
Click the Edit button at the top.
You will then be in the connection wizard.
Hit continue to get to the connection info screen.
Choose Secure FTP (SFTP) from the dropdown menu.
Click continue through the rest of the screens.

Create a connection

To begin working on your website, you must connect to it. After launching the program, you can create a connection by clicking on the “Create a Connection” link. This link is always available so that you can make multiple connections.

Contribute will take you through a wizard where you will need to enter the following information:

The url of your website. Ex. Computing’s url is http://www.brynmawr.edu/computing. You can browse to the website by clicking the browse button.
Connection type: Here, we use Secure FTP. Once
SFTP is selected, you’ll need to fill out the following:

SFTP server name: ada.brynmawr.edu
Your username and password (e-mail)

The location of your website on the server. Most websites have the following pattern: /web/www_pages/dept_name. Replace dept_name with your department's name. Computing’s location is /web/www_pages/computing. You may also use the choose button to find the correct folder on the web.
Your full name and e-mail address. This is particularly useful for those who share editing responsibility.
If the wizard doesn’t ask for role information, under the edit menu, choose My Connections, highlight the site and click the Administer button and answer yes to the question about administering the site.
Before editing pages, it’s a good idea to set up rollbacks to restore a page to its previous version if you make a mistake. Choose EditàAdminister websitesàChoose the site. A window will pop up. From the left-hand column, select rollbacks and then click the “enable rollbacks” checkbox.

Editing a page

Once you’ve entered the connection information, the home page, or index page, of the site displays. To choose a different page to edit, either click around in the site like you would in a browser to find the page, or select the choose button to find the file.

To edit a page, simply click the Edit page button. At the top of the page you will see a new menu.

Here’s what each button does:

· Publish—publishes the page to the web.

· Send for Review—if enabled, would send the page to be reviewed by someone else. (advanced feature)

· Save for later—allows you to save the document without publishing it. You can see drafts on the left side of the main window.

· Cancel—if you decide you don’t like what you’ve done, cancels all edits.

· Link—use to create a link to a web page, a file or e-mail address

· Image—use to insert an image

· Table—use to insert a table

· Page properties—use to change page properties like background colors, etc. Use carefully!

Links

Creating links is so easy in Contribute:

Highlight the text or picture that you want to link from.
Choose the link button. You have several options here:

Drafts or recent pages are pages that you’ve worked with in Contribute
Create new page—choose if you haven’t created the page you want to link to yet.
Browse to web page—allows you to browse to the web page you want to link to
E-mail address—allows you to insert an e-mail address
File on my computer—allows you to link to Word or pdf files.

Choosing any of these options brings up a window where you can change your mind and choose a different option.
If you link to a file that’s not already on the server, contribute automatically uploads it for you. No need to remember if you’ve uploaded all the right files.

Images

You can insert images and edit them in Contribute.

Choose the insert image icon.
To modify the image, right-click on it and then choose your option.

Image properties—changes aspects of the image as it is displayed on the web page
Edit image—gives you the ability to resize, crop, rotate, sharpen, and adjust the brightness and contrast.
Edit image in external application—allows you to edit the image in Photoshop or another application. To set these up, choose EditàPreferencesàFile editors
Align—align left, right, center, etc.
You may also may the image a link from here.
All these options are available as icons on the top menu.