Thumbnail interface

A powerful yet easy interface: You only need to attach stuff to an email. If you can do that you may not want to read ALL this.
At it's simplest: KISS!
Users and use: See it used in anger to email dozens of pictures, letters home into a department, or to create story pages, with a news item pointing to the story.
One example: Three pictures with the switch [h100]
Adding switches: Make a post-it note of some of your favourite, regular sets of switches. I have :-)
Width or height: Images can be creatively and differently sized.
Rows: Simple set of switches for equal rows, some up to 10 pictures wide.
More complex layouts: Examples and illustrations
No captions:Everybody should know the [nc] switch!
Departments: Put them directly into the correct department. Get an email of all of them, to pin to your wall. Or just write a post-it of a few of your favs and stick it to your monitor.
News items, stories or discussion group items: It doesn't have to go to the front page, it could be less important, or you want to open discussions.
Story and news item: Kill two birds with one email, automatically, all your content goes to a set page in your site structure—a story, and makes a note on the front page in a news item.
Front or pending: Hang back or urgent? Confident or nervous?
Rename and resize: Save time selecting and renaming your images before you send.
Later editing: We've made this much easier now, you just want to modify qualifiers to the end of the shortcuts.
Editing with shortcut appends: Change one character and a thumb flips, left, right, same sized and with captions.
Video: Probably every format.
Zipped folders: Using Hotmail or other web email system? Want some huge time savers?
Documents: Word, Excel, Powerpoint, PDFs, RTFs. Soon others too. Any suggestions?
Different documents sizes: Word docs, small, medium, big and huge!
Setting prefs: Who's allowed to send emails, and how they are allowed.
Upgrades: Any suggestions?

A powerful yet easy interface  

At it's simplest  

The simplest is to just send an email. You don't need to attach any pictures. If you've set the preferences for it to appear directly, automatically on the front page, this is send and forget land! Sure, you'll get a confirmation email that it has been posts, or merely created, if your Prefs are set this way. {See more on setting the Prefs below).

Merely attach your images or video to an email, add the subject line, and the body and mail it off to your secret email address. You really don't need to get any more complex than that.

The subject line becomes the title of the news item (or story or discussion group message see below), the body of the email becomes the body of the news item.

The file names of the pictures will become the caption of the thumbnail (the grey italicised text with a border line to the bottom and left). If you don't want captions, if your file names are of the order DCS1234 merely add [nc] for no captions to the subject line of your email. See more on this below.

If you don't add any size information to the images or the subject line the image(s) will default to 200 pixels wide, and you'll get two such thumbnails per line.

Video always ends up the same size, there is nothing apart from the caption that you can play with.

Tips

How many?

Sending just one picture with a bunch of text will give you a nicely wrapped around news item, and will illustrate a news item handsomely. You can send as many as will fit into 5Mb. Any more and the whole email will be rejected. So, it's best, if you want to send 30-40 in one go to make sure they're 640 = 480 pixels. (See more on resizing before you send below.)

Rotation

You can rotate later, merely by hitting the edit link under each thumb, but it pays to rotate before you send.

Editing

Once the emailed news item arrives at your site, you can edit it, as normal. However, as a lot of HTML style sheet information is added try to ensure that edits are mere text and spelling edits, that is try and get it correct in the email, before you send it. (See below for more on editing.)

Particularly, try and get the order correct in the email. The first picture you add will be the first picture in your news item. It is difficult to move and edit out pictures once they've arrived at your site. Though it's fairly easy if you're familiar with basic HTML. It maybe easier merely to admit your mistake and resend a corrected email with the correct order and those pictures deleted.

Long file names

Make you image file names as long as possible. This will help your views with helpful captions, and later, many years later, will help you find those images in your search engine.

Caveats

Plain text

Your email needs to be plain text. Not HTML! So, if you're able to make text in the body of your email a different colour, or add coloured backgrounds, this won't work. The system will automatically reply with an email telling you that your email was HTML and you need to send plain text.

Types of pictures

We accept both CMYK and RGB JPEGs and GIFs. But we only find this out with the file names. If your system doesn't add .jpg to .jpg or .gif to the file name, it's probably not openable on your system as it is.

File names

You can't add reserved characters to your files names, ? / ! % : aren't allowed. If you need to use these, you'll need to edit the news item and add them in by hand.

Mega pixel cameras

Don't send huge pictures! They'll only get reduced in any case, but if you send several large, say 5 mega pixel, images, for one it will take a long time to send from your machine, and two it will clog up our machine. Actually, it will be rejected—we set a limit of around 5 MB for emails.

Allowed sender email addresses

By default, the preferences for 'Email to weblog' are set such that only certain email addresses are allowed to send. You can add to this, or, you could rest your preferences to allow anybody to post!

Obviously, you have to be careful here. You can set a secret password that's contained in the subject line to stop unauthorised posting.

Posting directly to the front page

This is how I do it. I like to post directly to the front page! Though all schools so far, want news items to hang in the pending news items page for final editing, especially, to edit out the signature file sent from accounts like Hotmail or Yahoo mail.

There's a new switch for deciding on posting directly to the front page or for definitely leaving in the pending. (See below.)

One example  

Ice Pictures

Here's an example of three pictures emailed into the site.

Not pictures of ice, but pictures made with an ice lens. There's more of them at the photographer's site. [Via MeFi]

Red Osier Dogwood

Georgia Strait

Oak St

In this case, I sent three thumbs, with the subject line of the email being:

[h100] Ice pictures.

The "h" means height and is set as 100 pixels. It's a nice way of ensuring there's a clean line of pictures, when there are portraits and and landscapes together.

The pictures were added in order as attachments and their file names were:

Red Osier Dogwood.jpg

Georgia Strait.jpg

Oak St.jpg

The email I sent to create the item below is in this thumbnail.

An email to blog ready to go

One picture and a bunch of text. Added the size I wanted the image to be, knowing that 475 pixels is is as wide as it will go. After that you'll lose some to the right. And I wanted some text to flow down the right edge.

I added the [[community]] department too, to the subject line.

HTML? Well, I know it well since I started writing it when it first came out! Yip! I was there before there were picture tags! It was all just text, back in the day.

I use a speell checker [sic] Called Spell Catcher Plus, I've recommended it many times. Go get it! It's got a shortcut editor. You type your shortcut and it expands it for you. Good for boiler-plating. Maybe for signature files. Auto correcting spelling. And... Writing HTML I type href and it expands to <a href = ""></a> ready for my links. I type bold and italic links as I write. Sometimes also add unordered list too. I've also set up templates on my mobile phone, for double line spaces and links for my blog.

But then I'm geeky like this.

Users and use  

Posting Word documents as letters home is a doddle, once I know your mail system. Walsall Wood's Stuart Cox and their secretary are taking to this.

While The Wonderful Sue Broadbent at Moorside Primary are posting video, Word documents and Powerpoint slide shows.

Even better is the art, exemplary children's art posted as a story by Rob Hancock in Glendale Infants.

Great stuff--the grand parents are very pleased with the updates from Jemma Dowell at Bodnant Infants.

All because of the CMS email interface.

Adding switches  

The power of the email interface is realised through a set of switches, usually applied to the subject line, though some, particularly the width & height and the no captions can be applied to the file name of individual images.

A switch has [square] braces looks like this:

[200] The rest of my subject line

The switches in single and double square braces are removed from your title of your news item.

One switch, has [[double braces]], this is for posting directly to a news item department (see below).

[[classes year two]] We go off to the park

Tips

Your own defaults

Once you've worked out a few of your favourite switches maybe you frequently post into a news dept with no captions and at a particular size, write them down somewhere, or in your email program make a template or sheet of stationary. Then, you'll have access to your default way of posting emails to your site. Of course you'll soon start editing these for variations, the more templates the merrier!

Caveats

[Spaces] [between] [switches]

Ensure that there are spaces between the square braces. Otherwise, we may not spot them, thus, they'd not be obeyed and will show in your title of your news item. Missing gaps also make it difficult for you to read too.

[[classes year two]][200] We go off to the park

There isn't a space between the two switches here, so all switches will fail, and you'll see them in your news item's title.

Width or height  

With this switch you can pick the size of the thumbnail, individually, by adding the switch to the file name or for all images, by adding it to the subject line. Of course, you can set a default in the subject line and have this over ridden by adding the switch to the subject line. This gives great power with minimum ease.

Examples

[100] My subject line

If this is your subject line, then all thumbnails will be 100 pixels wide (unless there are some that have their own switches).

[h90] My subject line

Such a subject line ensures all thumbnails are 90 pixels high. Which is good if you're mixing portrait format with landscape formats.

[450] My picture's file name.gif

Perhaps if used in conjunction with one of the subject lines above. This will result in just this image being 450 pixels wide. Good, perhaps if this one is a panorama.

My subject

Default of 200 pixels ending up as two thumbs per row.

My file name.jpg

Again, the default of 200 pixels.

Rows  

The default of 200 pixels, that is if you don't add anything to the file name nor the subject line, will always give you two 220 pixel thumbnails per line—that's all the room there is, per line.

But if you want rows of 3, 4 or 10 then you should use the switches in the table below in your subject line.

Symbol	No in row	Pixel widths	Notes
[xl]	1	450	Filling available width of column
[l]	2	200	Default size
[m]	3	110	Optimum for captions
[s]	4	60	Captions very narrow
[xs]	10	30	No captions with these tiny thumbs

Example

The example post illustrated with the funny faces is comprised of:

[xs] Staff drawings

This is the subject line, thus all images are set at 30 pixels, the very small size, which results in 10 images per line. However, we've over ridden this default with the files below...

Mrs Vernon - Headteacher.jpg

Mr Kay - School Administrator.jpg

2 in the top row with no size information in the file name, thus they're set as the default of 200 pixels

[m] Mrs McMurray - Nursery Teacher.jpg

[m] Mrs Ward - Nursery Nurse.jpg

[m] Mrs Williams - Reception Teacher.jpg

3 in a row.

[s] Mrs Davidson - Reception Teacher.jpg

[s] Miss Thomas - Reception Teacher.jpg

[s] Miss Dowell - Reception Nursery Nurse.jpg

[s] Mrs Ryder - Reception Nursery Nurse.jpg

4 in a row

Then, followiing, in the attachments are the other 20 drawings. No need to add any size information to these, and we've already stated in the subject that we want all images to be [xs].

Example

The example to the right, with the black thumbnails for clarity, comprises of:

Plain old subject line [nc]

with no size information, so it will default to 200 pix with two thumbnails per row. We did add nc so that there would be no captions.

4 x plain old file names

four images with no size switches in their files names.

[xl] another image.jpg

this one has the size information, which over rides the default (that we didn't even specify).

More complex layouts  

The height switch is something you'll learn to love. It gives great neatness to lines, especially when there's a mixture of portraits and landscapes.

All the more complex examples below are sent using exactly the same series of images, in the same order of landscape, portrait, portrait, portrait, landscape, portrait, portrait, portrait, portrait, portrait, landscape, landscape.

They look complex, but are a doddle to send. Typically you just add [h149] to your subject line. Here's one I just sent today to my own site—Two days up The Wrekin.

[h149] Two days up The Wrekin [[kids]]

With a height of 149 set in the subject line, all images are going to be the same height, which makes the lines look even and level, as there are portraits and landscapes.

[450] Gwendda won't keep still.jpg

Just one image had a switch to over ride the default in the subject line.

(Each one of the below examples, with the black thumbs, has the [nc] switch in their subject lines.)

The above has no size information in the subject of the email. Its subject line is, in fact, if you click the thumbnail, you'll see it: With no size information in the subject line [nc] You can see the gaps caused when one landscape is with one portrait on the same line. This is what we want to avoid! However, the editor can resize any image, merely hit clicking on the edit link under each thumbnail. See the 'Edit' link beneath each thumb? All thumbnails have these links. Editors click through decide which size width, to make theportraits the same height as the landscapes you'd have to resize to 110. As there isn't a radio button for this size, you'd have to pick 'multiple copies, in the thumbnail editor, then swap the shortcut. Which is the LONG way around.

The above, is sent with a subject starting with the word [h149].

The above subject line had [h100] in it. Above, set to [h75] (no Latin added after arrival) Set as [h30]

The result of the email snap shot above. [h149] in the subject line and that one large image [450] of my dog, over riding this default. Pretty simple for such a complex looking layout! The only trick you have to watch is the order in which they're added as attachements. Make sure there are pairs (evens) aboove the large (odd) image.

Tips

This is where having notes or templates with these esoteric height information already to go. The most useful IMHO to remember is [h149], this follows the default of a width of 200 for landscapes x 149 height, but reduces portraits to 110 x 149 pixels. Though it depends on your aspect ratio.

No captions  

The no caption idea came from Jemma up at Prestatyn. Who, doesn't like to name each image, and is happy with file names of the order DVC 12345, DVC 12346... Which can look quite ugly, and she used to jump to the news item and hand edit them out, leaving an empty grey lines. Now she adds [nc] to the subject line of her email and there are no captions, no border lines.

Add it to the subject or the file name. Anywhere in the file name or subject.

Examples

[200] My subject line [nc]

[200] The [nc] filename.jpg

Thus, when you bulk rename a selection of images (see below), they end up with file names of the order:

fileName

fileName (1)

fileName (2).

So now you can have:

fileName [nc]

fileName [nc] (1)

fileName [nc] (2).

Tips

If you're lazy, have lots of images to go into one news item and they're all the same, rather it would be hard to think up lots of different titles. Use the bulk renaming feature and rename to a very, very long name with the added [nc]. Years later, you'll be able to find these images easier in your search engine, as they'll have those descriptive titles.

Departments  

To decide which department you want the news item to appear in, add the exact department title anywhere in the subject line of your email surrounded by double square braces.

To get a list of all your departments and how they're spelt, send an email to your website's secret address with one of the subject lines below, they all work. (I added lots more variants because I couldn't remember the precise one.)

dept

dept list

depts

depts list

departments

departments list

department

department list

An email will be sent back to you, as in the illustration to the right.

Examples

[h30] Class Three on computers [nc] [[Subject DT]]

Every image will be 30 pixels high, there will be no captions and it will appear in the DT department

[[Notices Clubs]] [100] Golf practice on Thursday [nc]

Every image will be 100 pixels wide, no captions, and in the Clubs department

[NC] [[subject science]] Using our mini robots

Each image will be the default 200 pixels wide, there'll be no captions and it will appear in the Science department

[[Sports Netball]] We win againEmailed department list

Each picture will again be the default 200 pixels wide, and the news item will appear in the Netball department — there will be captions this time.

Caveats

[[Notices feetball]] We won our match today

Each will be the default of 200 pixels, there will be captions, but the news item will not be put into a news department — there is no department call feetball! Spelling mistakes mean that we can't find the correct department so we don't put it into any department. Though we do delete the text contained in the double barces.

News items, stories or discussion group items  

You can email into your discussion group or to a story (as well as the normal news items).

Want to create a new page? Perhaps you want to show students work, but didn't want it on the front page. Perhaps, there's some building work, or you want to create a history of your school... In all these cases, I'd always put them on the front page, but some schools don't like this and want them deeper inside.

Now, all you need do is send your email with the switch [story] in the subject line. (Later, you'll probably want to put the story in the site structure so it becomes part of the little green folders. Just edit the story and add the path to the yellow admin box.)

What if you want to use your discussion group more, want to email a message into the site specifically for discussion? Perhaps you want to use your site as an adjunct to a mailing list. (The bulletins feature is perfect for informing all that a new 'something' is on the site and ready for discussion.)

Just add the switch [dg] to the subject line.

Want all email into your site to go in as a story or discussion group message? There's a new preference on the Editors only: ==> Prefs ==> Email-to-weblog that allows the setting of the default position of all your emails.

Pick discussion group, and ALL emails will be places into your discussion group, same with stories. Leave it as it is for it to remain as news items.

If you want to override this setting, just add the switch to the subject line of your email.

[newsitem]

[story]

[dg]

Examples

[xl] The buzzing of the bees [[notices school trips]] [newsitem] [nc]

xl will make all images extra large, 450 pixels wide

notices school trips in double braces will insert the news item into the Notices School Trips department

newsitem will ensure this email will become a news item, if your Prefs are set to discussion group or story

nc is no captions.

[xs] The buzzing of the bees [story] [nc]

xs makes each attached image 30 pixels wide and 10 to a line

story makes the email into a standard story page

nc isn't needed as xs deletes all captions regardless.

Caveats

You needn't add anything to the subject line... It will always become a news item (if you've not changed the Prefs) and give you 200 wide thumbnails. You can always edit the captions and alter the sizes of the thumbnails later, as well as picking which department the news item ends up in.

Of course, you can see the edit link in these screen shots, I was logged in as editor when I shot them. Ordinary members and plain visitors, obviously, won't see these.

Story and news item  

The email two weblog interface is growing, again. Now, you can email into your discussion group or to a story (as well as the normal news items).

Want to create a new page? Perhaps you want to show students work, but didn't want it on the front page. Perhaps, there's some building work, or you want to create a history of your school... In all these cases, I'd always put them on the front page, but some schools don't like this and want them deeper inside.

Post them to a story page, with a link from a news item pointing to it. With this in mind I've created another set of switches!

New switches

You want to create a story and a news item pointing to the story at the same time. Add [newsstory], [news story] or [news item story] to your subject field. If the last attachment is a document of some sort the new story will be created in the /letters/ folder or category in your site structure (the little green folders). If the last item is a picture it will be created in /pictures/myTitleOfMyStory. If it's a video, /videos/myTitleofMyStory.

But, if you want it to go directly into a category that's different to the above three, or even a new category, then use the switch with three, yes three square braces. Such as [[[whatever]]] which will create your story in the directory /whatever/ and the page's name will be taken from the subject line of your email. Thus, /whatever/mySubjectLine

Examples

2007 Letters to Santa [newsstory]

newsstory means it will be posted as a story (page) as well as a news item on the front page

the story will be created in /letters/2007lettersToSanta as the last attachment (indeed all of them in this case) was a doc

[xs] Staff photos [news item story] [[Notices Admin Staff]] [[[staff]]]

xs makes each attached image 30 pixels wide and 10 to a line

news item story tells your website to place the email as a web page, a story in our speak, as well as a news item on the front page

Notices Admin Staff is the department (it has double square araces)

staff is the category or folder that the story (page) will appear in. Thus, the web address will be /staff/staffPhotos

The news item will appear on the front page and in the Admin Staff department.

[h149] 2008 June [news story] [pending] [[Subject Art]] [[[gallery]]]

h149 makes all the images have the same height, thus making neat lines of two, even though they're mixes of portrait and landscape

news item story tells your website to place the email as a web page, a story in our speak, as well as a news item

pending tells us to hold the news item in the pending area. There you can make the news item sound more interesting, then post to the front page

Subject Art is the department (it has double square braces)

gallery is the category orgreen folder that the story (page) will appear in. Thus, the web address will be /gallery/2008june

The news item, when it is posted to the front, will appear, as well in the art department

The text of the news item is a little prosaic. But it does the job. The title of the post, again is taken from the subject line of the email (as is the story's title and the page's file name, see above). The text will be something like:

A new picture has been posted.

All this means, that you should save a lot of time putting stuff into your site. A lot of time! Me? I still like putting everything into the front page. But, I hear off some that they don't want 75 pictures in one news item. So, sure, this is going to save them a lot of time.

Front or pending  

Normally, I set the Prefs for the email to weblog feature so that news items hang in pending. It's more comfortable to send an email, then see what it will look like and perhaps edit, before posting to the front page.

For me, I've been doing this for a long time, I like to post directly to the front page. This is especially useful when I'm far away from a computer and will be for several days. Posting from my mobile phone, up the proverbial mountain.

Consider the sports teacher returning from a victorious football match. The school trip to Bristol Zoo, at lunch time. These are good cases too for posting from a mobile, directly to the front. Parents can catch up with the trip, other pupils can learn the result of the match, even see pictures or video of the winning goal.

Still with the comfort of all posts going into the pending, now you can override that setting with the switches [front] and [pending].

For those that are timid and need the bulk to remain as going into the pending.over ride with [front] in the subject.

For those, like me, who sometimes want an item to hang in the pending, while the Prefs says post directly to the front page, we'll use [pending].

This is a good idea for Heads, who have little time to mess around. It was inspired by Bodnant Infants (again). Jemma the nursery nurse bulk uploads 30 pictures via email. Once sent she checks back to clean up and edit out her Hotmail sig file. While Helen, The Head, would like to post short snipets directly to the front. She doesn't normally send pictures. (Note: her LA sends a long sig file with her emails, and I edit it out here.)

Examples

PTA meeting tonight [[notices heads letters]] [front]

An urgent reminder meant for the front page.

PTA meeting next week [[notices heads letters]]

This will take its front or pending value from the Prefs setting. If left as I've set it for you, it will hang in the pending news items, till the Head finalises out the date and time, perhaps.

PTA meeting next week [[notices heads letters]] [pending]

Let's just make sure it hands in the pending.

Rename and resize  

Here's a trick I'm terribly excited about!!! If you email to weblog thingy then this is for you!!! I found it here: Rename and Shrink Photos in Bulk.

Bulk rename

Control A to select all your images, or just select the images you need.

Right click for a contextual menu item,

Rename

Rename, to 'Whatever,' and they'll all be called

Whatever (1)

Whatever (2)

Bulk resize and email

Select all, right click to pull up the contextual menu...

Send To ==> Mail Recipient

There'll be a dialogue box (see bottom), obviously check the

Make all my images smaller

if you've a lot to send in one email, and they're all large images.

Keep the original sizes

If your images are of a reasonable size and you're not sending too many in one go.

click the More options, select the large size 1024 x 768

Add your secret email address, and change the subject and the text of the email as per normal.

Done! Now that's really, really fast!!!

Editing with shortcut appends  

Merely add or change the end of your shortcut.

And then there was the right version of the caption too.

The full list is now:

* none. A plain old shortcut, no captions, no alignment, nothing.

* -l Aligns left, with no caption.

* -r Aligns right with no caption.

* -c Aligns left with a cation.

* -cr Aligns right with a caption.

* -plain. No thumbnail! Just the original you uploaded, this could be very big as it's same sized. This effectually duplicates the Editors only: Pictures function.

Later editing  

If you want to add more text, like in the black and white examples above, you need to click the view source and add the text to the lines <br clear="all>. These are the divider between rows. This is the only sensible place to add extra text.

(Later editing has been made much simpler now all the source code has been taken out.)

You'll probably only want to vary the shortcuts by changing the shortcut appends. Of course, you can edit the text of your news item too, that just goes unsaid.

Editing captions  

With emailed thumbnails, just hit the edit link to edit the caption. You can add anything into the description box, links, enbolden, italics, even other pictures, though it';s probably not a good idea to add pictures to your captions, but you never know.

Video  

The reason we built this was because far too many parents complained that YouTube videos (within a school site) could be clicked through, to a world of grown up stuff. Parents liked the innocence of a school's site and the links contained there in.

Method

Attach a video to an email, addressed to your blog's secret email address, the video's file name becomes a caption, the subject line of the email becomes the title of the news item, and the body of the email becomes the body of the news item.

The idea is to send the email and forget. Get your settings right, and spellings, and if you've set it to appear on your front page, it really is send and forget. Otherwise, it'll appear in your pending news items awaiting approval (and editing).

Caveats

You need to ensure that the email is plain text, not HTML. Though you can send HTML within your plain text email, see the email, to the right as an example.

You need to ensure that the address you're posting from, that is, your own email address is in the allowed list. Go to Editors Only: ==> Prefs ==> Mail to weblog ==> Authorised Senders.

Format	width	height	file size	minutes	seconds
3gp	176	144	292Kb		32
mp4	352	288	10Mb	2	30
mp4	352	288	4Mb	1	10
mp4	352	288	½Mb		7

Try to keep your videos below 10 MB, I think quickies are better than feature lengths anyway, I'm sure your readers (viewers) will agree too. A good size is 2-3 MB for an MP4 or 30-40 seconds. You may have issues with your upstream ISP with emailing very large files.

Here's some more file sizes verses playing lengths...

Style

Add one video, and perhaps a couple of hundred words in the body of the email. This way the text wraps nicely around the video. The wrapping will occur on anything over 50 words.

Try to make sure your caption (the video's file name) is long and descriptive. Thus, it'll form a helpful caption. That is, if you want a caption (add [nc] to the email's subject line, if you don't.)

Extras

You can add [nc] for no captions to the subject line of the video or to the file name of the video. Or/and add the department's name to the subject line, just as you can with images.

You can mix videos with pictures within the same email. Remember, the order you add images and/or videos will dictate the order they appear in the news item (it can be a pain to reorder them in the posted news item—so try to get it right first off).

Notes

We've added a progress bar to the embedded video, so you can see how much is yet to download, and how much has played and how much is still to be played. There's also a big white triangle in the middle of the video, which can be hit to play and pause. And we take a thumbnail which shows while the video is downloading, or buffering or standing unplayed. It's taken on the 10th second of the video.

To Do

I want to give you more control over the embedded video, particularly the embedded size. Some sizes should be automatically smaller, e.g. particularly 3gp which comes off mobile phones—these should be smaller, as the originals are smaller.

Captions or subtitles. These could include links, styled text... Could be particularly good for subtitles for foreign languages or muffled sound.

I may add playlist features, so you could, effectively create your own films from a collection of your videos, with thumbnails for each section/chapter.

Possibly, adding meta information: school's name, copyrights, authors.

Perhaps there should be a school logo on each video (though IMHO this covers up too much video real estate).

Documents  

Merely email in your Word doc, or in this case a rich text format (.rtf) and we'll do the rest.

Word document: Megan's dyslexia homework

As is usual there are some switches that are useful for you, certainly the [[department]] is one. I see Heads sending their letters to the [[notices Heads letters]] department.

The [front] or [pending] will also be useful for when you just want to post it to the front page and dash off home.

Or perhaps you don't want it on the front page. You want it to go into a normal web page, or as we say here, a story. Then, you'd use the [story] switch.

I like the captions under the flash document. But some wouldn't so the ever useful is the [nc] switch for no captions.

As you can see, one attachment is nicely formatted, with the text flowing around the flash document. I think it's always useful to add a bunch of text to your letters even if they are 'letters home,' and should stand up by themselves. IMHO I think it's a good idea to add a more personal note, perhaps about how the week has progressed, perhaps about the weather...

The flash document itself, should be self explanatory. There's a slider to enlarge, another button to 'size to fit,' another two to jump back and forward between the pages. One to print and one to open in another window. It's these two that are the most useful for the home reader.

The problem with uploading just the Word document is that some people don't have Word. With these flash documents, 99% of web surfers have the flash plug-in installed. So they can print!

So far the formats we support here are:

• Word documents (.doc)
• Excel spreadsheets (.xls)
• Powerpoint presentations (.ppt)
• Adobe portable document formats (.pdf)
• Rich text format (.rtf)
• Text (.txt)

Caveats

Keep your fonts simple! If you use a fancy, unusual font, we may not have it installed here. If you see some of your text replaced by weird characters, it's likely that this is the problem. Either tell us which font it is, and we'll install it, especially if you regularly use it, or change font to something more, more common.

The flash documents created are fairly large, in weight, in kilobytes. This means they slow down the user experience. Try to keep images to a minimum, pages as few as possible. Or...

Post them to a story page, with a link from a news item pointing to it. With this in mind I've created another set of switches! Don't worry, my next task is to make a cheat sheet, and I'll be mailing this out to each editor soon.

New switches

You want to create a story and a news item pointing to the story at the same time. Add [newsstory], [news story] or [news item story] to your subject field. If the last attachment is a document of some sort the new story will be created in the /letters/ folder or category in your site structure (the little green folders). If the last item is a picture it will be created in /pictures/myTitleOfMyStory. If it's a video, /videos/myTitleofMyStory.

But, if you want it to go directly into a category that's different to the above three, or even a new category, then use the switch with three, yes three square braces. Such as [[[whatever]]] which will create your story in the directory /whatever/ and the page's name will be taken from the subject line of your email. Thus, /whatever/mySubjectLine

The text of the news item is a little prosaic. But it does the job. The title of the post, again is taken from the subject line of the email (as is the story's title and the page's file name, see above). The text will be something like:

A new picture has been posted.

All this means, that you should save a lot of time putting stuff into your site. A lot of time! Me? I still like putting everything into the front page. But, I hear off some that they don't want 75 pictures in one news item. So, sure, this is going to save them a lot of time.

Different documents sizes  

Feedback is that you want more sizes.

Word document: Dinosaurs

Now there's three more: 200, 500, 800. All you need do is append the switch at the end of the shortcut.

Below is my original— the default, without any size information. Its actual size is 320 pixels wide. The (2) merely means that this is second shortcut.

"Word document: Dinosaurs (2)"

Appending the number to the end of the shortcut, give me a small one (200) and a largest one (500) for news items.

"Word document: Dinosaurs (2)-200"

"Word document: Dinosaurs (2)-500"

The 800 size will not fit into the central news items column! It's only for internal pages, stories. It's huge, nearly full sized.

"Word document: Dinosaurs (2)-800"

Here's the 500 pixel wide one, see how it takes the full width of the column? Personally, I prefer the 200 version. Readers get a gist from this and if they're interested they can pop it out, bigger. This 500 version is too wide, too high for my liking, but it's what you've asked for.

But! What I've also done is to take out the stylesheets gumph. This means that you can no longer edit the captions—you just can't see them. Now, it's much easier to move your document around, you just need the shortcut, as everything is hidden in that shortcut.

If you get your caption wrong, that is if you make a misspelling in your file name of the document, then you're screwed. You'll need to email it in again. Of course, many of you merely add the switch [nc] to the subject line or the file name anyway, for no captions.

Or delete the '-c' off the end of the shortcut, giving you a valid shortcut to the version without a caption.

Zipped folders  

Here's the how-to. Zip a bunch of files (jpegs, gifs, videos, Word docs, Excel sheets, Powerpoint slides, PDF documents. Email the zipped document to your site. Couldn't really be simpler.

A more verbose how-to...

Highlight all the files you want to zip.

Right click ==> Add to some folder.zip and email

This will open up an email with the folder zipped and attached. Of course, this depends on you having a more complex zipping package than the default Windows version (see below). In the screen grab to the left I have AlZip and WinRar installed. But I'm geeky like this. Most of you will have Jemma's set up—below.

In Jemma's case she need to just zip the folder and then attach to her Hotmail email. Which means, effectively, uploading the zipped folder. But, though it's a bigger file to upload (it's full if pictures—usually) it's just a one time operation, rather than attaching many, sometimes 30 pictures.

She would highlight the pictures, right click==> Send to ==> Compressed zip folder. Then she would need to attach this (it has a zip on a folder as its icon) to her Hotmail account.

Setting prefs  

Your preferences are likely all set for you. Out of the box we set them, as we think you'll want them. But perhaps you'll want to play with them yourself...

There are three places you need to set preferences, one is the email to weblog settings the other are notifications sent when something happens on your site, which you may want to alter anyway.

In most cases the preferences are self explanatory, they even have linked pop ups to more help text.

Editors only: ==> Prefs ==> Email to weblog

Enable the Mail-to-Weblog feature?

Obviously you want the enable the feature. It will check every 15 minutes or so to see if there's any new mail.

Post news items to the home page?

If you want news items to hang in the pending news items, you need to uncheck this

Where do you want the emails to go?

By default you want them to go as news items—probably, sure you can over ride this for each individual email you send.

How should Manila generate titles for new news items?

Definitely, you'll want the subject line to be the title of the news item or story, or discussion group message. Though options are:

Use the date/time

Use the first sentence of the email

Don't generate a title

Account information:

You don't want to mess with this stuff!

Secret subject:

This is away of letting anybody post to your website. It maybe an idea to switch it temporally, if you have a class each with an email address.

How should Manila verify the secret subject?

If you're only allowing authorised senders, this isn't necessary.

Only post messages from authorized senders?

Highly likely that you don't want the world and his spammer to post to your front page. So, I'd suggest that only the people listed by their email addresses are allowed to post.

Post messages from these email addresses:

Editors only: ==> Prefs ==> Editorial ==> Email Notification:

This is site wide, not just for email to weblog! As a default we've set all these as yes! But if you switch them off, and you email in a discussion group message, you won't get a confirmation emailed back.

Do you want notification sent when a new story or picture is posted?

Yes, if ever you email in stories.

Do you want notification sent when a story or picture is changed?

Do you want notification sent when a new comment is posted?

Do you want notification sent when a new discussion group message is posted?

Yes, if you ever email in discussion group messages.

Do you want notification sent when a discussion group message is changed?

Send notification from:

This is the main managing editor's email address usually.

Send notification to:

Certainly you want all your authorised email list duplicated in here, so they can get a confirmation that a news item, story or discussion group item has arrived.

Editors only: ==> Prefs ==> News Items ==> Email Notification:

Do you want notification sent when a News Item is created?

Highly likey you will! I certainly like to know when an email has arrived.

Nice to have if there's lots of editors, lots of children creating news items, the old fashioned way.

Do you want notification sent when a News Item is edited?

I'm not so bothered about these. But in a school it's useful to have a record.

Do you want notification sent when a News Item is released?

Again, useful as record. But you may want them switched off, if there's too many emails coming your way.

When children release an item it means they think it ready for the front page.

Do you want notification sent when a News Item is posted to the home page?

On one site that has little activity, I've just set this one to yes. It's enough.

Upgrades