Efficient Authoring Methods

It is important for authors to use efficient methods to produce new content. Experience has shown that by following a certain sequence of methods, authors can improve their production rate quite dramatically.

• Create all the new children of a parent page at the same time. Start the serial page creation sequence by going to the content View of the parent page and select to create a new Encyclopedia Page using the drop down menu in the upper right hand corner. Give the page a title,go to the bottom of the Edit Encyclopedia Page window and enter the author attribution (enter fir first and middle initials and your last name, eg. H. H. Mills). Select the "Save and Create A New Page" action button. The first child page will be saved and then a new child page edit window opens up. Repeat this process until all the children have been created.
• Go to the View mode of the parent to see that all the children have indeed been saved and appear in the navigation system both at the left of your parent encyclopedia page as well as in the box at the bottom.
• Edit each child and add the content in the Body text box either by writing original content or by copying and pasting from a Microsoft Word or similar document. Find the description sentence that is most informative about the content of the page and best describes what this page contains. It is best to use a very informative factual sentence found in the child that actually gives the reader information about the child content. Then select "Save and View" to review your work.
• Find the Encyclopedia Identification Number (EID) at the bottom of the View mode for each child page and make a note of it on an offline piece of paper. Knowing the EID number of the parent page and the child pages improves efficiency later on.
• Add citation links to the page where needed. Highlight the citations, one at a time, type CTRL-Shift R and the citation dialog box appears.
• Add figures where needed. Place the cursor where the figure is to be positioned (you will be able to move it around later for final positioning), type CTRL-Shift P and the image dialog box appears. Note that you will need to have the image already created in some graphics program and you will need to follow the style guide for creating images for the encyclopedia network.
• Add tables where needed. Place the cursor where the figure is to be positioned (you will be able to move it around later for final positioning), type CTRL-ShiftC and thetabledialog box appears. Note that you will need to have thetable already created in somewordprocessing or spreadsheetprogram and you will need to follow the style guide for creatingtables for the encyclopedia network.
• Review your child pages for natural cross-reference links. Type CTRL-Shift J and the linking dialog box appears. At the bottom is a place to enter the EID of the page that you want to link to. Here is where you can make good use of the EID numbers because they make linking very much more efficient.
• If your child will have children of its own, then the structure of the content will need to be structured as an organizational page. Writing organizational pages is as much an art as a science. The hypertext encyclopedia network editors will be glad to help you write the first couple.