Technical Notes for Contributors

This page contains basic instructions for contributing to The New Everyday. The form we use for contributions is somewhat complicated, and a work in progress. If you have any questions or tips for content contributors, let us know by commenting on this page (you need to be logged in to comment). If you’re looking for more information on who we are and what we’re seeking in contributions, visit the About page.

Contribute a Piece to the Site

Once you have created a MediaCommons account and are sure that your cluster curator has registered you as an authorized contributor to your cluster, you can post your piece. Click Contribute at the top right corner of the page. Then, click Contribute a New Piece.

Create your contribution using the form. First step: enter or paste your title into the title field (required). Try to keep your title under 60 characters. You can always provide a subhead or subtitle in the optional tagline field below the title field.

In the document body box of the form, enter the body of your piece. Below are some basic formatting instructions. If you run into technical problems, let us know and we’ll help you. 

  • By default, the editor is in “rich text” mode. If you know and prefer to work directly with HTML, click the “source” button to toggle the mode.
  • Paste in content from Microsoft Word by using the paste from Word button (top row, third group from left). Most of your formatting will carry over. Some might not, so always double check your piece.
  • Hyperlinks
    • If you pasted from Word, your hyperlinks should have carried over automatically
    • To add a hyperlink manually, highlight the text you’d like to make clickable, and then click the link icon in the toolbar (middle row, third group from left). A window will pop up. Enter the URL of the site you want to link to in the URL field.
  • Single line breaks
    • By default, your carriage returns will create new paragraphs. To override this, and create a non-paragraph line break, hold down the Shift key while you hit Enter.
  • You can apply styles to your text, paragraphs, and images by selecting from the style menu (second row, second from left).
  • Footnotes: You can add footnotes to your text:
    • In the place where you want to insert the footnote, type the text for your footnote inside a [fn] tag. See the example below:
    • Example: As Samuel Coleridge would write in his notebooks, “Without drawing I feel myself but half invested in language.” [fn]Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Notebooks of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, ed. Kathleen Coburn (London: Routledge, 1957), vol. 1, §1554[/fn]
    • Footnotes are automatically numbered. However, you can assign numbers manually by using an optional 'value' attribute: e.g., [fn value="5"]Text of your 5th footnote[/fn]. 

If you want to include images in your piece, use the attached images section of the form on the right-hand side. Adding images is somewhat complicated. If you don’t feel that you can do this yourself, we can help you.

  • Upload the image files from your desktop as you would for an email attachment: click browse to locate the appropriate file on your computer, give the image a title that is brief and descriptive, and click attach. Wait until a thumbnail copy of the image appears before proceeding.
  • You can upload as many images as you want; you are not obligated to use all of your uploaded images in your published piece.
  • You can upload JPEG, GIF, or PNG images. If you have high-resolution TIFF or JPEG2000 masters, use Photoshop or another program to create a JPEG derivative. If you have questions about this, contact us. 

inserting images: Once you’ve uploaded the files, you can insert any of the images from the attached images panel.

  • If you are using Firefox, you can resize an image after inserting it.
  • You can align your image to the left, right or center in the same way that you’d align text in the body of your document: use the styles menu in the editor.
  • You can manage the properties of an inserted image by right-clicking it and selecting image properties from the menu.
  • Give your image a caption by selecting the caption style from the styles menu.

On the right-hand side of the form, check any clusters to which you are submitting the piece. You’ll only be able to check a cluster if you’ve already been invited to contribute to it by the Cluster Curator. You don't have to select a cluster — all pieces contributed to the site will appear in searches and in lists such as all/contributions. Your contributions will also appear on your MediaCommons user page.

Also on the right-hand side, enter keywords or short phrases — tags — that describe your piece. Separate entries with a comma.

Upload an image to use as your piece's representative image; this will appear as a thumbnail on the cluster's entry page. The image will be automatically resized for you.

Select a language in the dropdown (English or Spanish supported at this time). Or leave the setting to "Language neutral."

On the right-hand side, enter the names of any additional authors in the additional authors section. Additional authors will need to have or create MediaCommons accounts before you can add them.

When you are finished with your piece, and you are ready to share it with the public, set the publication status to published and click save. If the piece isn't ready and you want to work on it later, just click save. Once you have published your piece, it will be available on the site through the search. If you’re submitting a piece to a specific cluster, make sure the Cluster Curator has created the cluster. Otherwise, your piece won’t show up in that cluster until they create it.

Publication Status: 
Published