Welcome cochrane.org editors!! This is your resource page for publishing to the site and other related online projects.

• Newsmanager - to manage your entity newsfeeds or contribute new to cochrane.org
• Macromedia Contribute - Software used by cochrane.org editors and users of the Entity Website Builder system
• Web style guide - guidelines for all editors of Cochrane online materials

1. NewsManager

NewsManager is our homegrown (thanks Greg Saunders!) web-based news & events submission/publication system that is the basis of cochrane.org's calendars, workshops, opportunities, and news pages, as well as the source of content for news snippets for other sites.

Who:
Articles may be submitted through this system at any time by anyone in The Cochrane Collaboration.

Articles are then reviewed and published by the editors of cochrane.org (includes some of you), as well as managers of specific channels (e.g., local centre administrators for their local language news channel, etc.). The Cochrane Web Team manages cochrane.org publishers access priviledges, and your entity administrator manages web publishing rights for your own entity news channels.

How:
Submitters and publishers can access the system with an ordinary web browser; login at http://news.cochrane.org. Fill out the article submission form and submit it. Voilà! The current publishers are notified automatically when articles come into the system, and can then review, copy-edit, choose appropriate publication channels, set publish and archive dates, etc.

Where it’s seen:
Most current channels (such as "Current news at The Cochrane Collaboration" or "Cochrane workshops in the UK and Ireland") are displayed on pags of cochrane.org. Some (such as "Deutsches Cochrane Zentrum Nachrichten" are used only on other web sites. You can view all the contents of our current channels at: www.cochrane.org/news/newsman_livedata.htm. Any of the channels can be freely used on other websites by inserting "code snippets" into those sites. The articles are then dynamically drawn from the system's database when the pages are viewed. The code snippets can be seen at: www.cochrane.org/entitysites.

Help:
Support is available via phone or e-mail by the Cochrane Web Team: www.cochrane.org/docs/aboutsite.htm.

2. Macromedia Contribute

Contribute is commercial client-side software that lets you browse to any page on cochrane.org over which you have editorial rights, and then edit that page.

Who:
Currently about 20 contributors have received "connection keys" that allow them to access cochrane.org or their own entity's site using Contribute. With this key, they can edit and publish pages to these site(s). Drafts may also be sent to other editors (even non-contributors) for review before publishing. If you're not sure which pages you are allowed to edit, please contact Dave Booker (booker@cochrane.de), Manager of Website Development, or Chris Mavergames (mavergames@cochrane.de), Assistant Manager of Website Developoment, for assistance.

Installing:
For security purposes, installation instructions including Contribute "keys" and passwords are only sent via email and are not posted here. If you need to re-download the software or have lost your connection key, please contact the Cochrane Webteam for assistance at web@cochrane.org.

Help:
Support is currently via phone or e-mail by the Cochrane Web Team: www.cochrane.org/docs/aboutsite.htm.

The system is quite simple to use, with good help and tutorials from the menus, but we would like to build good Cochrane-specific help documents, too. Please help with suggestions!

One tip: to upload newsletters and other .pdf and .doc files, first browse to any .htm file in the folder that will contain them and add links to the relevant (new) files' locations on your own computer. Then publish the .htm file and viola! the linked .pdf s or .doc s will be placed in the same folder on the site. That's all there is to it. Also enjoy very easy importing of data from MSWord docs directly into .html pages - works like a dream (please use this feature).

Getting started:
To start with, please create and play with files in the /tests/ folder (to which most of you have access). Use that "Creat new page" or "Choose..." button to find it.

Happy editing and let us know (at web@cochrane.org) if you have any questions.

Web style guide

These are guidelines to help us use consistent "branding" on our pages. The guide is at: www.cochrane.org/docs/webstyle.htm. As an editor, you are expected to follow what is written there.

Reminders:

• Filenames: Please only use lowercase characters, no spaces, and no punctuation or other special characters except "_" and "." Please also specify the ".htm" suffix for web pages, rather than ".html" - this is our convention.
• Re-naming files: Please don't attempt to re-name files once you have created them. Ask a member of the Web Team to do this.

Comments, corrections on this page to: web@cochrane.org