Adding an Imperial to the AutoBiography portal is easy – the second time you do it! Here are some hints and instructions to make the first time easier:
Getting Started
Each Car and each Story is an individual article or post which can be separately viewed. Each post is owned by an Author. Groups of posts are shown as thumbnails – each thumbnail includes a Featured Image, a Title, the author, and a brief extract of the full post.
Collections of thumbnails are shown for all posts and for posts by member/author. Posts can be linked to individually, so you can point people directly to your car or story.
To create a post go to the main portal page select either Add Car or Add Member Story.
Account
Everyone who contributes content to AutoBiography has an account. This is used to control who can contribute to the website and make sure it isn’t overrun with spam.
When you create your first post you will be asked for your name and your email address. After you submit your first post you will receive an email asking you to verify the account. Once you reply to this email and verify your account the AutoBiography WebMonsters will review and publish your post.
The next time you want to enter a car or a story you will need to login. You do this by clicking on “Member Login” in the top menu bar and providing your Username or Email and password. You will then be able to enter and submit cars and stories and will not be asked for name or email as part of the post.
Trying to create an account using an existing Username or Email address will fail – once an account is created you must login to it to use it.
Entering a Car
From the main portal page select Add Car. Provide the information requested. A good starting point would be to read some of the other car entries first to get an idea of what other people are doing for each requested piece of information.
You will be required to provide a Featured Image. This is a picture that is included in the thumbnails and at the top of your post. Click on the Featured Image button and select a picture from your local computer to upload. Have patience – it make take several seconds to upload. The maximum file size for pictures is 2MB – larger images will need to be cropped or downsized. Note that smartphones and digital cameras tend to produce pictures larger than 2MB, so you can’t load these pictures directly into your post. We are exploring ways to allow larger pictures but do not currently have a solution.
Entering content is much like using Microsoft Word – you can use plain text for everything or you can take advantage of fancy formatting. This is entirely up to you, just use whatever you are comfortable with.
You can provide as much or as little content as you want. If you wish, you can just do a title and a Featured Image. Of course we would like to see a bit more than that!
To add pictures, position the text cursor where you want the picture to go and select the Insert Photo button at the top of the text entry box. This will take you to a dialog where you select a picture to upload. Note the 2MB file size limit for pictures.
You can add as many photos as you want – we want to see everything on your Imperial!
When you have finished entering your car you will see two options: Imperial Mailing List and Imperial Registry.
You will be asked if you want to be added to the Imperial Mailing List. This is an email list used for discussions by members of the Online Imperial Club. The options are No (default), Yes, and I’m Already Subscribed.
The Imperial Registry is a registry of all known Imperials maintained by the Online Imperial Club. The choices are No (default), Yes, and Already in Imperial Registry.
Adding your car to the Imperial Registry is completely voluntary. If you want to add your car, select Yes and provide the information requested.
At the bottom of the page select the Create Car button. This will save all of the information you have entered and place it in a Pending Review queue for the WebMonsters. Once a WebMonster has reviewed and approved your post it will be published on the portal.
Entering a Car based on an Existing Imperial Club Entry
You may have a car already entered in the Imperials by Year section of the Online Imperial Club website that you wish to add to the AutoBiography portal, perhaps to update or add to.
The easiest way to do this is by a copy and paste of the existing information. This works, but has one drawback: all the pictures will come over as thumbnails and will not actually be included in the AutoBiography portal. This may have issues in the future if links change.
The recommended process is:
- Open two browser windows: one on the Imperial Club website and one on the AutoBiography portal.
- Open your car on the Imperial Club website.
- Select and copy text and paste it into the Portal.
- For each picture in the original article:
- Click on the picture. This will open a high resolution image in a new browser tab.
- Select the new browser tab.
- Position the mouse cursor over the high resolution image, click the right mouse button, select Save Image As, and save it to your local computer.
- If the high resolution is too large you may need to resize it. As a general guideline, pictures for AutoBiography should be roughly 1200×1200 pixels or smaller. Maximum file size for pictures is 2MB.
- Go to the browser tab for the AutoBiography portal. Position your text cursor to the place in the article where you want the picture.
- Click on the Insert Photo button just above the text entry box, select the picture you just downloaded to your computer, and upload it.
- Repeat the process for all pictures.
At this point you have a copy of the original article in AutoBiography. Edit it, add more details, add pictures, and in general update it with all the things you missed the first time!
Entering a Story
Entering a Story is much like entering a Car. The difference is that you only need a Title, a Featured Image, and the Story itself. None of the car specific information is needed for stories.