ArtsforLA.org Site Introduction 

Our Drupal site is a powerful tool for social knitting, advocacy and collaborative authoring.  This is a basic tutorial, but you are always welcome to email camille@artsforla.org for help/tips.

You will probably be able to participate in forum discussions and join groups without this tutorial, but if you’d like to be an active site participant with the ability to blog, contribute to collaborative documents, create original content, communicate with group members and share content on FaceBook or Digg, please read on.  Arts for LA’s participatory 2.0 site gives you the opportunity to reach as few or as many people as desired, addressing multiple topics/audiences with one blog or forum post.  We ask that you do not use our site to publicize events (please use ExperienceLA.org).  We do have a forum for arts job postings and one for community opportunities.

Users can navigate the site in two ways: from the homepage, you can click directly on Forums, News, Take Action, etc., jumping into a certain section of the site.  You can also use the labels across the top of the home page to see content relevant to your position as:

    * Parents

    * Patrons

    * Artists

    * Arts Administrators

    * Educators

    * Institutions

    * Students

Within those sections, you will see a feed of News, Blogs, Forums, etc. that have been tagged as applicable to you.

The two web sections currently open for community participation are Groups and Forums.  If you don’t see the Group or Forum that best fits your interests, email us and we will create one for you.  Basically, Forums are online discussion centers organized by topic, while Groups are composed of users who share similar interests or are working together on a project or team.  It’s fair to say that Forums are built around topics and Groups are built around people.  We recommend that you register and create a username/password for the website; this is free and allows you access to more places.

Forums: Any registered user may post to a forum.  Forums can be “nested,” so users can either discuss the overall issue or enter into more focused discussions (i.e., “Elementary Music” could be created as a separate forum within the “Arts Education” forum).  Users can create these sub-forums within a larger topic.

From the Forums page (or from within a Group), click the Forum topic of interest.  Some forums were created by invite-only groups, and therefore you may not be allowed access until you join that Group.  Once inside a forum, click on a topic to see the discussion and add your comments.  There may be sub topics within a forum that you’d like to view and comment on, or you may want to create your own forum topic. 

• When posting to a forum or group, you will see the option “enable rich text” below the text box.  Clicking this turns on the rich text WYSIWYG editor (What You See Is What You Get), allowing you to change your font, post pictures and link to other web pages.  We recommend using the rich text editor unless you are very comfortable with HTML.

Groups: Joining a group allows a user to become an active, regular participant in specialized advocacy efforts.  Groups are useful tools for community organizing, disseminating information and creating materials as a team.  Use the navigation links on the right-hand side to add new content to a group.

Basic group functions include:

• Creating a Book to edit a document collaboratively
• Starting or joining a Forum to discuss a topic
• Creating a Blog entry to report on an issue or voice a long-format opinion (see discussion of Blogs below)
• Checking the Calendar for meetings and events
• Feeding information to FaceBook, Digg, etc.

From the Groups section, request membership to a group in order to join it.  If you’ve already joined a group, you can see your personal list of groups in the “My Groups” tab.  Some groups are private and do not show up on the public list; these are by invitation only.  Once you have joined a group, click on its name to go to its main page.  From here, scroll down to see the group’s activity in chronological order, with the latest addition to the group on top.  On the right-hand column is a list of actions and ways to contribute to your group.  You may create a blog post, create a new forum topic, view the group calendar, look at all of the group’s forums and invite friends to join.  Content posted to a group will be visible to all group members, who will be notified via email and provided with a link to the new content.

1. Within a Group, click “Create Blog Entry” or “Create Forum Topic.”  Within a Forum, choose “Post New Forum Topic.” 

2. Title your blog/forum.  For blogs, choose which section it should appear in and which audience(s) would find it relevant.  You can choose more than one audience by holding down “Control.” If your blog is about an arts education issue, it might be appropriate to choose Arts Education as the section and Educators, Parents, School Districts and Students as the audience.  

3.  For both the Teaser (blogs only) and the Body, it’s a good idea to click “enable rich text” right away (see box above).

4. Write your content. 

5. Choose your settings:

     a. Input Format: Leave the format as Full HTML.

     b. Groups: Select the Group(s) relevant to your forum or blog post.  Choose whether or not you want your blog/forum to be public (we would prefer content to be public, unless a confidential issue related to your group).

     c. Comments: Read/Write is usually appropriate.

     d. Captcha: Annoying but necessary to prevent spam.

6. Preview and submit it.

Calendars allow group members to view events relevant to a specific group.  Additions to the calendar will also show up on the Group’s main page.  Right now, only group managers have the capacity to add events to a group.

Books allow group members to work collaboratively on a document or other language.  They’re a lot like Wikis: you can edit a current page or add a “child page” with a related topic or additional information.   Books are labeled “Book Page” in the list of posts on the Group’s home page.  Click to look at a Book, and choose to “edit” if you have something to add.  Some books may have many “pages;” you’ll be able to jump to the first or last page of a book by scrolling to the bottom of the page and using the links provided.  Clicking “Up” returns you to the “Parent” page: as in, you would click Up from a book page about Carrots to return to a book page about Vegetables.  All group members are able to edit books within that group.  Click on the Edit tab from any book page to change parts of its text.  If you want to add a new section to any book, scroll to the bottom and click “Add Child Page.”

Blogs: ArtsforLA.org has the capacity to host blogs.  Please email Camille@artsforla.org if you are interested in starting a regular blog related to LA arts advocacy.  All registered users can write blogs within a Group by clicking “Create Blog Entry.” 

When to Blog?  A blog is an ongoing series of articles (a “web log”).  According to Wikipedia, a blog is a “web site usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video… Many blogs provide commentary or news on a particular subject; others function as more personal online diaries.”

Blogs are not for:

• Posting events

• Generating ongoing discussions, especially back-and-forth discussions (use a Forum)

• Publicity (use Experiencela.org)

Sharing Content: Most sections of ArtsforLA.org feature a row of small, colorful symbols below almost every piece of content.  Clicking on these symbols allows you post that blog, forum, new item or group to a variety of social networking and news archiving sites, including FaceBook and Digg.

RSS Feeds: Arts for LA offers separate RSS feeds for each forum, blog, audience group, web section and story type, as well as a general Front Page feed.  Subscribe to one or more at http://www.artsforla.org/sitemap to keep up with content additions. 

Arts for LA’s site uses Drupal, an open source content management system.