| { Main | Search | Countries | Information | Member Page } | |
How to use HTML in visit narratives |
When you submit a confluence visit, your narrative is presented on the confluence webpage using HTML (HyperText Markup Language), the language used to create webpages. The information below should help you properly create your visit narrative for submission to our website.
The two most common things you need to know about are how to indicate paragraphs, and how to create links. You do not need to know much about HTML, and we do not support the full range of HTML tags in visit narratives.
Do not write your narrative in programs such as Microsoft Word and then use the program's 'save as HTML' option. Always save your narrative as plain text. It's best to write your narrative first, and save it, then you can "cut & paste" the text into the webpage form when you enter your visit submission.
Please make sure to break your narrative up into paragraphs. At a minimum, leave a blank line between each paragraph. When the regional coordinator reviews your visit submission, one of their tasks is to review the narrative, and that includes using HTML to indicate each paragraph.
If you use the correct HTML tags to indicate your paragraphs it would make life easier for the regional coordinators, and would help ensure that your narrative ends up on the confluence webpage looking as you intended. Start every paragraph with the opening paragraph tag <p> and end every paragraph with the closing paragraph tag </p>.
For example, if in your narrative you had the following:
<p>We set out from home, and drove east on the highway, and then turned off onto the Old Mine gravel road. After driving up this road 5 kilometers, we had to park our car, due to a washout.</p> <p>We started hiking at 10:00AM, along the old gravel road. It was almost noon by the time we came to the end of the road, so we decided to stop there and have lunch, and also to explore the remnants of the old mining equipment.</p>
it would be displayed on the confluence page as:
We set out from home, and drove east on the highway, and then turned off onto the Old Mine gravel road. After driving up this road 5 kilometers, we had to park our car, due to a washout.
We started hiking at 10:00AM, along the old gravel road. It was almost noon by the time we came to the end of the road, so we decided to stop there and have lunch, and also to explore the remnants of the old mining equipment.
If you want to include a link to a non-Degree Confluence Project webpage in your narrative, open the page in your web browser, and then 'cut and paste' the complete URL into your narrative. The URL forms part of the anchor tag, which looks like this: <a href="https://your.url.here">The page title</a>
For example, if in your narrative you had the following:
<a href="https://www.w3schools.com/html/default.asp">HTML Tutorial</a>
it would be displayed on the confluence page as:
If you are including a link to a page that is within the Degree Confluence Project website, you still use the anchor tag, but you leave out the name of the website. Perhaps you want to link to another confluence visit - maybe a prior visit of your own, or maybe a visit by someone else to the confluence you visited.
For example, if in your narrative you wanted to provide a link to visit #3 to 54°N 123°W, you could use the following:
<a href="confluence.php?lat=54&lon=-123&visit=3">54°N 123°W visit #3</a>
and it would be displayed on the confluence page as:
The reason to specify the visit number is to make sure the visit you want is the one displayed. When a visit number is not specified, we have a method to decide which visit is displayed, as explained in FAQ #7.3.
If you want to have links in your narrative that refer to pictures for that visit, you have to know the "visitid" number. When you are writing your narrative, which you do before starting the visit submission process, you cannot know what the "visitid" will be, however you can still use links to pictures, by using a 'placeholder' value. For example, if in your narrative you wanted to provide a link to picture #5 you would use the following:
<a href="photo.php?visitid=XXXX&pic=5">picture #5</a>
and it would be displayed on the confluence page as:
Once you have actually started entering your visit submission on our website, you can go to your Member page, and if you use the "Preview" link to view your visit submission, it's "visitid" number is displayed in the URL. You can then edit your narrative to replace the 'placeholder' with the 'visitid' number.