Culture is made of stories, whether they are the stories of an entire people or the stories of a family’s holiday traditions. Everyone is welcome to contribute to TOTA. Whether you want to share a recipe, historic documents, a memory or anything else, our creation tools make it easy!

To get started, click on the Create link in the sidebar, then select Add an Article.  This will take you to the Add/Edit Article page and our text editor. You can type your content directly into the editor or copy and paste it from the editor you’re most comfortable with. The editor will expand as necessary, so if you have a long article, don’t worry about the size of the text box when you begin.  It will all work out just fine.

Toolbar Overview

There’s a toolbar at the top of the text box with the text editing tools you’re already probably familiar with.  It’s responsive, so the selection of tools will change as you make changes in the text box.

If you don’t see the tool you want, click into the text box or highlight some text.

The “Heading” and “Sub-Heading” tools are handy for longer articles with sections.  The section heading above (“Toolbar Overview”) is a heading; a sub-heading will be somewhat smaller but still larger than regular text, like the text (“Lists”) below.  

Lists

The next items in the toolbar are for making lists, with either bullets or numbers identifying each list item.  Place your cursor where you want the list to begin, click either tool depending on which style of list you want, and continue typing.  If you have already typed the text, you can highlight it and then click the appropriate button.  Once you are in list mode, you’ll get a new bullet or number when you press the enter key.  If you want nested lists, click the list button in the toolbar a second time.  From a nested list, use the backspace to get out to the parent list. Likewise, if you are done with the listed items, a backspace will remove the extra bullet and return you to regular text editing mode.  (Check out the video tutorial for a visual explanation.)

Quote Tool

The next tool can be used to visually identify quoted text, something that’s particularly useful in more academic writing.  To use it, enter in the quoted text, select it, and click the quote tool (the icon looks like quotation marks).  This will change the color of the text and indent it slightly so that it’s clear that it’s quoted.  Like this:

"Don't bend; don't water it down; don't try to make it logical; don't edit your own soul according to the fashion. Rather, follow your most intense obsessions mercilessly."  (Franz Kafka)

 

Ephemeral Buttons

There are a couple buttons that come and go from the toolbar depending on what you’re doing.  When you are in list or quote mode, there will be an “Exit mode” button, which can be used to get you out of whatever mode you are in.  It looks like this:

That little arrow pointing to the left is the undo button.  When it’s pointing to the right, it’s the redo button, which is handy in case you undo something accidentally.

If you highlight some text, the link tool will appear in the toolbar.  It looks like this:

Use this tool if you’d like to include a link to a webpage in your article.  Highlight the text you want to make a link, click the link button in the toolbar, and then enter the URL of the linked page in the field provided.

Add an Image 

The final button in the toolbar is the Add an Image button, which you can use to add an image to your article.  Place your cursor where you want the image to appear in the body of the article, then click the Add an Image button.  This will open our image picker tool, from which you can choose an image from those you have already uploaded to TOTA or from our image database.  

You can limit the available images to just those you’ve uploaded by using the Your Images checkbox.  Or choose from images already in TOTA’s database; use the filter fields to narrow the options based on culture, topic, or keyword.  Both sections of the image picker can scroll (even if you don’t see a scroll bar) so there may be more filters and/or more images than initially display. 

You can upload an image directly from the image picker by using the Upload Image button in the title bar. 

In the Upload Images window, choose Browse... (it’s called Choose Files… on some computers) to access files on your computer.  Select the image you want to upload and then use the orange Upload Images button to add them to your images at TOTA.

When you’ve found the perfect image, click on it to select it.

Then click on the Add Image button to add the image to your article.  Repeat these steps if you want to add more images to your article.

Finishing Up

When your article is finished, don’t forget to save it! The Save button is at the top of the page, above the column of metadata fields.

All articles default to a privacy status of “Public”.  This means that your article will be visible to other TOTA members and could appear in searches on TOTA.  If you would rather keep your article “Private”, click on the Visibility item in the metadata to open the pane, then uncheck the Public checkbox.

If the Public checkbox is unchecked, and if the article is not assigned to a group, the article will be private to you; no one else will be able to see it.  However, if the article is assigned to a group, members of that group will still be able to see the article, even if the Public checkbox is unchecked.  This allows members of a family group, for instance, to share stories and memories with each other without revealing them to the entire TOTA community.

The other metadata fields are important, especially if you want your article to show up in search results on TOTA.  For more information about metadata, please see the metadata tutorial article.

The length of this article possibly makes the writing process seem complicated, but it’s really very straightforward.  However, if you run into any difficulties, please don’t hesitate to contact Support.

TOTA Tutorials

Find out how to start a group, comment on a discussion, manage your articles and images, and more! If you would like to get in touch, we would be happy to hear from you. There's a "Help" link in the sidebar on the right side of all TOTA pages. Or you can use the "Contact Support" link, also in the sidebar.

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