Note:  These instructions are best followed by opening this article in a separate browser window or tab.  Then you can refer to it, step by step, as you create your article. Updated 7/19/2008

To create an article:

1. Click on "Create content"
2. Choose "Article" as content type
3. Choose your article's topic(s) from the Topics box. Below the topics box are instructions for uploading images (essentially the same instructions as below).
4. Compose your piece in the online editor box.  It works like any modern Word processor.  If your piece is already composed in a word processor program such as MS Word or OpenOffice Writer, you will want to PASTE it in.  If pasting from Word or OpenOffice, best results will be obtained by choosing the "paste as plain text" button.  (Hover the mouse over the buttons to see each' button's name.)
5. When your article is ready, choose "preview" rather than "submit."  That allows you to see how it will appear when published.  If the teaser (abbreviated version of the article as it appears on the front page) is too short, you can specify exactly where the teaser ends using the "Drupal break" editor button in the editor.

To add an image to an article:

1. Click with your mouse where you want the image to be.  I suggest the beginning of the piece, so it shows in the article's "teaser."
2. Click on the "Insert/Edit image" button.  You see the "Image properties" dialog box.
3. Click "Browse Server"
4. In the popup window that appears, click on "Browse..." and choose the image file on your computer.
5. Back in the popup again, click "Upload file." The file then appears in the list  above.
6. Click the "add" link in the "Operations" column.  (At this point you can also resize your image, but I won't cover that here.
7. This takes you back to the "Image properties" dialog, with your image file selected.  Press TAB to preview the image.
8. The image preview shows the image alignment as it will appear when the image is inserted in your article.  Choose the image alignment from the "Align" option (I suggest "right").  This puts the image on the right side with text flowing around it. 

   Note that as you change the alignment, the image preview shows how the image and text will appear on the page.

Alternative way to upload images

If you are unable to insert your image into your article using the above instructions, or if you are too busy or too computer-challenged to  try, you can EMAIIL your images to the server.  But please do not email them to me.  Email them, as attachments, to a special email address for this purpose: tosimages at theoservice.org (spam prevention: replace "at" with "@" and remove spaces).  You will need to put the password 'tosupload1' somewhere in the subject of your email.  This uploads the images to a special directory that the administrator can access to add your photo(s) to your story.

For the Confused

If you are unable to use the editor to compose and post your article, then just email it to me (the site administrator), and I'll post if for you.  If you  have image files for your article, please email them following the instructions in the section above titled "Alternate Way to Upload Images."