CR Bridge

Two forms are provided for uploading content for the bridge website.  These forms are generally intended for documents that are unsuitable for the WordPress media library.  Posts typically might connect to these documents via links.

For Hand Records:  Click the Hands Uploader link in the black footer area of the web pages to open the form. The reason for having a dedicated uploader for hands is that the “/hands” folder is being kept clean so that the customers can see all past hand records in date order without distractions.  Hand records are stored in “cedarrapidsbridge/content/hands/”.  Hand records should be named as “yymmdd.htm” or else as “yymmdd.pdf”, where yymmdd is the date of play in numeric form.   The suffixes must be in lower case.  Suffix “htm” is for an ordinary html file and “pdf” is for a pdf file.  For example, “170612.htm” would correspond to June 12, 2017 and an html file.

There are two reasons for this strictness in naming hands files.  First, the script that displays hands on the Results page uses the name to find the correct file for each date displayed.  Second, the naming scheme assists in sorting the files by date when the hands folder is viewed.  The Results page refreshes itself every 10 minutes and then re-checks for the existence of uploaded hand-record files.  If you have just uploaded a hand record, and you do not see a corresponding link on the results webpage, just refresh the page.

For other documents: Click the Documents Uploader link in the black footer area of the web pages to open the form.  This permits you to upload, for example, a pdf file or a txt file that you want to link to in a post.  Documents are stored in “cedarrapidsbridge/content/docs/”.  The underlying purpose of document uploads is to support presenting the documents in their original form.  In most cases the documents are not suited for inclusion within a normal post or page.

For uploading images, you ordinarily should prefer to use the built-in WordPress media capabilities so that WordPress will provide thumbnails and standard sizes.  Using the Documents Uploader for images suggests a special reason, such as a special size.

The two forms perform identically except for where they put files.  Here is what the Documents Uploader form looks like:

The steps you must follow are:

• Click “Choose File” and locate and select the document you wish to upload from your PC.
• Enter the password  (check your email archives).
• If you are intentionally replacing a file someone has uploaded before, click the radar button for “Enable Over-Write.”  Otherwise skip this step.
• Click the “Upload File” button.

Scrutinize the messages you receive on the closing page to determine if your upload was successful.  The uploader handles a number of popular file types but by no means all.  The closing page offers a link to the folder where the documents reside, as well as a link to the document you uploaded.  If the uploader rejects a file type you need to upload, contact the admin or use FTP.

You can upload a document name with spaces in it; but the spaces are changed to underlines in the uploaded copy; e.g. “good hand.htm” is changed to “good_hand.htm”.  The closing page warns you that this has been done.  File names are case-sensitive.

When you replace a document, it is not deleted.  It is renamed so that it can still be found.  This is to protect content from mistakes.  If you are serious about deletions, you can haul out Filezilla or contact the admin. Feel free to upload test documents with silly names, and we will clean up later.

Two videos describe the process of updating the bridge calendar

• Part 1 is general instruction on getting a Google account and on mechanics of updating the calendar.
• Part 2 is the specific example of updating the month of September for evening clubs.

Notes:

☠When you change one occurrence of a repeating series, you should NOT uncheck the “repeating” property before clicking SAVE.  If you do, you’ll mess up the series.😩

☠After you save a modified single occurrence from a series, that instance no longer has the “repeating” property, and it is safe to duplicate it.  You do NOT, however, want to duplicate a repeating event.

The video below shows the creation of a plain-text post, with the example of a monthly masterpoints report.  (note 1)

• A smaller-sized-file version is http://www.cedarrapidsbridge.com/content/uploads/posting_mps_50h.mp4 .
• A slightly-higher-quality version is http://www.cedarrapidsbridge.com/content/uploads/posting_mps.mp4 .

A second video, in two parts, shows the creation of a more complex post, titled “Two for One.”  Subjects addressed include the following:

• Creating, reviewing and editing a post.
• Creating a table
• Correcting a system issue with table formats
• Incorporating an image (note 4)
• Use of special symbols for suits

The video is in two parts totaling about 90 Mbytes.  They are about 5 minutes each.  A program called Flashback-Plus was used to record one video and  Microsoft’s free Moviemaker was used to split it in half.

• Part One
• Part Two (notes 2 and 3)

Notes:

(1) The masterpoints video states that “.txt” files open in Notepad; that actually could vary.  You can right-click to select the application you want to use.  To amplify the comment about “.dat” files, the meaning of such files is determined by the program using or producing the data.  This is qualitatively different from, for example, a “.jpg” file, which is always supposed to be a picture and generally follows certain public standards. Renaming the file (in the video) may have been a bit prissy, since Notepad will cheerfully open a “*.dat” file used to contain text.

(2) The Part Two video mentions alt key codes: You can google for “card suit symbols using alt key codes.”  One site is found here.   You have to use the numeric keyboard; the regular number keys won’t work.  You are supposed to have the keyboard NumLock set; some Windows applications won’t enforce that, but some do.  In WordPress, you may get some unexpected behaviors unless you set NumLock.  When you use alt key codes you press Alt, then press and release the number while holding down Alt; then release Alt.  The alt key codes for card suits are  3 for ♥, 4 for ♦,5 for ♣,6 for ♠.

(3) The Part Two video should have mentioned the full-screen option of the WordPress editor.  Hover over the button below the “Tools” menu , the fourth button from the right, to identirfy the full-screen toggle.

(4) A later post, “Managing Image Collections” provides additional detail about incorporating images.  That post mentions a new button, “clear-float,” that was added to the editor for use with images.  The clear-float button actually issues an html “break” instruction, which starts a new line.  In addition to its uses with positioning text after images, this button lets you start a new line without starting a new paragraph.  (By contrast, the “enter” keyboard key starts a new paragraph, which involves a line space.)

Here is a video about how to change announcements on the bridge website. It is about 10Mbytes.

http://www.cedarrapidsbridge.com/content/uploads/Editing_Announcements.mp4