Submissions

This page gives some guidance on how and what to submit to the DOGS mailing list and so the webmaster for inclusion on the website. To simplify the rhetoric, ``I'' and ``me'' refer to the webmaster. ``You'' refers to... well, you, the submitter.

General

Please avoid attachments, especially Microsoft Word and Excel attachments. They generally cause me extra work and provide no useful additional information. (One exception is spreadsheets for routes, but see below.)

Contributions from: Members    Non-Members

From Members

Mailing List

Just send email to dogs@d-o-g-s.org. Avoid sending attachments; absolutely avoid sending big attachments. Not everyone has a high-speed Internet connection.

Information about New Events

Please send the information as plain text to newevent@d-o-g-s.org. (Please click on that link to pop up an email window with all the prompts in it.) Consult existing calendar listings for typical information. These items are essential: These items are desirable:

Photos and Writeups following Rides

Send write-ups and photos to webmaster@d-o-g-s.org. Write-ups should be plain text (no Microsoft Word documents, please). Preferred format for photos is JPEG. If you reduce the size to 800x600 (or 600x800 for portrait), which is what I use on the website anyway, you'll save me a little work and save us both the bandwidth. Please do not rename photos; keep the camera-assigned names. The sequence numbers help me know the correct order. Feel free, though, to send comments to describe them.

When you send photos, please do so as email attachments. Although I can handle arbitrary size messages, your ISP might restrict how large a message you send. Best bet is to send 4-5 photos at a time, so the messages don't get too big.

If you're sending ride route sheets, the preferred form is Adobe PDF. Second best is Postscript. I can deal with Microsoft Excel files, but badly: the result might look different from what you started with. (I don't have a copy of Excel for Windows, so my conversion to PDF will be imperfect.)

Unless you have a recent vintage Macintosh or a copy of Adobe Acrobat Professional, you probably can't create a PDF file easily. But you could produce a Postscript file. Here's how (approximately; exact details probably change depending on your version of Windows):

  1. Install the "Generic Postscript Printer" printer driver, which you can find at http://www.adobe.com/support/downloads/detail.jsp?ftpID=1500. It works for Windows versions except Vista.
  2. In Excel, in the print dialog:
    1. Choose "Generic Postscript Printer" from the list of printers.
    2. Choose "Print to File"
    3. Click "Print"
    4. Excel will ask you to choose a filename to save to. Do so.
  3. Send me the file that results from the above.

Photos and Writeups for events not listed in the Events Calendar

Unless the event was previously posted on the DOGS website, I am unlikely to post write-ups or photos about it. Exceptions may be made if several DOGS teams partcipated.

From Non-Members

Mailing List

You cannot send email to the list. You can only reach the membership through me. And DOGS members appreciate the fact that I'm a tough gatekeeper.

Information about New Events

I will post non-member events on the DOGS website at my discretion. I will consider unfavorably any notice I receive in the form of an attachment or HTML page, so save the effort and just give me the information I need, in plain text. (See the list above of information I require from members for their listings.)

I will post events that I deem of high interest in the Events Calendar. Events that I deem of possible interest I will list in DOGS Droppings. In both cases, I must receive a website URL for the event. No URL, no posting. That's because I almost never send notice of such events to the DOGS members via the mailing list, and members have to be able to find all relevant information somewhere other than the DOGS website.

webmaster@d-o-g-s.org
Last modified: 23 April 2008