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User Guide

Creating your home page

Creating New Journal Entries

Attaching Images to Your Journal Entries

Editing Journal Entries

Deleting Journal Entries

Managing Your Subscribers List

Managing Your Location Map

Creating Your Home Page

One of the first things you'll want to do with your new travel journal is create yourself an inviting home page for your readers. You can do this from the admin section of the site and follow the link to "Update Home Page Text". This will take you to a simple update screen allowing you to enter the text you would like to appear on your home page. It is possible to include HTML tags in your home page text but unless you are comfortable with HTML then we advise that you just enter standard text.

Creating New Journal Entries

The heart of you travel journal is built from this section of the site. You will find a link in your admin page to "Add New Journal Entry", this will first take you to a page where you can enter all the textual narrative, title, Location, and date of your Journal Entry (note the date of your journal entry does not need to be the current day, you can do bulk updates to your journal and enter any date you like). Once you are finished entering the journal text, click submit to be taken to the second phase of the insert process.

Attaching Images To Your Journal Entries

You have now entered all the information you need for your journal entry and it will be immediately available on your site. A Travel Journal is not complete however without some lovely snaps to liven things up. So you are now taken to the image attachment page. You may attach as many images as you like to a journal entry and they will be neatly arranged at the bottom of your journal. Use the browse button next to the filename box to open a browse window, you then locate the image you wish to upload and click open. This populates the filename field with the location to the image. Now fill in the remaining details, giving your image a name and a short caption that will appear below the image on your journal.

If your image needs to be modified, for example you took the picture in portrait format, you can use the image manipulation options at the bottom of the form to modify the image after upload. You can rotate the image to its correct orientation or perform a flip (or mirror) image about the X or Y axis. To perform either of these functions simply select them using the radio buttons provided.

Editing Current Journal Entries

To edit a current journal entry you first need to be logged into your journal. Once you are logged in you simply navigate to the journal entry you wish to edit as you would normally. On the journal page you will see an extra link on the side of the page saying "edit this journal entry". Clicking on this link will take you to the edit page.

The edit page is laid out exactly as the new journal entry page but with all the details already filled in. All you need to do is make your changes in the relevant boxes and click the update button to make the changes live.

You can also modify, add and remove images from this page too. Each image in your journal is displayed along with the caption. You can update the caption or delete the image from the journal. To delete the image tick the delete box and click update. You will need to click the update button on each individual image you edit (the same is true for the image caption).

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Deleting Journal Entries

To delete a current journal entry you first need to be logged into your journal. Once you are logged in you simply navigate to the journal entry you wish to delete as you would normally. On the journal page you will see an extra link on the side of the page saying "edit this journal entry". Clicking on this link will take you to the edit page. From the edit page there will be a link on the left side of the page saying "delete this journal entry" If you click this link you will first be asked to confirm that you wish to delete the current entry. If you click 'yes' then the journal entry will be deleted.

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Managing Your Mailing List

Your mailing list can be accessed from the admin section of the site. When you open the screen you will be presented with a table containing all the subscribers in your list. This table will detail their name, email address and if the subscriber has activated their subscription. A reader must activate their subscription by following a link in the email sent to them upon joining the list, this is to maintain security and integrity of your subscribers list and ensures that only people who want your emails will receive them. If a subscriber does not activate their subscription within 7 days it is deemed that they do not want to be included and are removed from your list.

You may delete subscribers from your list be ticking the box next to their name and clicking the 'delete subscribers' button at the bottom of the table.

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Managing Your Location Map

There are two type of location maps provided by YourTravelJournal.com. Please follow the instructions relating to your version of the location map. To determin which location map your travel journal is using please match your map to the two pictures below.

Location Map 1

(Note: this is our old map. If you wish to upgrade to the new map please email support@yourtraveljournal.com)

Location Map 2

Location Map 1 - Instructions

After accessing your location map from the admin section of your site you will be presented with a map of the globe along with a form to add new locations to the map. There are three actions that you can perform using this form:

Add an item to the map

Zoom into the map

Zoom out of the map

Add an item to the map
To add an item to the map select the option from the "Action to take menu". Next fill in the date you arrived / will be arriving at the location. This date will be used to order the points you plot on the map. You can then enter an order number for this location, this is used to tell the system which location to add first in the event that two locations share the same date (1 is first then 2, 3.. etc.. the default is 99).

Next enter the caption you wish to appear on the location map page for this location. You then need to select what type of point you wish to plot on the map. Your choices are:

Stopping point - this is the standard point to plot which is a location you have visited.

Navigation point - this plots a point on the map but does not add a numbered location to the map. It is used to more accurately plot the route you are taking instead of just having direct point to point lines

Here I Am Flag - This is a flag to show your current location on the map and only appears once.

You may now link the point on the map to a location within your journal. Simply select the desired journal location from the drop down list. Visitors to your map will then have a direct link from your map to the related journal entries. After you have entered all the relevant information in the form you now must actually plot the point on the map. Move your mouse over the exact location you would like the point plotting and click on it with your left mouse button. The point will now be added to the map and the image will be updated (this may take a few seconds so please be patient).

Zoom In
To zoom into the map select "Zoom In" from the actions menu and then click on the globe at the point you wish to be the center of your zoom. The map will be re-drawn with the location you clicked forming the center of the new image.

Zoom Out
To zoom out of map select "Zoom Out" from the actions menu and then click on the globe at the point you wish to be the center of your zoom. The map will be re-drawn with the location you clicked forming the center of the new image.

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Location Map 2 - Instructions

This is our new and much improved location map and works a little differently to the old one. All locations on the map are plotted from the locations in your journal entries. There is no need to manually update this location map as points will be added automatically each time you add a new journal entry.

Adding a new point to the map

To add a new point to the map you need to create a new journal entry from the admin menu. When you get to the "add new journal entry" page you will see the new entry form along with a small image of the world.

First select the country you require from the drop down list labled "Country"

The map of the world should now change to a map of that country

Next enter the name of the city or town you wish to be plotted in the "city/town" field and click "Find Location"

A search will now be performed to try to locate the place you have entered on the map. A list of matches to the place you entered will appear in a new drop down box labled "Results". You should also see the first entry in the list plotted on the map above.

Select the correct location from the drop down list and you should see it plotted on the map to confirm it's location.

If you cannot find the place you are looking for try just entering the first few letters of the place and click "Find Location" you will then get a larger list of matching locations to choose from.

Fill in the rest of the journal entry details as normal and click submit.

Your location will now appear in the location map page of your journal. A small version of the map will also be placed in the actual journal entry.

Zooming in and out

To zoom in and out of the world map from your location map page click on the zoom in or zoom out icon from the tool bar at the top left corner of the map. Now click on the map where you would like to zoom in/out. Alternatively you can drag a box around the are you wish to zoom to.

Panning around the map

You can pan around the map by selecting the pan icon from the location map tool bar. Now either click the point you wish to pan to on the map or click and drag the map around in the direction you wish to pan.