Those of you who like to use RSS news feeds (you know who you are) can subscribe to feeds that show current discussions in each of the “forums” on our site. For instance, you can subscribe to feeds on the Service Learning forum discussions, or the Enrichment discussions. Just go to the “see all forums” list of forums, and click the link to go to the forum you’d like. When you see the “RSS” icon, you can subscribe to that feed using the appropriate steps for whatever you use to read RSS feeds.

Let us know if you use these services, and what you think!

Steve Norton
parent of Jamie (1) and Alida (K)
PTO info tech co-chair

If you want to add a bit of zest to your postings, or help organize them better, you can use a limited set of HTML codes (the codes that format the text of web pages) to format your text. (You can find out more by looking at the quick tips shown at the bottom of the comment form, or see detailed information by clicking on the “compose tips” link in the navigation bar at left.)

There are some simple ones, like bold, italics, and links.
Typing this in your comments: <em>This is in italics, also called emphasis.</em>
gives you this: This is in italics, also called emphasis.

Typing this: <strong>This is bold, also called strong.</strong>
gives you this: This is bold, also called strong.

Lastly, adding links to other pages is easy (the tag is called “a” for reasons lost in the mist of time). Typing this:
<a href="http://burnsparkpto.org/confer">Burns Park PTO: Penguin Talk!</a>
gives you this: Burns Park PTO: Penguin Talk!
More generally, you need to do this:
<a href=”full web page address of the page you are linking to“>Put the words you want to appear in your message as a link here</a>

(But please be careful what you link to!)

Notice how each tag is “closed” with the same tag with a forward slash in it – you need to turn the special formatting on and off:
not bold <strong>this is bold</strong> not bold
gives you : not bold this is bold not bold

Also, if you combine tags, they need to be “nested” – that is, you need to close them in the opposite order that you opened them:
<em><strong>Bold and italic.</strong></em>
gives you: Bold and italic.

(Don’t do this: <em><strong>Bold and italic.</em></strong> — it will mess up your formatting.)

Finally, you can make numbered and bulleted lists that will display cleanly on anybody’s web browser. Bulleted lists are called “unordered lists” with the abbreviation “ul”, and their individual parts are called list items “li”. So typing this:
<ul>
  <li>First list item.</li>
  <li>Second list item.</li>
  <li>Third list item.</li>
</ul>

Gives you this:

• First list item.
• Second list item.
• Third list item.

Numbered lists are called “ordered lists” and the abbreviation is “ol”. So, typing this:
<ol>
  <li>First list item.</li>
  <li>Second list item.</li>
  <li>Third list item.</li>
</ol>

Gives you this:

1. First list item.
2. Second list item.
3. Third list item.

If you’d like to find out more, check out the “compose tips” menu item at left; regular users can only use the “filtered HTML” tags. If you need help, post a comment and we’ll do our best!

Steve Norton
parent of Jamie (1) and Alida (K)
PTO info tech co-chair