This is how articles would be posted - by authorized contributors - for comment.  Articles appear in chronological order, and can contain text, images, and other attributes. Images can be uploaded easily; however, it is important to properly format them before uploading; we can show you how to do this assuming you have some image editing software.  Permissions for posting, editing, etc. are set by the site administrator(s).

Those wishing to comment may do so; we currently have this set so that users must register, but that can be reset at your discretion.  Registration can be very useful in a setting such as this one, which is likely to become an online community of people interested in regional water resources issues and information.  Registered users can create a profile, although they cannot create their own home page of their own.  This can also probably reduce blog spam to some degree, but experience has shown us that the spam protection embedded in WordPress is very aggressive, and spam hardly ever gets through. Registration for the blog is separate from registration for the information sharing tools.

We chose the format of this blog from among a large number of templates available through WordPress.  It was selected because of its ease of use, which will likely be of value to your administrator.  We - or, in the future, the administrator - can always select another design or customize this one.  The latter does require a certain knowledge of HTML and CSS. Posts can be of any length without crowding the main page, which is accomplished by using a “more” tag.  This makes it easier for people to browse through the posts.

The blog, articles, announcements, and info sharing pages are all inside the blog interface and use the WordPress search capability.  The actual information sharing database and associated functions use a Google search protocol. Posts can be assigned to categories, a few of which we’ve created for illustrative purposes.  Users can click on any category and see a list of all the associated posts. This is different from the search capability in that it allows the administrator and/or authors to organize posts in a subject-oriented manner in addition to the chronological order seen in the blog interface.