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Creating Records

Introduction

We want to use your plant descriptions more effectively! This page will show you how you can help us do this.

Rationale

Adding in cerain comments allows our software to index the individual sections of your plant descriptions. For example if a searcher wanted to find pages about White Pines, she might find this page on red oaks since "white pine" is mentioned in the discussion section. But if the page is indexed by section, then we can give the searcher the option of searching for "white pine" only in the 'Names' section.

How to Make It Happen

There are a couple of ways we can go about this. Both have advantages and disadvantages. One way is to have everyone use a template to create web pages for their plant descriptions. Using a template is fairly easy (see below for a real example). Our software will ceate xml files from your plant descriptions. The other way is to fill out a webform for the characteristics. Filling out the web form makes your plant descriptions much more detailed and uniform. When you click the button to submit the form, it creates a detailed xml file automatically that can be used by our indexing software. The form might seem intimidating at first but you can fill out as much or little as you want.

Option 1: Template

Example of using xml template

Here's what the HTML template looks like.
Here is a real example of a page using the template.
Here's what the HTML source for the slippery elm page above.

Starting from Scratch

1. Use this blank template to start from. Open a text editor (notepad or wordpad are good choices if you are using Windows).
2. Click the link and start copying at <?xml...  Paste the text into the new document and save it as somename.htm or somename.html. The text will no longer be red but that doesn't matter.
3. Change the sample text so that it is appropriate to your plant description.
4. You may want to add other formatting and text to your page. This is fine as long as you keep the tags that were originally in red.
5. Save your document and you have your webpage.

Adapting an existing webpage

1. To adapt an existing web page, you have to insert some comments and tags into the existing source code for your webpage. To get the source see '3 Ways to Look at the Source Code for Any WebPage' below. If you are using software such as Dreamweaver or FrontPage there is usually a way to edit the sourc code directly.
2. Before the name section of your webpage, type in: '<!-- Name -->' This is a comment. It will not appear in your webpage when you view it with a browser.
3. Each paragraph in your name section should have a '<p>' tag. Inside the beginning tag, type 'class = "name"'. Use the example templates as a guide.
4. After each section and before the next section of your webpage, (discussion, for example), type in the comment for that section (e.g.'<!-- Discussion -->'). It doesn't matter which order the sections are in.
5. Save your document and you have your webpage.

Option 2: Web Form

Here is a peek at what the web form looks like. You can try typing some things in to see how it works. After filling out some of the boxes, click on the submit button. You will see the same form again. At the top will be a link labeled "new xml file". Click on the link to see the file. You can use the 'view source' command to see what the xml file looks like.

Web Form Directions

These are the labels for the boxes on the webform. If you aren't sure what to put into the boxes, you can use these as a guide.

|--Name : Put the name of the plant here. Common name and/or Latin
|--Description : Describe the leaf, flower, fruit, bark, shape, whatever
|--Descrition : Another paragraph of description
|--Discussion : Explain differences among related species here.
|--Distribution : Where is the plant found? prairies? woods? Illinois? US? Europe?
|--Images : Web location for images of this plant
|--Other : Like the season and where the pictures were taken, uses for the plant...
|--Map : Geographical map image of where this plant is found. Perhaps a map of North America with dots indicating the distribution of the plant.
|--Copyright : Copyright information. Who owns the rights to this record? Who can use it?
|--References : What sort of books or websites or books did you use to identify your specimen?
|--Creator : Information about you and your school.

Which one is better?

Use whichever one you think is easier!

Some more examples from some other schools:

• http://www.u46.k12.il.us/shs/aldeellen/5289.htm
• http://www.carlinvilleschools.net/linke/BIBE/poak.htm
• http://www.bhschools.org/trees/buroak.html
• http://www.cumberland.k12.il.us/chs/Ecology%20web%20pages/bur_oak_stem.htm

3 Ways to Look at the Source Code for Any WebPage

Links

template source

This is a page showing what your source code might look like if you use the template option. The code in red are the important tags that allow our software to index the webpage.

blank template

This is a blank template. You can use the technique described above to get the source code.

source for blank

Same thing, but we have put it into a web page. Copy and paste it straight from there. (Start copying at <?xml...)