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How can I post Congress Legislation?
Congress legislation is a bit problematic to post on the website, but it is very possible to do. You just need to know a few "tricks".
The primary problem that comes up when posting legislation is the difference between what the website will consider a "page" and what you expect. As far as a web page goes, the concept of a "page" in terms of an 8 1/2" by 11" piece of paper goes away and becomes something else. Typically, congress legislation is formatted specifically for 8 1/2" by 11" paper and therein lies the problem. Web pages are constructed so that they can be resized and as they are resized, the content is shifted on the page.
For something like congress legislation that really does need to have a consistent format on the printed page, there are a couple of ways to deal with that. It is "possible" to post the legislation correctly as HTML, but sometimes the process can get rather complicated. The easiest way to solve the problem is to post a link to a WORD or PDF document that can be downloaded. Both WORD and PDF can preserve the 8 1/2" by 11" page formatting.
To post legislation, I recommend that you create a page on the website that lists only a calendar of legislation with perhaps the titles of each of the pieces of legislation. Then, I recommend that you include a link (something like "click here to download legislation") which will provide visitors with the text of the legislation.
To setup the link, here's how you go about that.
Step #1: create the WORD or PDF document that you'll want accessible on the website.
Step #2: upload that document to the website. Click on "Administration" and then "Upload Files". Browse to find the file(s) you created in step #1 and then press "upload".
Step #3: create a link to the uploaded files. On the appropriate information page of your website, click on the "Edit Page Content" link. Type in the "text" of what you want the link to read (e.g. "Click here to download legislation"). Highlight that text and then select the "insert link" button on the toolbar (about 7 icons from the right on the top strip; immediately left of the anchor icon).
When you click on the "insert link" icon, the following dialog will appear:
You can safely ignore most of the fields on the dialog that appears. You'll need to fill in the URL which you can do by using the "..." button to the right-hand side; the "..." button will display a list of the documents that have been uploaded to your website (step #2). Find the document you uploaded; highlight it; click "open".
Change the Target field to read "_new". You may also want to change the Title to read something appropriate (the "title" is displayed as a tip when users hover over the link in the browser window).
Press OK. Save your changes. You may want to repeat this process to add additional links to your page.
This process will set the page up to include a link to the WORD and/or PDF document. If it needs to be printed and maintain a definite formatting, those are the best choices.
