help guide

About the Site Content
More About Publishing Your Story
About the Site Layout
Uploading & Creating Image, Video, Document and Audio Files
Indymedia Glossary

About the Site Content

Using this site you can publish your own news, pictures, audio and video. The Newswire (see below for more information) empowers people who are often ignored or marginalised by a mainstream media skewed toward corporate interests; by allowing ordinary people to publish on it. This project also provides an open forum for discussion and debate. You can join in here even if (or especially if!) your views may be in direct conflict with the focus of the Bristol Indymedia Collective or if even if you subscribe to the views propagated by the mainstream media.

The Bristol Indymedia collective (whose membership is open to the public) does its best to oversee the Newswire with a careful eye to balancing the open publishing philosophy with a desire to maintain the "newsworthy" quality of the content. Bristol Indymedia volunteers strive to check all contributions and hide content which breaks the open publishing editorial guidelines. However, if you do see anything that contravenes these guidelines, please let us know. If you have an issue with a comment or article, see our complaints page and/or contact us.

Remember that the Indymedia site is here for you! We encourage you to upload your own stories, commentaries, and announcements - and any other information that may be of use to the community. We also encourage you to participate actively in the Bristol IMC group and its development - if you don't like something, get involved and change it! Our meetings are open to the public, and announce d on the site's calendar page. See the Getting Involved with Bristol Indymedia page for more information.

More About Publishing Your Story

This is the main point on the site - for you to tell your story! Here is a few things you may be interested to know about publishing on this site:

• It's free! We don't charge for publishing a story. We don't take money to promote stories. We are an ad-free, non-commercial project.
• You don't need permission from us to publish - just click on publish and fill in the form!
We don't publish the information, we provide the means for you to do it.
• You don't have to use your real name or give your contact details, though using a consistent alias may help in discussions. It is up to you how much you want to tell people. If you are running a charity, then giving your name and contact information is pretty helpful, but if your story is exposing your employer's dodgy practices, then you might want to use a fake name.
• You need to stick to the Editorial Guidelines. They explain what is and is not allowed on the site. They are there to enable people-power media to work. However, they are not set-in-stone; if you don't agree with them, then get involved and help shape the project!
• There is more information about contributing articles here, including a step-by-step walk through of how to complete the 'publish' form that will get your story online.
• Please also see our good article guide for more information about the best way to get your information across to readers.
• When you feel ready to publish - click here!

About the Site Layout

This is a guide to the main bits of the Bristol Indymedia website. Below is an image of the main bits:

And what they all are is:

• A - the most important bit! The 'Publish Button'. This button that allows you to publish your own news. Click here to submit a story. It will take you to a new page that will guide you through the process.
• B - This is the 'newswire'. Once you (or anyone else) submits a news story it will instantly appear here, on the newswire.
• C - This is the 'front page' where Bristol Indymedia volunteers can highlight interesting or important stories. If you wish to get involved in the project or the process that guide decisions about what goes here, please get in touch!
• D - There are a number of important links here; including to find out more about the project and how to contact us.
• E - This is the calendar. It lists the day's events and what is coming up. If you wish to submit a calendar event, you do so though the standard 'publish' button (see A, above). In the form you fill in to publish a story select the Story Type as 'Event Notice' and drop-down boxes will appear for you to enter the date of your event. When writing an event; don't forget to say what time the event is, how much (if anything) it costs, where it will be and how to get there.
• F - This is the 'Indycycle'; a way of offering and receiving items that saves them from landfill. See Indycycle and the Indycycle Help Guide.
• G - The 'News Image Gallery'; this randomly selects images from recently published stories.

Uploading & Creating Image, Video, Document and Audio Files

If you wish to upload something with your article, then when you have clicked on the 'publish' link, 'Step 1' offers you a drop-down box for you to indicate how many files you wish to upload. Select the number you requite then click on the button marked 'Change the number of files to upload >>'. Do this before adding any other information. This site allows you to upload a maximum of 20 media files for each article or comment. Below is more information about each type of file upload:

• Images - Each image you wish to upload must be 1000 x 1000 pixels or smaller and 1000 KB (about 1 MB, or megabyte) or smaller. The system can handle most image formats (.jpg .jpe .jpeg .gif .png .bmp), but if you are not sure what to use, try the JPEG format (.jpg or .jpeg). Most image software allows you to create such files. There are also free & open source software packages that would allow you create and re-size image files, e.g. the GNU Image Manipulation Program (GIMP). If you have an image that is too big and you wish to upload it, you can also use the GIMP to re-size them, see this handy guide.
• Video - You can embed video files that are already on sites like YouTube or Blip.tv or you can upload the file directly to Bristol Indymedia (or both!). If you want to embed a video, see our Guide to Embedded Video. If you want to upload video, then each video file you wish to upload must be 8192 KB (about 8 MB, or megabytes) or smaller. The system can handle most video formats (.mov .mpg .mpeg .m4v .avi .wmv .asf .rm), but if you are not sure what to use, try the Audio Video Interleave (.avi) format. To distribute large video files you will need to compress them - try the Xvid codec (linux, free windows Xvid file converting tool or windows & mac codec download links). Once you have installed Xvid, you can use the free & open source software VirtualDub to compress video using Xvid, see this handy guide. We suggest that you then include a link on your Indymedia story page to the VLC Media Player, http://www.videolan.org/vlc/ so readers know what software they can use to view your film. (For example see here.) You can also use torrent files to distribute film files (see the 'Other Files' option when uploading files).
• Audio - Each audio file you wish to upload must be 8192 KB (about 8 MB, or megabytes) or smaller. The system can handle most audio formats (.wav .mp3 .mp4 .m4a .aiff .mid .snd .ram .ogg), but if you are not sure what to use, try the MP3 or the open format Ogg. You may wish to use the free & open source software, Audacity to help you.
• Documents - Each document file you wish to upload must be 5120 KB (about 5 MB, or megabytes) or smaller. The system can handle most document formats (.doc .pdf .txt .ppt .xls), but if you are not sure what to use, why not try If you distribute your files as a PDF, that way your choices on layout and font will be kept for the reader. You could use the free, open-source Open Office for this. There is a video on YouTube that will show you how.

Indymedia Glossary

You may find us (or others) using terms to describe activity on the site, here's what they mean;

• BIMC - This is Bristol Indymedia Collective and is a term for the whole Bristol Indymedia project and the people involved.
• Front Page - The central column of the website with larger news stories in. These are selected and complied by Bristol Indymedia volunteers from stories they think or interesting and/or significant.
• Newsfilter - These are drop-down boxes that allow you to select the topic of the stories you wish to know about.
• News Image Gallery - This randomly selects images from recently published stories.
• Newswire - The right column of links to news stories. This is a real-time list of news stories that you (and other) users of the site have submitted.

If you are still a little unsure and have a question, then please contact us.