Adobe Contribute Instructions

Download Contribute from http://www.adobe.com/products/contribute/ This can be the trial version or the purchased version and will need to be installed on your computer.

A connection key has been emailed to you. From the email, double-click the connection key. This will setup the connection to your website.

When you open Contribute for the first time, you'll see this screen. In the section that says "Begin Editing" your website will be listed. Click on that link and you'll be taken to the home page of your site.

The screen is divided in two sections. On the top left is a section for pages that you have on your computer. Typically, this will be empty except for the contribute start page.

On the bottom left is the section for "How Do I..." This section contains a tutorial and many helpful topics for changes that you can make with Contribute.

The larger main section on the right is where you will see your website. In this screenshot, the Contribute start page is still displayed.

On the top left of that main section is a button that will change depending on what you are doing. If you are not connected at all to the website, you will see the image below, and a button that says "Connect" Click that to connect to your website.

Once the connection has been established, that button will say "Edit Page" Before you click that button, you will need to navigate to the page you want to make changes on. You'll be able to get to that page the same way as you would in a browser. Once you are at the page you want to edit, click the "Edit Page" link.

Now the real fun begins! That top bar has changed again and will look like the image below. Some of this will look similar to other word processing applications that you have used. The page of your website that is open in contribute may look slightly different than it does on the web. It's best to pay attention to that right away so you'll be familiar with that later.

The button that has changed from Connect, to Edit Page, now is Publish. We won't do that until the changes have been completed. Past the first 4 buttons are the places to add a link, image, or table. If your cursor is inside a table, you'll be able to add a table row or column also. The second row has the items where you can bold or italicize text, align text, make bulleted or numbered lists and so on.

If you click on an image, the top bar will look different again. The tools that show up are for images rather than text.

Once you've made the changes that you needed to, click the "Publish" button. That will put those changes up on the web.

Remember that Contribute has a great built-in help system. The "How Do I..." section will walk you through most of the things you need to do with your website.

Have fun updating your site!