HOW TO: Write a how to

[stolibears]

MOD PLEASE MOVE ME TO THE HOW-TO SOMEWHERE.

Application: Anything you want to share.

Symptoms: Your fishing for attention and you haven't gotten any for a while. Your ego needs some stroking, or your just a really nice guy/gal wanting to give and teach the world.

Honda Mechanic says: " I hate when people tell me how to do my job so leave me out of it!"

Choices:

• Keep the infinite amount of knowledge locked up in your noggin and die a lonely soul.
• Share your wisdom with the world and maybe, just maybe someone will worship you as tuner king of CC.com!...or maybe not, or at least until my reign of ruler of CC is over

Skill:

The only skills you need is to read and write, and try to spell most of what you type so people understand at least what your trying to say.

Tools Needed:

• Computer with internet access

Optional, but highly recommended:

• Fireworks, Photo shop, or some kind of image/photo editing software.
  

Procedure:
PART I. DO THE INSTALL

1. Well it would just be silly if you did a writeup on something you have no idea about or no experience with, so the next time you do what ever you want to do the write up about, make sure to take lots of pictures when you do it.
2. When your done, get the pictures back to the computer and edit them, filter them label them and last shrink them down a bit. I get mine down to about 300px across and lock the ratio of whatever the height some out to be. A 1200x1200 pic is not appropriate since the forum will resize them anyway and takes too bloody long to load for some one to see, especially if you got a boat load of images.
3. Upload them to an image hosting site that will handle the bandwidth of a lot of users accessing them at one time. I like ImageShack but close seconds go to Flickr,Microsoft Spaces, and recently Google Photos (Most of these require you to create an account, but all are free)
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   When you upload them, make sure to write down the addresses of where the photos go on the web, or what I do is open up a text editor and paste the addresses in so I can reference to them later when I want to stick the photos in the write-up.
   
   
   
   (Image Shack will list the addresses of the different formats you can use, I cut and paste the last one labeled "Direct link to image". Make sure to click on the "IMG" button in the format tools of the form editor so it shows up)
   
   
   
   
   
   If you use one of the other hosting sites, just simply right click on the image in the site after it gets uploaded and click "Properties" and it should show you the link. It may not fit in the entire field to make sure to select the address from the beginning and go down so it scrolls and selects at the same time, then just copy and paste it to your text file.
   
   
   
   
   

PART II. Writing down a step by step procedure

1. Since this writeup make take some time, and you probably won't get it done in one sitting, make sure you have a text editor open such as Wordpad or NotePad so you can copy and paste your work on your computer and paste a working copy in the forum when you want to work on it.
   
   
   
   This way you save a draft copy on your computer without having a junky how-to on the forum for everyone to shred, even though your not done.
2. You'll notice these bracket type notations [] with letters inside. If you haven't seen these before, these are know as BB code formats. These tell the forum to BOLD, italics, or underline. You'll probably need to get familiar with this if you want your document to look formatted and a bit clean. Here some info: BBcode
3. To see what you have before you officially "Submit" it, in this forum there is a "Preview" button which will give you a sneak peak on how your doing, or show any formating mistakes that you may have made.
4. If you've accidentally submitted it, it's ok, just make sure to post another post in there to tell people that your still working on it, or make sure you have "DRAFT" somewhere in the original post.
5. Notice the best writeup usually takes more time to type up then the time it took for you to do the install on whatever your writing the how-to about. It takes writing a draft more then a couple of revisions and then there are the photos and editing of photos if you really want it look sharp.
6. Write down step by step how you did the installation of your how to.
7. Don't leave out anything. You can always go back and trim back, but for now you want to write as much as possible. One of the problems is people don't detail what they did in a step. For example, .."unscrew that bolt and replace with new one..." isn't enough to get the info across to most people. Explain the detail of the bolt, where is it next to or around, what exact tool did you use and better yet, what tool you could substitute if your missing it.
8. Remember who your target audience is. Most of which are not honda mechanics and are just hobby tuners learning along the way so explain as much as possible.

PART II. ADD IMAGES AND PHOTOS (OPTIONAL)

• Try to put a photo in between each step as you go. You should almost be able to do the how-to without any instruction, but with pics alone. The written steps should almost be a supplement. When someone is browsing for instructions, the one that they will use is the one with the most pics. It gets really hard to describe some parts so pics help a lot.
• If you have an image editor, try to label the parts in the pictures. If you don't have pictures, scan in some scribble drawings, (hey at least it's something).
• I can't stress enough how important some type of image or photo is important to making a writeup these days.

PART III. REVISIONS OF YOUR DRAFT

1. Go back and review what you wrote, make corrections, spelling, wording etc. Make sure the pics you used represent what the step is. If need be go back and take more pictures.
2. Go back and review what you wrote, make corrections, spelling, wording etc. Make sure the pics you used represent what the step is. If need be go back and take more pictures.
3. Go back and review what you wrote, make corrections, spelling, wording etc. Make sure the pics you used represent what the step is. If need be go back and take more pictures.
4. Alright, your ready for publishing.
5. Once you're pretty comfortable of your work, publish it, BUT make sure you put at the top of you how-to that this is a draft
6. The nice people on the forum will give you feedback on what you wrote, be prepared to get some flack, and make further adjustments to what you wrote.
7. Make sure that you post references of other how-tos you may have found when you did your install. It's just courtesy to give credit when due, and it also gives your audience more resources to work from.
   

TIPS:

• Make sure that your how to has a flow to it, and is consistent with any other how tos that you write up in the future or past. Consistency is key.
• It's your how-to, put some style in it, make it yours.

The next post after this I'll include a one of a kind "Stolibears" template at no charge!

This has been

 

[stolibears]

-----------STOLIBEARS HOW-TO TEMPLATE-----------

First summarize what your trying to show here. Maybe some warnings or things of that nature.

Application: What vehicle did you do this on? What other applications will work on other cars.

Symptoms: Why did you do this? Was something wrong before, reason why you did what you did.

Expert advice it: (a stoli original idea) I use my honda mechanic. Before I start any project, I ask his advice first and usually get some great tips or feedback. This part of the how-to gives some creditability if your an expert noob like myself.

Choices: What might be some alternatives instead of doing this.

Skill What kind of skill do you think it would take to do this app?

Tools/Materials Needed: List out what will be needed throughout the how to.

Procedure: The step by step process of how you did it.

1. Step 1
2. Step 2
3. Step 3

At the end you can add either important tips, or extreme case scenarios.

*note: You may find that your how-to is actually too long for one post, so make sure to subdivide the Procedure into parts, that way you can post each Part in it's own post. If you have to do this, make sure you write that at the top of your first post something like PLEASE DO NOT POST YET, STILL IN THE PROCESS OF POSTING MULTIPLE PARTS at the top and hopefully no one will. Worst comes to worst just ask a mod to clean it up for you.

[size=3][b]-----------STOLIBEARS HOW-TO TEMPLATE-----------[/b][/size]

First summarize what your trying to show here. Maybe some warnings or things of that nature.

[u][b]Application:[/b][/u] What vehicle did you do this on? What other applications will work on other cars.

[u][b]Symptoms:[/b][/u] Why did you do this? Was something wrong before, reason why you did what you did.

[u][b]Expert advice it: [/b][/u](a stoli original idea) I use my honda mechanic. Before I start any project, I ask his advice first and usually get some great tips or feedback. This part of the how-to gives some creditability if your an expert noob like myself.

[b][u]Choices:[/u][/b] What might be some alternatives instead of doing this.
[u]
[b]Skill[/b][/u] What kind of skill do you think it would take to do this app?

[u][b]Tools/Materials Needed:[/b][/u] List out what will be needed throughout the how to.
[b][u]
Procedure:[/u][/b] The step by step process of how you did it.
[list=1]
[*]Step 1
[*]Step 2
[*]Step 3
[/list]

At the end you can add either important tips, or extreme case scenarios.

*note: You may find that your how-to is actually too long for one post, so make sure to subdivide the Procedure into parts, that way you can post each Part in it's own post. If you have to do this, make sure you write that at the top of your first post something like PLEASE DO NOT POST YET, STILL IN THE PROCESS OF POSTING MULTIPLE PARTS at the top and hopefully no one will. Worst comes to worst just ask a mod to clean it up for you.

 

[95gainfla]

you rock.

 

[Genuine Rolla]

 

[JohnS.]

lol...

 

[Szady]

Great stuff. Im doing this this weekend!

 

[Blue_EF]

lotsa time on your hands?? seems like ur a pro at that stuff lol.. wish i knew enough to do a damn write-up! since i cant..keep up the how-to's everyone!

 

[defvayne]

Great how-to on how-to's!!!

 

[RHennin]

do we really need this? I would assume that most people who have posted pics online before would realize that you have to use something like photobucket etc... and also the reimaging thing, although some people tend to forget and make the thread window HUGE.

 

[Civic11]

That's funny; Kind of like this guy I know who mopes about moping

 

[oc_civic]

thats actually really good

 

[stolibears]

i'm in the computer tech bizznat, so yeah I have some experience writing up "help" documentations, and yes very bored at work.

I guess you cronies haven't been through the how-to section of the forum, some of them are pretty hard to follow. Some are pretty good too though. I just wanted to set sort of an example to help guide those who want to contribute.

do we really need this? I would assume that most people who have posted pics online before would realize that you have to use something like photobucket etc... and also the reimaging thing, although some people tend to forget and make the thread window HUGE.

joo assume too much! for the most part people that post pics can't get it right the first time around, you usually get just the url and then another post saying that they don't know how to post pictures. Second, photobucket is a pretty good example of what NOT to use since it has a bandwidth limit. Once it reaches it's limit, no one can see the pictures until it gets reset the next month.

the other reason I wrote this ditty up is to promote contribution to the site. I''m seeing way too much emo posts about personal lives then I care to read about. This is first and foremost a car forum, post something relevant once in a while. If you got the knowledge, share it!

 

[oc_civic]

I guess you cronies haven't been through the how-to section of the forum, some of them are pretty hard to follow.

understatement...

 

[Civic11]

IMO, this is the best how-to of them all