To write the text portions of a taxon page on your LifeDesk, log in, then select 'Create Content' from the main menu, then select 'Create Taxon Page'.
There are a number of form fields provided for different topics. By default, you are listed as the author and copyright owner for your contributions. You can change this if you are entering information for other people or if you want to list co-authors. Note that all information uploaded to a LifeDesk must be in the public domain or released under a creative commons license.
You can also export a spreadsheet template, work on it offline, and then batch-upload this information to your LifeDesk (Create Content › Import Pages).
If you are a site administrator, you can create new chapter titles and re-organize them to suit your needs.
Watch this screencast to learn about adding text content to taxon pages on your LifeDesk
A core task for LifeDesk users is to create pages that have descriptive information about taxa. These taxon pages can be customized depending on your community's needs.
To change the default set of data entry fields,
Headings tab
Headings are similar to book ends; they do not contain content. Instead, they organize chapters that do contain content. You can change the labels for headings (e.g. Overview, Conservation, Description, etc.), add or delete headings, and change the order they are presented both to contributors and to viewers by dragging sections up or down.
To prevent loss of information, clicking a delete icon next to a heading will cycle through all chapters it contains and will query your LifeDesk database for associated content.
Chapter tab
Under each heading is one or more chapters. You can change the name of these, add or delete chapters and change the order they are presented.
You may call chapters anything you like, but to share the data with EOL you will later need to map these chapters to the EOL defaults so that EOL knows where to put your information on their pages. In this case, your labels will show up on EOL as the title over each section, also called a "data object." The label will not appear in the table of contents. Rather your "data object" will be displayed when someone selects the EOL subject heading you chose when you mapped your chapter to EOL's.
Deleting chapters is a potentially destructive event so clicking any delete icon will query your LifeDesk database for associated content.
Taxon Page Appearance
You can determine whether or not the authors and chosen licenses for each chapter are shown with each chapter, or whether they are summarized at the bottom of a taxon page. These settings are easily changed.
Your name, under which you logged on to the LifeDesk, will appear by default under any text object on any taxon page that you create.
[inline:author1.JPG=default author]
You may overwrite your name, or add another author using the "More Authors" button. Autofill will offer you the names of other members of your LifeDesk, or you may enter another name as a text string.
[inline:author2.JPG=adding authors]
To manipulate the order of authors, click and drag the green double-headed arrow to the left of any author name to the position that you want. When you're finished re-ordering, save the form.
[inline:author3.JPG=changing the order]
If you need to delete an author delete the text from the author box and save the form.
By default any new taxon pages or images you create will initially be in unpublished format. Unpublished data objects are not publicly visible, only members of your LifeDesk can see them when they are logged in. Also, if your site is a content partner to EOL, draft pages are not exported.
In order to make your pages publicly visible, you need to check the Published box at the bottom of the image or taxon page data entry forms. The unpublished designation will then disappear from your submitted content.
If you have worked on several data objects you would later like to publish, go to 'My Account' >> 'Submissions' or, if you have permission, 'Administration' >> 'Content Management box / Manage Content'. Set the Filter controls to status:unpublished and click on Filter. If there are more than 50 pages you wish to publish simultaneously, you may also want to increase the Max rows setting under General Settings above the Filter controls.
Once you filtered your list of unpublished data objects, select the boxes next to all the data objects you wish to publish, then select Publish from the Update options menu, and click on the Update button.
LifeDesks, provisional names and EOL relationship
Are you preparing a new manuscript or revision in which you describe a species new to science? If you organize text or images on your LifeDesk and want to publish information about this taxon as soon as the paper is published, this is perfectly safe provided you take some care with names and settings to prevent pre-publication sharing of information.
1) Use a provisional name in your LifeDesk classification eg.: "Homo sp. 9"
2) Any text content for this species in your LifeDesk should be in unpublished mode. Whenever you save your taxon page, make sure the PUBLISH box is not checked. This text will only be visible to you and your LifeDesk editors or owner.[inline:publish box unchecked.JPG="Publish" box]
3) You may also post photos of this taxon in unpublished mode. When you save your image, make sure the PUBLISH box is not checked. These images will be visible only to you, your LifeDesk editors or owner.[inline:draft flag.JPG=DRAFT mode]
4) In your manuscript, the url for the soon-to-exist species page can be constructed from the identifier for the provisional name e.g.: http://mysite.lifedesks.org/taxa/12345. Similarly, if your site is a content partner to EOL, you may use the soon-to-be published taxon name as part of the EOL URL, eg.: http://eol.org/Homo%20informaticus . Since the taxon is not yet known to EOL, this link will return an error message, "No search results found".
5) When the manuscript is published, return to the classification tree on your LifeDesk and replace the provisional name with the real name, "Homo sp. 9" -> "Homo informaticus". Then open your species page and images, click the PUBLISH box for each one, and re-save.
At this point, your content will immediately become visible to the public on your LifeDesk. If your site is a content partner to EOL, the new species page, complete with content, will appear on EOL at the next harvest from the LifeDesk, and the link in your manuscript will resolve to a species page. (If you're in a hurry, the LifeDesk owner can arrange an immediate overnight harvest by visiting the LifeDesk Administration>EOL Partnership>Schedule page and then the LifeDesk's content partner account.)
You may find it more efficient to produce the text for taxon pages in a text or spreadsheet editor. You can download a file that provides a template for bulk upload. However, before you create your template, you need to make sure that (1) all the taxa for which you want to write the text for your pages are in your classification and (2) you have done all the necessary customization of your LifeDesk's headings and chapters. Your LifeDesk template will contain place holders for all your taxa and chapters, so you should not change any of this on your LifeDesk while you are working with your template.
Once your LifeDesk is ready to produce your template, follow these steps:
Some things to keep in mind when working on your template file:
Once your template file is ready for import, follow these steps: