Adding Manual Content

Following on the previous section (Creating a Manual), we can begin adding new content.

Creating your first Manual Section

From your blank manual, click 'Add a Section':

This will now open the Editing window, and we'll click 'Add a New Section':

This will open a New Manual Section, ready to begin adding content. First, add a Title, and optionally a summary:

Next, we have the option to 'Re-use a Section from another Manual'. We're going to set this as 'No' for now, but if you'd like to re-use a section that already exists in another Manual, visit our Re-using Manual Sections Guide:

Finally, we can begin adding Content to the manual.

First, provide a title for the first Heading of this section:

Highlight the title (the text you've just added):

Click the 'Paragraph' drop-down from the content ribbon, and select 'Main Heading':

You'll now see in the Content Editor that the font size of this title has increased and it's now in bold:

You'll see the result of this in just a moment.

Next, we'll add some content under this heading, followed by another heading with some content:

Note: You can copy and paste content from Word documents, however FranchiseBase will 'strip' any additional styling from the original document. While this means you will need to edit your document to define headings, links or bulletpoints, it means your manuals will be much more consistent once published. For more information on each element of the Content Editor, view our 'Manual Content Editor' section of this documenation.

Now that we have some content for this section, we'll click 'Save' to add the new section:

Upon saving, you'll be redirected to the newly created Table of Contents for your Manual:

You'll see that the 'Main Headings' you created within the Content Editor are now clickable headings under the Section:

This simple way of defining Headings means you can write and edit your documents quickly, without worrying about creating Contents Pages or breaking your section headings up manually.

Now we'll move on to adding our next sections.

Adding Additional Sections

From any page within the Manual (including the Contents page), click 'Edit' from the Manual Tools bar:

This will open the full editing panel for the manual.

Scroll down to 'Manual Section'. You'll see your earlier created Section here, and we'll now click 'Add a New Section':

This will open a brand new section to begin adding content to.

Follow the steps from earlier by adding a Title, a Summary (optional) and your Content:

Once you've added your content, click 'Save':

Click 'Refresh' in your browser to see the latest changes:

You'll now see that your next section of content has been added, along with any Section Titles you defined with a 'Main Heading' listed beneath:

Good work - we've now created a browsable (and searchable) Manual with multiple sections.

Next, we'll personalise the manual.

Personalising your Manual

Your manual can be personalised with cover images, as well as defining a 'colour' for your manual - helping distinguish it from your other Manuals.

To start personalising your manual, from any page within the Manual (including the Contents page), click 'Edit' from the Manual Tools bar:

This will again open the full editing panel for the manual.

Scroll down to 'Cover Image' and 'Manual Colour':

Uploading a Cover Image

First, we'll upload a 'Cover Image'.

Click 'Choose File':

This will open the file window. Navigate to the folder that contains the image you'd like to use for your Manual Cover and highlight it (left click) and click 'Open':

The Cover Image will then be uploaded:

We can now move on to setting a Manual Colour.

Adding a Manual Colour

Navigate to the Manual Colour tab within the Editing panel:

Click the default colour, which will open the 'Colour Picker' tool:

From here, you can select a suitable colour. We'd recommend using a deep or darker colour to maintain good colour contrast between the colour and text:

In this case we've selected red with the colour picker, but if you have a suitable hex code for your brand, you can enter or paste it into the appropriate field:

Finally, click anywhere outside of the colour picker.

We'll now save the new changes to our Manual by clicking 'Save' at the bottom of the Editing Panel:

Now we'll head back to the Contents page (or refresh the page if we're already there):

We can now see that the Manual has been customised with our Manual Cover and Colour:

Further, if we head back to the main Manuals screen, we can see these changes here too:

With our new manual created, a couple of sections added, and customised with a cover and colour we're ready to Publish the manual.