Flak Style: Posting a Letter to Flak

There are two basic steps to adding a letter to the letters pages.

Step one is actually adding the letter to letters page itself.

1. Grab the most recent letters page. Each year has three pages; they're all stored in the /about/ directory. 2005, for example, has letters05a.html, letters05b.html, and letters05c.html. They correspond to January-April, May-August, and September-December, respectively.

2. If there isn't yet a letters file for the current part of the year, grab the most recent existing file (letters05a.html, for example), and rename it appropriately (to letters05b.html). Go into the file and change the months in title tag. Change the months at the top of the text block. Wipe out all the letters (starting from LETTER TEMPLATE and going through END LETTER TEMPLATE) except for one.

3. Go into that template and update it with your new letter, changing the A NAME, the little pullquote title, the date, the name of who it's to, the name and link of the piece the letter is in regards to, and the text of the letter. Sign-offs and names (including place names) are bolded at the end of the letter. Voila — you've updated the letter.

4. Now, go back into the file that the letter is about. Also open an old file with a "letter from a reader" template in it, like this one. Copy the template from the old file, paste it into your new file, changing the link to match the new letter, and changing the teaser text. Upload the file, and you're all set.