The LTLF network is a community and this site is a collaborative site, meaning everything here is contributed by users on a voluntary basis. LTLF is a place for you to air your views on the latest goings on at Nottingham Forest Football Club, whatever they may be. You can also flex your journalistic muscles with news items, historical features and player profiles or even try to make us laugh with a comedy piece.

How to start contributing to LTLF

Whatever you want to put on this site, you are welcome to do so. There are no editorial policies and no censorship. As long long as it is vaguely related to Nottingham Forest or football in general, it is welcome here.

Becoming a contributor to LTLF is simple. Just complete the simple registration process which requires only an email address and a username. Your password will be emailed to you and you can change this easily.

Once you have received your password you will then be able to log in to the LTLF admin site and submit articles. When you first become part of our team your status will be ‘Contributor’, which means your piece won’t be published until an editor has seen it. After you’ve submitted a few pieces and we know you’re not having any problems, you will be upgraded to ‘Author’ which means you will be able to publish pieces yourself.

Please don’t be shy - LTLF is here for everyone, no matter what your writing ability (though we do ask you to take care with your spelling and grammar). As long as you’ve got an opinion on the Reds, we want it on LTLF!

Information for existing contributors

If you are already registered as a ‘Contributor’ or ‘Author’ please log in to start posting articles.

Please follow these guidelines when contributing a new piece to LTLF:

• Write your articles in a word processing program and copy and paste them into the ‘Write Post’ page rather than typing them directly into the site. Remember to spell-check them first and read your articles back to yourself before publishing. (If you don’t have a word processor with a spell-check function, we recommend Open Office.)
• Keep your articles to a decent length. Not too long, not too short. 500-700 words is the ideal length for an online article, but anything between 100 and 1000 words is fine. If you want to write something longer, check with Peter (the editor) first.
• When posting please place your article in the appropriate category using the menu on the right hand side of the screen by ticking the appropriate boxes.
• Please use a ‘real’ name for your posts on LTLF. You will register and log in with a username of your choice which need not be your real name, but under the Users/Your Profile menu you will find options to add a name to be displayed with your posts. Please set up your profile so your posts appear under a ‘real’ name, i.e. first name - second name. You can use a pseudonym if you like, or initials in place of your first name, just so long as you are not posting as something like ‘megachav2345’.
• We’re not into censorship but bear in mind that young people could be looking at the site, so go easy on the bad language. If you must swear, use a few f***ing stars! This not only keeps kiddies innocent, it also helps people access the site from work computers.
• It should go without saying, but everything posted on this site needs to be original work. This particularly applies for photographs – if you haven’t taken a photo yourself, it’s probably best to assume it is copyrighted, so don’t post it. If you are unsure about this, you can email Peter for advice.

  When writing an article you can freely quote other sources but if you do, please give a credit, ideally in the form of a web link so people can check it out themselves.

• On the subject of web links, when posting you should be able to see a useful button that will let you make short, handy text links, like this one. Please do this for the sake of readers and the design of the site which will be messed up by long URLs stretching it.
• Check the articles already on the website before you post. You can write about the same issue as another author, but if you are just going to repeat exactly the same opinion as someone else, why bother? Leave a comment under that person’s article instead.
• While we want this site to be busy, we don’t want it to be too busy. Please restrict your contributions to two or three a week. Anyone who tries to dominate the site with repeated postings may find themselves becoming very unpopular.

While we are keen to have no editorial policy as such, nor censor anybody’s views, all articles will be checked by our editorial staff to ensure authors are adhering to these guidelines. Articles will be edited without notice and ‘Author’ status is dependent on the ability to work within these guidelines. LTLF reserves the right to delete any articles deemed unsuitable and ban users who show blatant disregard for the guidelines set out on this page. As for spammers..!

If you have any questions about contributing to LTLF, please email Peter or if you are having technical difficulties, email Alex.