Adding a story about a person

These instructions walk you through the process of adding your story to the My Place and Story website.

20 steps

**Thank you for signing up for My Place and Story. The next step is getting your story published and making your furniture QR live.** To do this, we're going to ask you to fill in a form with various questions - this helps you tell your story to us in a way that we can arrange and display on the My Place and Story website. If it's helpful, you can look at [an example of an existing story](https://www.myplaceandstory.com/story/martyn-atkinson/) to get a feel for the sort of information you could share. Let's get started, and remember, if you need any help whatsoever, feel free to email info@tdp.co.uk and a member of the team wil be able to assist.

By the way, whilst you can answer these questions on a mobile device, you might have a better experience completing it on a device with a larger screen, like a laptop.

Visit the Story details form in your web browser - <https://www.myplaceandstory.com/add-your-story-about-a-person/>

Your details and privacy

The first part of the form asks for a bit of information about yourself - this is just to help us identify each story submission and none of these details will be visible on the My Place and Story website - if you are able to use the name and email address that you used when you place your order on TDP.co.uk, that would be great, but one of our team will contact you to confirm your details if we need any more information.

You'll also be asked about to confirm the Privacy Level for your story, by default, all stories are randomly showcased on the [MyPlaceandStory.com](http://MyPlaceandStory.com) homepage - but you can choose to not display yours if you would prefer. *(Please note, this does not make your story inaccessible - it will always be accessible from the QR code and if people share the story, it may appear on Google or other search engines as well)*

Saving and continuing later...

Before you continue, it's useful to know that it's possible for you to "Save" your story and come back to it at a later time.

We appreciate that it might take quite a bit of time to answer all the questions, so if you do need to come back later, just go to the bottom of the form and press the "Save and Continue later..." Button

You'll then be taken to a page that gives you a unique link that you can use to pick up where you left off - copy this link and save it somewhere safe so that you can come back to your story at any time.

To make it even easier, you can enter in your email address into the box and press "Send Link" - this will email you a copy of the link to your inbox (just double check you've entered your email in correctly before pushing the send button)

Details about the person

The first thing we'll need is the full name of the person this story is about - what you enter here will appear in a few different places, so it's best to use their full name (although titles and middle names are optional)

Next, you'll be asked for an introduction to this person - this will be displayed at the top of their story. Ideally it's 2–3 paragraphs long and between 500–700 characters, its purpose is to give a quick insight into the person - you'll be able to expand and tell more of their story later on.

They say a picture says a thousand words, so each story needs a picture of the person it's about. It's easy to upload a picture, but you will need to have one prepared in advance. To upload one, just click/tap the "Select Files" button and browse to a folder on your device that has the picture you want to use in it. You'll need to make sure the photo is quite high resolution, and it might benefit from being cropped in onto the person's face to give the clearest picture. *(Please note, you can only add one picture here, but there is an opportunity to add additional photos further on.)*

You can then tell us the date they were both by choosing the Day, Month and Year.

Then do the same for the date that they passed away.

Please then enter their age when they left us, in a numerical format, e.g. 75

The next part is where you get to go into detail about the person's story. There isn't any minimum or maximum length of a story, it's unique to the person, but you might want to aim for between 4-8 paragraphs or around 300-600 words to ensure that any readers really get to know the person you're writing about. It's good to include a bit about their past, what they will be remembered for and maybe things like their hobbies or talk about the family that will continue to remember them.

Location details

The next part of the form asks some questions about the location of the memorial bench/furniture item that their QR code is installed on. These questions are optional, but details about location can be useful if you share the story online and other people wish to visit its location. The first question is a general location question and gives you the chance to say where people would find the memorial furniture. You can describe the location e.g. **"Brad's bench is located just to the left of the entrance gate of the nature reserve"** or be more specific with an actual address, e.g. **"The Fulwood Nature Reserve, Rembrandt Walk, OLDHAM OL1 4PH"**

You can add a photo of the memorial furniture as well, useful if it's located at a place with other items of furniture and you want people to be able to identify it.

Lastly, you can optionally provide specific GPS coordinates if you want - providing this allows us to add a button to your story that gives people precise directions to your furniture - useful if it's located somewhere that is quite large or isolated. Determining GPS coordinates can be a little tricky, but this [Google Maps article ](https://support.google.com/maps/answer/18539?hl=en-GB&co=GENIE.Platform%3DDesktop#:~:text=Get%20the%20coordinates%20for%20a,decimal%20format%20at%20the%20top.)explains how you can use their Maps software to find rough coordinates of a location.

Additional Photos

There is also an option to provide some photos to go in the story gallery, this helps you show the reader some snapshots of the persons life. You can add up to 12 photos - just click/tap on the "Select Files" and choose which ones you want to upload.

Tribute Messages

If there are any particularly special tribute messages you have about the person, you can include them in this area. Messages will appear as a small speech bubble with the persons name underneath, so it's better suited to shorter 1-3 paragraph messages rather than very long messages.

Once you've answered all of the above questions, the only thing left to do is to click/tap the "Submit your story to our team" button at the bottom of the form. Once you've done this, its contents will be emailed over to the team at TDP and they'll be able schedule in adding your story. *Please note that once you have submitted your story, any changes will need to be made by contacting the team directly at info@tdp.co.uk - please don't use this form again to request additional changes.*

And you're done! As soon as your story is live on the My Place and Story website, the team will be in touch with a link you can use to preview it, and confirm you're happy. Thanks for contributing to My Place and Story, and if you have any questions whatsoever, feel free to contact the team on info@tdp.co.uk