Maddenation
How to Post an Entry (imageless)
Note: We don’t have a full-fledged discussion board (like Ikonboard) running on our site, but we do have the capability to make comments on others’ posts. For the sake of neatness, it’s probably best to post comments if you’re replying to a previous entry instead of creating a whole new entry. But if you’ve got a long reply, with new information, then you might want to create a new entry. It’s up to you, but let’s try to use the comments feature as a first resort. Meanwhile, if, in the future, it looks like we’d like to have a discussion board as well as the blog, we can look into that.
In any case, here are detailed, illustrated instructions for posting entries:
1) Log in to the site by typing your username and password in the boxes at the bottom-right of the main page.
2) You’ll get a page with options to “Edit Profile” (which you may want to do), “Set Up Bookmarklets” (which I’ll explain later), and, in the bottom-left corner, this box:
I should explain that Movable Type can manage more than one blog, which is why “Maddenation” appears in a pulldown menu at the top of the page and is linked in this box. But we’ve only got one blog running, so don’t worry about it.
3) Click on “New Entry.”
4) You’ll be taken to a screen with a small toolbar on the left and an entry form for your post on the right. As you can see, that left-hand toolbar will allow you to add more new entries, edit your old entries, search the entries, or view the site. Once I’ve enabled image uploading, there will be a new button there for “Upload File.”
5) Give your entry a title, put it in a category (we’ll get to multiple categories in a minute), and type your entry in the “Entry Body” box. Note that now (as of 15/2/2003) you can add a new category if you don’t see one that fits your entry. Please, please, please use this only as a last resort, and if you do use it, choose a plural noun for your category name.
6) Type your entry in the appropriate boxes. If you have a long entry (like this one), you might want to divide it into the “Entry Body,” which will appear on the main page, and “Extended Entry,” which will not appear on the front page, but which will be in the actual entry archive. People viewing the main page will have to click on a “read more” link to read everything. This is useful so that long entries don’t fill up the main page and make it way long.
If you’re using Internet Explore on PC, you’ll see buttons above your “Entry Body” box. These let you embolden, italicize, or underline your text. Just highlight the text you want formatted, then click on the appropriate button. It’s probably not a very good idea to use the underlining feature though, because underlined text usually means it’s a link. Speaking of links, there’s also a button to create links. Remember that to create a link, you have to include the http:// before the address. I don’t have PC access, so I’m not exactly sure how this works: whether the text that becomes the link has to be the URL or if you could do something like just write “click here” and get prompted for the URL. Somebody tell me.
If you know HTML, then you can include it in your entries. Just be sure you know what you’re doing. And, finally, there’s another formatting option built in to Movable Type (at least now it is, after I installed it) called Textism. I’ve made a separate post on that.
Note: Because HTML doesn’t have any way to really tab your paragraphs (people do things to fake it sometimes), it’s customary to divide paragraphs by a blank line (and each paragraph begins flush left). In order to get Movable Type to do that, please hit return twice between paragraphs when you’re typing your entry (leave the blank line). If you don’t, your entry could be hard to read. I’ll give some more HTML tips and tricks in an upcoming entry.
7) There’s a small pulldown menu near the bottom that says “Publish.” You should probably just leave it like that, but if you want to write only a draft, which will not yet be placed on the site and which you can come back and edit later, then choose “Draft” from that menu.
8) At the bottom you can choose to “Preview” your entry or “Save” it. Saving it will put it on the site. Previewing will let you kind of see what it will look like, and then you can re-edit it or save it.
9) When you click on “Save,” you’ll get a temporary screen that tells you it’s rebuilding your entry. Once that’s done, your entry is on the site. You’ll be taken to a page with your entry on it and a notice up top that it’s on the site.
10) Now you may want to assign your entry to secondary categories. Do so by clicking on the small link 
next to your primary category. If you do, you’ll get a popup window that shows you all the possible categories and lets you associate your entry with them. You have to save any category changes you make, and then re-save your entry in order for these to take effect.
11) Back on the entry page, there are a couple of advanced options at the bottom of the page. One is for editing comments that people make about your entry. You won’t have any of those yet when you first post, but if you find some dumb or offensive comments later on, go ahead and edit or delete them. The thing about “Trackback Pings” we’re not using on our site, so don’t worry about it.
12) Anything else on these pages you don’t need to mess with (like the “Customize the display of this page” link at the bottom), though you may if you like.
13) Be sure to save your entry after any changes you make, so they’ll show up on the site.
14) If you ever delete an entry, please tell me about it. This is because while Movable Type deletes the entry from the database, it leaves an HTML file on the server, and I want to be able to delete those so as not to clutter the site.
15) That’s it! Not too difficult, eh? Let me know if you have any questions or difficulties.
Patrick • Instructions • 02/14/03 • 0 comments
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