How to post an article
Writing Posts
Posts are the entries that display in reverse chronological order on your home page. In contrast to pages, posts usually have comments fields beneath them and are included in your site’s RSS feed.
To write a post:
- Log in or register.
- Click the Posts/Add New.
- Start filling in the blanks.
- As needed, select a category, add tags, and make other selections from the sections below the post. Each of these sections is explained below.
- When you are ready, click Submit For Review (or Publish button in available).
- Title
- The title of your post. You can use any words or phrases. Avoid using the same title twice as that will cause problems. You can use commas, apostrophes, quotes, hypens/dashes, and other typical symbols in the post.
- Post Editing Area
- The big blank box where you enter your writing, links, links to images, and any information you want to display on your site. You can use either the Visual or the HTML view to compose your posts.
- Preview this Post
- Allows you to see how your post will look before officially publishing it.
- Publish Status
- Shows three states for the post: Published, Pending Review, and Unpublished. A Published status means the post has been published on the Bulletin Board for all to see. Pending Review means the draft is waiting for review by someone else prior to publication. Unpublished means the post has not been published and remains a draft. If you select a specific publish status and then click the Save button, that status is applied to the post. For example, to save a post in the Pending Review status, select Pending Review from the Publish Status drop-down box, and then click Save. You can see all posts organized by status by going to Manage > Posts. NOTE: To schedule a post for a future time or date, hit “Edit” in the Publish Status area of the post screen. Change the settings to the desired time and date. You must also hit the “Publish” button when you have completed the post for the post to be published at the desired time and date.
- Save
- Allows you to save your post as a draft rather than immediately publishing it. To return to your drafts later, click the Manage tab, click the Drafts link that appears below the Manage Posts title, and then click your draft post.
Submit for Review
Contributors (default user role for all TFN Members) can now submit their posts for review by an Editor. When Contributors are done editing their post, they press the “Submit for Review” button to put the post in the Editor’s pending review queue.
Editors can list all of the posts that are pending review on the Manage Posts page. Just select “Pending Review” from the Status dropdown.
Editors then have the option to either publish the post or set the status back to Draft if they don’t think the post is ready for publication.
- Publish (available only for administrators and editors, default Users role is Contribuitor)
- Publishes your post on the site. You can edit the time when the post is published by clicking the Edit link above the Publish button and specifying the time you want the post to be published. By default, at the time the post is first auto-saved, that will be the date and time of the post within the database.
- Tags
- Refers to micro-categories for the Bulletin Board, similar to including index entries for a page. Posts with similar tags are linked together when a user clicks one of the tags.
- Categories
- The general topic the post can be classified in. Readers can browse specific categories to see all posts in the category. To add a new category, click the +Add New Category link in this section. You can manage your categories by going to Manage > Categories.
- Comments & Pings
- Options to enable interactivity and notification of your posts. This section hosts two check boxes: Allowing Comments and Allowing Pings. If Allowing Comments is unchecked, no one can post comments to this particular post. If Allowing Pings is unchecked, no one can post pingbacks or trackbacks to this particular post.
- Password Protect This Post
- Allows you to keep this particular post private so that only those with the password can read it. Be sure and write down the password and keep it in a safe place.