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This article will describe how to write your article directly into the PostNuke article editing form.

Previous article in series: A closer look at authoring on FFI

The PostNuke Article Editing Page

You should read this section even if you plan on editing your article "offline", since you will still have to transfer your article to the PostNuke system using the article editing page.

The PostNuke article editing page is pretty simple. There are three boxes in which you can enter text, and two drop-down menus you can select options from. We'll describe these features now.

NOTE: Disable Pop-Up Blockers

Many of the user interface elements for the article editing system use pop-up windows. If you have a pop-up blocker active then you won't be able to use these elements.

We recommend that you disable the pop-up blocker for the entire FFI domain.

 

IMPORTANT: Article limitations

The design of the PostNuke system, and the organization of the database that it uses, imposes a limit on the length of an article.

An article may not exceed 65,535 total characters.

This limit includes all letters, numbers, punctuation, spaces, and HTML formatting tags contained in the article. Most authors should not be affected by this limit, since it is equivalent to more than a dozen printed pages. However, if you are writing a long article then you should be aware of this limit. If you preview or submit an article which exceeds this limit then PostNuke will simply cut off your article at the maximum number of characters. The extra text will not be left in the Body text editing box.

If you edit your article offline then you can check the size of the text file to see if you are approaching this limit. If so, then plan to break your article into multiple article submissions. Consider adding an appropriate suffix to the title of your submissions, such as "part 1", etc.

Title

Use this box to enter the title for your article. Keep it brief and to the point, like a newspaper headline. Don't use vague titles like "My Article" or "Something Interesting!". Make sure your title describes the content of your article.

Technically, the PostNuke system will permit your title to be up to 255 characters in length. In reality, it will truncate the title when it displays it long before you reach this limit.

In our example above we've entered a title of "My First PostNuke Article!".

The editors reserve the right to change your title as needed.

 

Topic

From this drop-down menu, select which of the available topic categories you think mostly closely suits your article. If you are unsure, then leave it set to "Select Topic" and the Editor who reviews your article will choose a topic for you.

In our example above we've selected the "Op-Ed" topic.

The editors reserve the right to change the selected topic as needed.

 

Language

Use this drop-down menu to select the language you intend to write your article in. Only users who have selected the language you choose will be able to see your article.

In our example above we've selected the "English" language. (Currently, English is the only language we've installed on the PostNuke system. We will be adding more languages in the future. Please stay tuned...)

The editors reserve the right to change the selected language as needed.

 

Story lead-in

This box is used to enter a brief lead-in for your story. The lead-in is a brief summary of the contents of your article. It is often displayed along with the article's title on sites that receive RSS feeds. For an example, you can look at the news summary page at Yahoo:

 

http://news.yahoo.com/

Apparently, the PostNuke article submission system will not accept an article which does not have a lead-in. If you can't think of a suitable summary, then you can simply enter the article's title. Since the lead-in will be displayed just above the article text to the reader, you shold probably do something with the formatting to cause the lead-in to stand out from the rest of the article text. Using bold text and a paragraph break are usually sufficient, but you might even consider using a different text color. It's really up to you.

Here is the "Story lead-in" window for our example article:

Your lead-in may include HTML tags. You can see in our example that we used "This is my first PostNuke article!" for the lead-in text, with the text set to bold, and a paragraph break following it.

The editors reserve the right to modify your lead-in text as needed.

 

Body text

This box is where you'll enter your article text.

Here is the "Body text" box for our example article:

In our example, the body text consists only of the sentence "Welcome to my first article!"

The editors reserve the right to modify the body text as needed.

 

Previewing Your Article

At the bottom of the article editing page is a "Preview" button:

 

 

Clicking on this button will display a preview of your article. When viewing the preview you should PAY PARTICULAR ATTENTION TO THIS:

 

 

This means that you should be aware that the preview is NOT an exact representation of the article as it will be seen when it's published. It is only an approximation which you can use to see if there are any formatting or HTML errors in your article.

Some common differences between a "preview" of an article, and the actual published article:

 

• Double paragraph spacing. You'll often notice double spaces between paragraphs, where only single spacing was specified in your article. This is because the "preview" display interprets vertical space between your paragraphs as if you'd specified an actual paragraph break using the <p> HTML tag. The editor who approves your article will ensure that it is displayed correctly before publishing it.

 

• The topic icon is on the right side, rather than the left side. When you preview an article PostNuke will display the topic icon on the upper right portion of the frame. However, when PostNuke displays an article to a reader it will place the topic icon on the upper left portion of the frame.

 

• The article is displayed on a color background, rather than a white background. Readers will see your article on a white background, while the preview display will have a light green background.

 

• The previewed article is narrower than the published article. PostNuke uses a narrower frame to display a previewed article than it does to display a published article.

Here is what our example article looks like in preview mode:

You can continue editing a previewed article because the article editing boxes are at the bottom of the preview screen.

 

What to look for in an article preview

Obviously, you want to look for things like spelling mistakes and grammatical errors. Beyond this, there are some particular things you want to look for that are unique to the PostNuke system.

All formatting within your articles is done using HTML tags. If you created your article offline using a web page design tool like Microsoft FrontPage then that web page design tool probably generated the HTML tags for you. If you edited your article in a text editor or in the Body Text box, then you probably created the HTML tags yourself. Regardless of how you created your article, everything it contains beyond plain text will be comprised of HTML tags.

PostNuke will not accept every existing HTML tag - it only accepts a limited subset of them. Further, PostNuke is very strict about the formatting of the HTML tags that it will accept, probably a lot more strict than your web browser. Finally, PostNuke will sometimes do unexpected things when it interprets HTML tags it encounters, causing the displayed page to look different than you expected.

If you use HTML tags which are not accepted by PostNuke then it will simply display those tags as if they were part of your article's text. The same is true if you use a tag which PostNuke would normally accept, but you don't format it the way that PostNuke expects it to be formatted. For example, the <div> tag is not permitted by PostNuke.

What if we tried to use a pair of <div> and </div> tags in our previous example?

Notice that the <div> tags were displayed along with the article text? When you see something like this it is because you have either used an HTML tag which PostNuke doesn't permit, or you have formatted a permitted HTML tag incorrectly.

The permitted HTML tags are displayed below the "Body text" box.

Note that this list of HTML tags is generated automatically by PostNuke according to the HTML permissions which have been set by the administrators. The list of permitted tags may change from time to time. Tags may be added if it is determined that the tag cannot be used maliciously, or removed if it is determined that the tag is being misused. Remember that any tags in this list can be used by members posting comments, as well as authors, so security must be considered.

The current permitted tags, and their proper formatting, is covered in the Editing articles in HTML article.

Some formatting errors that result from the improper use or placement of HTML tags are obvious, and easy to track down and fix. For example, if you intended to make the first word in a paragraph bold, but the entire paragraph is being displayed in bold, then you probably forgot the </b> tag at the end of the word.

Some formatting errors are much more difficult to track down because PostNuke changes the way you would expect the page to be displayed. This makes it difficult to track down the problem logically because the cause of the problem isn't readily apparent from the display.

For example, let's say you wanted to make the last word in a paragraph bold rather than the first word, and you made the same mistake mentioned above; you forgot to include the </b> tag at the end of the word, and before the paragraph break. What would happen to the following paragraph?

Well, you would expect that the following paragraph would be bold, along with every subsequent paragraph. Right? This is not what would happen. The following paragraph would probably not appear bold because PostNuke would have interpreted the paragraph break to mean the end of the bold text. However, it would still remember that there was a <b> tag previously in the text. At some later point in the article you would probably find text was unexpectedly being displayed in bold, even though you didn't expressly create it this way.

The only way to track down this kind of formatting error is to work backwards from the point where the improperly formatted text appeared and try to find the missing tag.

 

Submitting your article

You cannot submit your article without previewing it at least one time. In fact, the first time you open the "Submit Article" page there will only be one button at the bottom of the page - "Preview"

You will preview your article, probably make some changes to it, and then preview it again. This will continue until you feel that your article is sufficiently free of errors, and is ready for submission.

You can submit your article to the editors by clicking on the "OK" button.

 

What happens after I submit my article?

Your article will not be published immediately, so don't bother looking for it on the front page immediately after you submit it. Your article will be held temporarily in the database, and will only be accessible to the editors.

At some point, an editor will log in, find your article in the new submissions box, and will review your article for publication. The editor will review your article for spelling mistakes, grammar, formatting errors, etc. The editor will also evaluate the title, lead-in, and the topic you've selected. If any of these need to be corrected then the editor will correct these before publishing your article.

The editor will also make an evaluation of the subject and content of your article to determine if it's appropriate for publication on FFI. This is a subjective judgement made by the editor alone. If the editor determines that your article is ok for publication, then it will be published without further delay. However, if the editor decides that your article may not be appropriate for publication on FFI then there may be a delay in publishing your article. The editor will usually consult with the other editors to obtain a consensus before determining the disposition of your article.

If the editors decide not to publish your article then they will usually resolve on one of two courses of action. Either the article needs to be returned to the author (you) for modification, or the article should be discarded. In either case, you should receive an explanation by private message describing why your article was not published, and what (if anything) you should do.

 

Next article in series: Editing articles in HTML - part 1