Creating Comments, Articles, and Blogs

Speak Up!

There are many places where you can express your thoughts, voice your opinions, or share your experiences. They all have pretty much the same method of operation as described in the "How To Post" article.

Comments

On many pages, if you are a registered user, you'll see a "post a comment" link. Click on it and you'll be able to do just that. Other members may have done the same thing, and the comments can often turn into a form of entertainment in and of themselves.

Forum

The main place for discourse and debate, the forum. This area allows all registered users to post questions, debate rules, and brag. Browse on over there and add comments to existing topics or create a new topic of your own!

How to Create and Post Content

Three Simple Steps

Start the item, either by selecting it from the "create content" menu or by following a link, such as a comment, book page, or reply link somewhere on the page. You can also start to edit your own material by clicking on the "edit" link, where appropriate.
Give it a title. Do this in the title box.
Enter your material in the area provided, usually labelled "body." Here are a few tips

Generally, you can simply cut and paste stuff right into the body box. Most formatting is preserved.
Most content types include a formatting bar for "rich text." Make your content bold, italicized, or underlined with the appropriate buttons. Clear formatting with the button. Dropdown boxes invite the highly-recommended use of headline formats, like H1 and the ever-populer H2.
You can insert images with the button. You should be prompted to select from a gallery or to upload a new image. This option is a little tricky.
The web link button has become unstable. You may have to "disable rich-text" to enter links manually, or paste linked content from another editor.
The button expands your work area and may make your work easier.

When you are done creating or editing

You may want to fiddle with some of the settings for the content, like whether users can post comments, or the order in which items appear (called "weight") but you don't have to. You may "preview" your masterpiece or simply "submit" it. Depending on the item, it will either become immediately publicly available or may be submitted for moderation by the appropriate person.

And that's it! Bob's Your Uncle! Done

Well, mostly. If you want to find what you wrote, and it does not appear anywhere you expect to see it, you can always find it in the administer>content link. Some items, like comments, forum posts, and book pages automatically appear somewhere useful. Others, like "pages" need to be added to a menu or a link for anyone to find them.

Blogs

Blogging is safe, fun, and easy.

The blog, or "weB LOG" is simply a place on the web where you may maintain a running log. Take a look at some of the blogs and sites of PCYC Veterans and friends.

COOL! I want one too!

No problem! There are many free and paid services who will happily host a blog. PCYC members are invited to maintain their blogs here on this site without additional charge by clicking here. If you are unable to post, please contact the site administrator to get your registration upgraded to "Member"

Your PCYC Blog is a basic blog. You'll be able to update it by email, including SailMail, and post pictures to it. To do that, you simply send an email from the email address associated with your account to blogme@pcup.org. Additional features will be added to the blogs as they become available.

What else can I do?

Well, you can post comments to others' blogs, and they may do the same to you. Er, FOR you. Folks can "syndicate" your blog by clicking on the button. This means that things you post to your blog will automagically appear on their sites too. which is a great way to keep up!

Pictures

Worth a thousand words

This site allows you to upload and link to your photographs. You may arrange them in galleries or just leave them lying around in that giant shoebox that is the web.

Nice metaphor, but how do I upload pictures?

Otherwise, you can click on the image link under create content and fill in the blanks.

Tell me about image galleries

These are simply a way to organize pictures. Galleries have been created, and you may post to them. They are publicly available. so no racy stuff. Just send that straight to me.

Advanced Content

Because You Are Special!

Users in certain categories (Writer, Skipper, Board, Flag, Pilikia Nui) can create additional types of materials. These include the list below. All of these types of content are available from the "create content" link, or you should be able to click the links below.

book page: A book is a collaborative writing effort: users can collaborate writing the pages of the book, positioning the pages in the right order, and reviewing or modifying pages previously written. So when you have some information to share or when you read a page of the book and you didn't like it, or if you think a certain page could have been written better, you can do something about it.
event: An event is a story which can be given a start and end date, thus appearing in the events calendar.
event with volunteer timeslots: A node type representing an event with timeslots where users can sign up to volunteer
forum topic: Create a new topic for discussion in the forums.
image: An image (with thumbnail). This is ideal for publishing photographs or screenshots.
mail: A mail post can be sent to users of selected roles.
newsletter: Send a newsletter to subscribed e-mail addresses.
page: If you want to add a static page, like a contact page or an about page, use a page. This is the main method of looking like a classic website.
story: Stories are articles in their simplest form: they have a title, a teaser and a body, but can be extended by other modules. The teaser is part of the body too. Stories may be used as a personal blog or for news articles.