Writing Posts

Posts are entries that display in reverse order on your home page. Posts usually have comments fields beneath them and are included in your site's RSS feed.

To write a post:

1. Log in to your Event Smart Administration Panel (Dashboard).
2. Click the 'Posts' tab.
3. Click the 'Add New' sub-tab.
4. Start filling in the blanks: enter your post title in the upper field, and enter your post body content in the main post editing box below it.
5. As needed, select a category, add tags, and make other selections from the sections below the post. (Each of these sections is explained below.)
6. When you are ready, click Publish.

Screen Options

There are more editing fields available to you than you see on first login. The Screen Options area allows you to choose which Post Fields are displayed or hidden from your editing area, which allows you to minimize clutter and customize according to your needs.

You'll find the Screen Options tab at the very top of your screen, and if you click on it, you'll see a list of available editing boxes that you can use. Check the box for each Post Field you want displayed, or uncheck the box to hide that module. Click the Screen Options tab again to close the tab.

Once you've customized how your editing screen works, your options are saved so you don't have to select or hide them again next time you log in.

Descriptions of Post Fields

Title/Headline Box
The title of your post. You can use any phrases, words or characters. 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 like "My Site - Here's Lookin' at You, Kid". Event Smart will then clean it up to generate a user-friendly and URL-valid name of the post (also called the "post slug") to compose the permalink for the post.

Body Copy Box
The 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 Text view to compose your posts. 

Preview button
Allows you to view the post before officially publishing it.

Publish box 
Contains buttons that control the state of your post. The main states are Published, Pending Review and Draft. A Published status means the post has been published live on your blog for all to see. Pending Review means the draft is waiting for review by an editor prior to publication. Draft means the post has not been published and remains a draft for you. If you select a specific publish status and click the update post or "Publish" 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 click Save As Pending. (You will see all posts organized by status by going to Administration Panels > Posts > Edit). To schedule a post for publication on a future time or date, click "Edit" in the Publish area next to the words "Publish immediately". You can also change the publish date to a date in the past to back-date posts. Change the settings to the desired time and date. You must also hit the "Publish" button when you have completed the post to publish at the desired time and date.

Publish box
Visibility - This determines how your post appears to the world. Public posts will be visible by all website visitors once published. Password Protected posts are published to all, but visitors must know the password to view the post content. Private posts are visible only to you (and to other editors or admins within your site)

Permalink
Permalink stands for "permanent link". That means a post URL that does not expose the post ID which could be subject to a change (e.g. when moving to different blogging system), but it rather contains a user-friendly post name derived from the post title which could also change, although not recommended, but in a more controllable way. This post name (also referred to as "post slug" or just "slug") can be edited using the "Edit" button. The permalink is automatically generated based on the title you set to the post and is shown below the title field. Punctuation such as commas, quotes, apostrophes, and invalid URL characters are removed and spaces are substituted with dashes to separate each word. If your title is "My Site - Here's Lookin' at You, Kid", it will be cleaned up to create the slug "my-site-heres-lookin-at-you-kid". You can manually change this, maybe shortening it to "my-site-lookin-at-you-kid".

Save 
Allows you to save your post as a draft / pending review rather than immediately publishing it. To return to your drafts later, visit Posts - Edit in the menu bar, then select your post from the list.

Publish 
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.

Post Tags 
Refers to micro-categories for your blog, similar to including index entries for a page. Posts with similar tags are linked together when a user clicks one of the tags. Tags have to be enabled with the right code in your theme for them to appear in your post. Add new tags to the post by typing the tag into the box and clicking "Add".

Categories 
The general topic the post can be classified in. Generally, bloggers have 7-10 categories for their content. 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 Administration Panels > Posts > Categories.

Excerpt 
A summary or brief teaser of your post featured on the front page of your site as well as on the category, archives, and search non-single post pages. Note that the Excerpt does not usually appear by default. It only appears in your post if your theme supports the display of the Excerpt instead of the full content of a post. If so, Event Smart will automatically use as the Excerpt the first 55 words of your post content or the content before the <!--more--> quicktag. If you use the "Excerpt" field when editing the post, this will be used no matter what.

Custom Fields 
Custom_Fields offer a way to add information to your site. In conjunction with extra code in your template files or plugins, Custom Fields can modify the way a post is displayed. These are primarily used by plugins, but you can manually edit that information in this section.

Discussion 
Options to enable interactivity and notification of your posts. This section hosts two check boxes: Allow Comments on this post and Allow trackbacks and pingbacks on this post. If Allowing Comments is unchecked, no one can post comments to this particular post.

Post Author 
A list of all website authors you can select from to attribute as the post author. This section only shows if you have multiple users with authoring rights in your blog. To view your list of users, see Users tab on the far right.

Visual Versus Text Editor

When writing your post, you have the option of using the Visual or Text mode of the editor. The visual mode lets you see your post as is, while the Text mode shows you the code and replaces the WYSIWYG editor buttons with quicktags. These quicktags are explained as follows.

• b - <strong></strong> HTML tag for strong emphasis of text (i.e. bold).
• i - <em></em> HTML tag for emphasis of text (i.e. italicize).
• b-quote - <blockquote></blockquote> HTML tag to distinguish quoted or cited text.
• del - <del></del> HTML tag to label text considered deleted from a post. Most browsers display as striked through text. (Assigns datetime attribute with offset from GMT (UTC))
• link - <a href="http://example.com"></a> HTML tag to create a hyperlink.
• ins - <ins></ins> HTML tag to label text considered inserted into a post. Most browsers display as underlined text. (Assigns datetime attribute with offset from GMT (UTC))
• ul - <ul></ul> HTML tag will insert an unordered list, or wrap the selected text in same. An unordered list will typically be a bulleted list of items.
• ol - <ol></ol> HTML tag will insert a numbered list, or wrap the selected text in same. Each item in an ordered list are typically numbered.
• li - <li></li> HTML tag will insert or make the selected text a list item. Used in conjunction with the ul or ol tag.
• code - <code></code> HTML tag for preformatted styling of text. Generally sets text in a monospaced font, such as Courier.
• more - <!--more--> Event Smart tag that breaks a post into "teaser" and content sections. Type a few paragraphs, insert this tag, then compose the rest of your post. On your blog's home page you'll see only those first paragraphs with a hyperlink ((more...)), which when followed displays the rest of the post's content.
• page - <!--nextpage--> Event Smart tag similar to the more tag, except it can be used any number of times in a post, and each insert will "break" and paginate the post at that location. 
• lookup - Opens a JavaScript dialogue box that prompts for a word to search for through the online dictionary at answers.com. You can use this to check spelling on individual words.
• Close Tags - Closes any open HTML tags left open--but pay attention to the closing tags. Event Smart is not a mind reader (!), so make sure the tags enclose what you want, and in the proper way.

Workflow Note - With Quicktag buttons that insert HTML tags, you can for example click i to insert the opening <em> tag, type the text to be enclosed, and click /i or Close Tags to insert the closing tag. However, you can eliminate the need for this 'close' step by changing your workflow a bit: type your text, select the portion to be emphasized (that is, italicized), then click i and your highlighted text will be wrapped in the opening and closing tags.

Next: Screen Options