Perseus Development Corporation

BelowBoston.com Shining a progressive light on the political landscape from Quincy to the Cape Posting Your Comments on the Blog
Objective: As a Blogger, you have two main choices in BelowBoston.com. Your first option is to comment on existing posts (known as diaries or Blogs). Think of BelowBoston.com as a lively coffee house: at each table, a different conversation is raging about politics on the South Shore. If you find a topic that interests you, simply sit down and start talking by adding your comments to that discussion. You don’t want to start a brand new diary if you find a conversation that you want to join -- that would be like sitting at an empty table to chat about the same topic. The more you contribute to each diary, the better the conversation. Let’s get started!
First, you’ll want to learn how to navigate BelowBoston.com’s Home page. You may add your comments to any existing diary, and there are a few different ways to browse the topics.
2. Right beneath the center BelowBoston.Com logo is the main Blog window, with the most recent entries at the top of the page. This is like the front page of a newspaper, with the latest news at the top.
3.The upper right corner contains “Subjects” Blogs, listed by topic.
4. The “Recent Diaries” box lists, in chronological order, new diaries created by users.
5. Let’s start adding comments by introducing yourself in the “Welcome” Blog. Under the Subjects box, select the line item, “Welcome.”
6. The main window now opens the Blogs for “Welcome.”
7. Each Blog appears in an abbreviated format to give you a quick glimpse of the topic.
8. Diary Subject – Gives you options of where you’d like to categorize your diary entry in the BLOG. BelowBoston.Com editors are responsible for defining these subjects. If you would like to see a subject add send us and e-mail
9. Click on the “There’s More” link to see the Extended window. (You can also press the plus sign to the left of the title.)
10. Author - To the right of the by: appears the user name of the Author
11. Time Stamp - Below the Author line is the Time Stamp line. That tells when the diary was created.
12. Main Text – This is the textbox directly underneath the title. Here is where you can start the meat and potatoes of your new diary. You want to grab people’s attention and get inform them at the same time. Keep it short people do not like long introductions
13. Click on the “There’s More” link to see the Extended window. (You can also press the plus sign to the left of the title.)
14. Quick Static – Tells you what is in the extended windows. How many comments and how long the dairy is.
15. Click the “There’s More” link
16. The Extended window contains the entire text and any existing comments for this diary.
17. The third line on the header is a “subscribe” link. When you click on this link, you are telling BelowBoston.Com to send you an email every time a new comment is added to this diary.
18. Below the header is the Main text followed by any extend text, the index tags and last allow the comments for this dairy.
19. Between the extended text and the comment section is the tag section. When creating a diary entry the author can create tags that are index references. Listed here are the tags that this diary is under.
20. After the tags comes the comment section. This are comments that other user have about the dairy created by the author.
21. Click on the “Post A Comment” box at the bottom of the Blog. If you see two duplicate lines, click the upper box. This simply means that you’re the first to comment on this entry.
22. The first line is the Subject of your comment, where you can create a title for your post.
23. The Comment section is where you type your message.
24. At the bottom of the page is a Formatting drop-down box. If you stay with “Auto-Format,” BelowBoston.Com will handle all the nitty-gritty HTML stuff. Or, you can use the “No Formatting” option if you know how to program in HTML and prefer to set your own styles.
25. There are currently two (2) choices for this option: Auto-Format – BelowBoston.Com comes with some nifty little features to make your life easier. If you choose Auto-Format, BelowBoston.Com will handle all the nitty-gritty HTML stuff to make your entry look the way you want for you. It will turn URLs you write in the diary entry into links. More on this later No Formatting – This is used if you now how to program in HTML. You can add your own formatting tags to the text of the comment. (See Formatting Tags) BelowBoston.Com will directly copy whatever text you enter directly into the database.
26. Click the Preview button to see what your comment is going to look like.
27. Above your entry, you’ll see your new comment as it will appear when it’s posted.
28. If it looks OK, click the “Post” button.
29. Your comments are now added to the list of comments for this diary.