Joan on Government

UPDATED LESSON ON HOW TO POST TO THE ST. CLOUD TIMES -

4-9-08

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The St. Cloud Times has changed the format for posting to the Story Chat comment areas of their website again as of 4-9-08. In an effort to help people understand this new format again, I've created this new help page. I hope that it is of some use. ~ Joan

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Here's a lesson on how to post using HTML language

on the St. Cloud Times Story Chat pages.

(This lesson will allow you to post in bold, italics, underlined, paragraphs, as well as posting links to other sites and now posting graphics. I've now added several pages of "Smilies" you can use as well.

If you want to post a link to another site, you would start off the link by posting the following:

<a href="

Then paste in the link such as the link to go to my website:

http://joanongovernment.homestead.com/

Follow that up with:

Then put in whatever you want to call the link such as:

this site or click here or Joan On Government

Then follow all of that up with </a> to close up the "HTML TAG".

This will end up making what you would post look like this when you are typing it into your Story Chat post (using my own web site address as an example):

<a href="http://joanongovernment.homestead.com/">Joan on Government</a>

Your link will then end up looking like this after it's been posted to the

St. Cloud Times Story Chat comments page:

Joan on Government

(if you click on this is will end up taking you to the home page of my site, so make sure you can get back to this page or don't click on that link!)

The words that are placed where the title of my web site is shown in the above completed sample link are the ones that will end up showing up on the Times site.

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Below are some examples of the various ways that I would end up posting to send

people to various pages of this site when I post or to my other web site. Use these

as examples of how to post to other sites that you would like to link to.

<a href="http://joanongovernment.homestead.com/polparty.html">Joan on Government Political Party page</a>

<a href="http://joanongovernment.homestead.com/schools.html">Joan's School Page</a>

It's VERY IMPORTANT to include all of the parts of the HTML within these links in order to make sure the link will work and you won't do anything to screw up the website!

MAKE SURE THAT ALL OF THESE ELEMENTS ARE IN PLACE

BEFORE YOU SUBMIT YOUR POST:

<a href=" web address to go to "> name of link </a>

(DO NOT FORGET THIS SLASH / IN THIS END TAG!)

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***To post in BOLD***:

Start with this:  where you want to begin making your words come out bold

and end that part of what you want bold by typing in

***Note the addition of the slash / in the end tag again. It's important to remember that!

Sample: If you want to have this part posted in bold, this is how it would look

when entering it to the Times site.

Result: If you want to have this part posted in bold, this is how it would look when

posted to the Times site.

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If you want to post in Italics:

Start with this,  where you want to begin making your words come out in italics and end that part of what you want in italics by typing in 

***Note again the slash / in the end tag. This is where your post will stop being in italics.

Sample: If you want to have this part posted in italics, this is how it would look

when entering it to the Times site.

Result: If you want to have this part posted in italics, this is how it would look when

posted it to the Times site.

Underlining words works the same way, except that you use the following beginning and end tags:

 

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You can also do a combination of bold, italics, and/or underlined if you want.

Sample:

text that you want to have bold, italics, and underlined

Result: text that you want to have bold, italics, and underlined

Note again the end tags! Not closing these is one of the main things that may goof up the Times site for all users. It has in the past anyway and we don't want to do that because it potentially could lead to the Times not allowing users to post HTML in this way and it's too convenient for the readers to be able to view any links that you might want to send them to if we can continue to post HTML. I don't want to be responsible for teaching anyone how to abuse the priviledge of posting!

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If you ever need to break up your post into paragraphs, you could do the following:

Either type in

 

Either one will work although it appears to be unneccesary under this new format. Just put it at the end of where you want one thought to end and the next to begin. You don't need end tags to do paragraphs.

***Additional Note*** The St. Cloud Times Online might not accept JAVA Script in the posts made to their site. (for those who know how to do such things.)

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POSTING GRAPHICS

*** There have been many more people posting pictures (graphics) onto the St. Cloud Times Story Chat pages lately. Some of the attempts may not have been done quite right and may have ended up resulting in the pages shutting down or loading much more slowly.

Because of this, I thought I would attempt to give some advice here on posting graphics or graphics links to the Times site as well. THIS SHOULD NOT BE ATTEMPTED BY PEOPLE WHO HAVE NOT TRIED ANY OF THE EARLIER HTML LESSONS ON THIS PAGE FIRST!!! There is far too much potential for goofing up the Times site which could end up risking YOUR ABILITY TO POST ANY LONGER to the Times site OR our being able to post using HTML at all!

Images can be displayed on the Story Chat pages in two ways:

1. a link to the image can be created

2. or the image can display automatically

The first method is used to be preferred by the St. Cloud Times Online staff for use because it gives the viewer the OPTION of seeing the image. Not everyone may want to see what you want them to look at! It's better to give them the choice - to click or not to click!

It also is better because of the fact that many people may not know enough about graphic size and composition to realize that the graphics may be too large of a file size (over 50k) or too wide to fit properly when placed directly onto the Story Chat pages.

You may have noticed in the past that there have been times when people have posted graphics in the past that are too wide and they end up goofing up the width of the page for reading the comments. This is something that we want to try to avoid because it ends up goofing things up for everyone else using the site and makes it more of a hassle for the people who maintain the site.

When posting a graphic (picture, cartoon, photo) using this first method, the link will display as highlighted or underlined text that when clicked on, will load the image. Posting a graphic this way works in much the same way as posting links to other web sites as shown in the lesson at the top of this page. However, it is a little different as far as just getting the link to the graphic itself.

In order to get just the link to the graphic on the page you are looking at without linking to the whole page, you will need to do the following:

1. place your curser (arrow) directly over the desired image

(try it on the image to right)

2. use your right hand mouse button and click it over the image.

This will bring up a menu. At the bottom of the menu will be the

word "PROPERTIES"

3. Click on the word Properties. This will bring up another box that will

describe the graphic you are looking at. In the middle of this new box

will be a line that says: Address [URL]

This will give you the web address that you will need to post in order for

viewers to see just the graphic you want them to look at. It will look something

like this: http://joanongovernment.homestead.com/files/goofysmiley.gif

The properties box will look

like this >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Look for where it says Address:

[URL]

If posting a larger size graphic,

pay attention to the Dimensions!

Don't go over 500 pixels wide!!!

If a graphic is over that width,

you will need to resize it before

posting it.

(that's a whole different lesson!)

4. To finish creating the link for the graphic, see the posting links portion of this page above.

The link you end up with will end up looking something like this when you are done:

<a href="http://joanongovernment.homestead.com/files/goofysmiley.gif">goofy smiley</a>

(The portion of this link shown between the > and </a> is whatever you want to call the link itself. The portion of the link between the quotation marks is the exact web address of where you will find the graphic.)

If you insist on trying to place a graphic directly onto the Story Chat pages, PLEASE! Make sure that the graphic is not wider than what the comments usually are! Try not to post any that are wider than around 500 pixels. That information will also be shown in the properties box that you will bring up in the same way shown above.

Also, REMEMBER THIS!!! If images are inappropriate in any way -- not only offensive, but TOO LARGE (over 50k or too wide) -- they could be removed and you could lose posting privileges.

To post the image itself to the Story Chat pages, you will need to do the steps listed above for finding the web address for the graphic. The difference between posting it as a link and posting the graphic itself is in how you post it to the Times site.

Instead of using the <a href=" at the start of the link, you will use the following:

<img src=" and you will end it with the following: ">

So the same link that I showed you in the above portion of this lesson would instead be posted in this way:

<img src="http://joanongovernment.homestead.com/files/goofysmiley.gif">

IT IS VERY IMPORTANT TO GET EVERY LITTLE PORTION OF THE LINK CORRECT FOR EITHER OF THESE METHODS OR THE LINK OR POST OF THE GRAPHIC WILL NOT WORK. Check it over several times before you actually submit your post to make sure it is done correctly and will work properly.

If you want to try this out initially on the site, find some page that no one is posting comments to and try posting the link for this "goofy smiley" image that I've placed in this portion of this lesson. See if it works OK for you or not.

***It should be mentioned here that I've been noticing that graphics from Geocities web sites do NOT seem to work well for linking on the Times site. Many times, I've been seeing that they simply will not show up on the Times site and will just leave a blank box there instead of the graphic intended. It's probably best to not even waste your time or the Times space in making the attempt to link to Geocities sites.

If you run across problems with posting these, feel free to email me with your questions or preferably contact the St. Cloud Times online guys.

Good luck to you when posting your images to the site!

For those brave enough ...

If you want to post in color: