Long Room posts are an opportunity to share content, express a view or pose a question for other members to read and respond to.
To get you started, here are a few technical explainers on how to write a post:
Writing a new post for the Long Room follows most of the conventions associated with standard word processing software.
First, give your post a title - something that's both pithy and relevant to the content of the post. A good title is the first - and perhaps most important - step to attracting other members to your content.
Next, enter the body of your post in the "Content" window. Easy. When you've finished writing, scroll down and you'll find the "save as draft" or "publish" buttons. Clicking "publish" will instantly make public the content of your post to the table. Clicking "save as draft" will keep the content visible only to you, saving it and allowing you to come back to it later. You can access your draft posts in the right hand navigation menu of the long room, where it will appear under the "My Drafts".
When you're writing a post, there are a number of editing functions which you may find useful. These functions appear as buttons in the posting taskbar, which you'll find above the content window for a new post:
Pasting text
Chances are, you'll want to paste text into your post. You may even decide to write your whole post elsewhere and then paste it in. Either way, when doing so, you shouldn't simply use the File>Paste menu option or the Ctrl + V shortcut (CMD + V for the Mac users amongst you). Instead, after you have copied text, you must select one of two buttons in the "Write a new post" taskbar. Sometimes you many want to past in text without any formatting. In that case, click on the "Paste as plain text" button which is denoted by a clipboard with a "T" in front of it. A window will then open into which you can normally paste your text (using Ctrl + V, or CMD+V). Once you have pasted the required text into the box, simply confirm by clicking on the "Insert" button at the bottom. If you want to paste in text with formatting, such as bold, italics, or bullet points, you must select the "Paste from Word" button, which is denoted by a clipboard with a "W" in front of it, and appears next to the "Paste as plain text" button. The subsequent steps are identical to the pasting as plain text process.
Quotations
We encourage you to use quotes when referring to the thoughts or comments of others. Paraphrasing is great, but it's courteous to correctly attribute views when you can – and make it clear they're not your own. Of course, you can just use standard "quotation marks" in your text, but there is also a function in the Long Room for publishing quotations in special blockquotes, which stand out in your post. To do this, simply select the text you want to put into a quotation box (it must be in a separate paragraph of its own before you do this) and click on the blockquote button, on the right side of the post taskbar. This button is denoted by a quotation mark. The selected text will then be italicized and marked out in a block.
Links
Whether quoting or simply discussing ideas you've seen elsewhere, one of the most important things you should do in any post is insert links. Linking is not just helpful to your readers, it's also a matter of politeness (we've very big on politess in the Long Room - it's even one of our House Rules). To insert a link, select the text you want to turn into a clickable link, and then (making sure your chosen text is correctly highlighted) click on the "insert/edit link button", which denoted by an, er, small section of chain. In the pop-up box which appears, simply paste in the URL of the post you are linking to, and be sure to include a description, including the publication or author (e.g. FT article on Gold), in the "title" field. We also recommend that you select the "open link in new window" option in the "target" dropdown menu. When you're done, click insert. It's also good practice to test that your links work. You can do this by right clicking on the link-text and choosing "open in a new window" of your preferred browser. (We're big fans of Firefox, by the way). If the link doesn't work, or you want to change or delete a link, then just select the link-text and click on the button depicted by a "broken" link.
Inserting Images
There are two steps to inserting an image into a post. First you must upload the image onto the Long Room system, and then you must load that image into your post.
1. To upload the image into the Long Room system, look for the "attached files and images" window underneath the "post content" window:
Click on the "Browse" button to select an image from your computer - and please don't post anything you wouldn't want your children to see, unless it's a terrifying chart of the Vix or some such. Once you have selected the image, it will automatically upload to the Long Room.
2. To insert your uploaded images into the post you are writing, move your cursor to where you want the image to appear in your post, and click the "insert/edit image" button, which is denoted by a picture of a tree:
A new window will open. Select the "choose from attached images" link in blue. A list will appear of all the images you have uploaded in step 1; select the image you wish to insert. In the "alternative text" field, please enter a short description of the image. Then click "insert" and the image will appear in your post. You can resize the image at any time by clicking on it in your post, and then reclicking the "insert/edit image button". The "dimensions" can then be changed.
Inserting other media
You can also put videos, animations and flash files into your posts. To do so, make sure the cursor is in the right place in your text and click on the "insert/embed media button" shown above, denoted by a filmstrip. A new window will open. Whether you're uploading a file from your own computer, or linking to a video from a sharing site such as youtube, you will need to paste the location of the video into the File/URL field in the new window. Once you have done this, click insert, and the video should appear embedded in your post.
Attaching files
You may wish to attach files to your post which are relevant and you wish to share – such as research in the form of word documents or pdfs. You might not to even write a whole post at all – just share a document. Attaching a document to a post is very straightforward. All you have to do is scroll down to the bottom of the post content screen to find the ‘attached files and images' box, which looks like this:
Click on "Browse" to select a file from your computer. Once selected, the file will be automatically added to the bottom of your post. You can upload more than one file. You can see all the files you have uploaded in the attached files and images screen:
That's it. Happy posting.
