Instructions for Registered Users

Thank you for your participation in IP v3.0 as a registered user! We’ve now migrated to a new Content Management System called Drupal, which will allow us to do a number of new, powerful things:

• Every registered user can create their own blog entries – but only featured authors will automatically appear on the front page
• Blog entries can be promoted to (and off) the front page through the votes of readers
• Every registered user will have their own blog at www.illinipundit.com/USERNAME
• Every registered user’s content is syndicated (has its own RSS feed)
• All registered users can have individualized avatars and comment signatures

To log in, please point your browser to www.illinipundit.com and fill in your USERNAME and PASSWORD in the “User login” box in the left sidebar. (After logging in, the “User login” box will be replaced by a box titled with your username, called the “USERNAME Block.”)

• View: this is the publicly viewable portion of your profile. For now, it only contains the length of your site membership, and a link to your blog – essentially this is a full-featured sub-site on IP that contains only your blog posts, and no posts by any other authors.
• Edit: allows you to make changes to your user account, including username, email address, password, picture (used as an avatar to identify you in comment threads), preferred theme, comment signature (which will appear at the end of all your comments) and time zone. 
  
  • PLEASE CHANGE YOUR PASSWORD IMMEDIATELY. Please fill in your new password in the two “Password” fields and click “Submit” at the bottom of the page. You will be returned to the user account-view page.
• Track: This page tracks all of your recently created content (blog entries and comments).

After updating your password, feel free to enter a comment signature and/or upload a small picture for your profile.

Creating a blog entry

• Title: Title of the post
• Categories: Categories into which this post applies. Please make an effort to highlight at least one category for each post. To highlight multiple categories, hold down the CRTL key while clicking.
• Body: the main entry area for the content of your blog entry. You’ll notice some formatting buttons across the top of the Body window – you can find explanations for each of those buttons here. (Not all of the buttons that appear on that page appear in our editor window – but all of the buttons that appear are on that guide page.)
  
  • This WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editor will allow you to have a much greater variety of formatting options than were available with WordPress. Please don’t use excessive formatting – cleaner is almost always easier to read.  
  • If you are copy-n-pasting your posts from Microsoft Word, please allow the editor to “clean” it (you’ll get a popup asking permission) as it prevents sloppy Microsoft Word formatting that breaks our site.
  • To upload and insert an image:

1. Place your cursor at the point in your content at which you’d like the image inserted.
2. Click on the “Insert/Edit Image” button. A popup window will open.
3. If you know the URL of the image, paste it into the URL box.
4. If you need to upload the image, click on “Browse Server.” Another popup window will open.
5. To upload an image, click on “Browse” (at the bottom of the window) and double-click on the image you want to upload. It will now appear in the list of images available to be inserted.
6. Click on the image you’d like and it will be inserted into your content. You’ll return to the popup window opened in Step #2. 
7. Set any other characteristics you’like.
8. Click OK.

• Underneath the Body window are option menus (you may need to click to open one or more of the option menus):
  
  • File attachments: use this to upload files as attachments to the post. Allowed extensions are jpg jpeg gif png txt html doc xls pdf ppt and pps. For images, if you’d like to insert into your content rather than attach as a file, please follow the instructions above (“To upload and insert an image”)
  • Scheduling options: use the “publish on” field to schedule future publishing.

To control how you view comments, you can change the settings under the post in “Comment viewing options.” These are your individual viewing preferences, so feel free to experiment. Make your selections by clicking on “Save settings.”

To write a comment, scroll to the bottom of the blog entry page. 

• If you’re not logged in, you have the option of completing fields for your name, email and homepage.
• If you are logged in, your username will appear above the comment submission window.

For writing comments, you have access to a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editor. You can find explanations for each of those buttons here. (Not all of the buttons that appear on that page appear in the editor window – but all of the buttons that appear are on that guide page.)

You will have the same formatting options for comments as you have for blog entries (described above) including images.

Moderating (Voting On) Blog Entries

Click on the title to any blog entry to view the comments that have already been submitted.

Directly underneath the blog entry you’ll see an drop-menu titled “Moderate Post” (if this is somebody else’s blog entry). This is the mechanism by which users can approve and/or disapprove of blog entries. To vote, select your choice from the menue and click “Add vote.”

Voting is a significant new feature to give readers some control over the content that appears on the front page of IlliniPundit.com.

• Non-front-page-blog entries that receive enough positive votes will be promoted to the front page.
• Blog entries that receive enough negative votes can be removed from the front page, but will still be available on the creator’s sub-blog at www.illinipundit.com/USERNAME.
• Featured authors and administrators have the ability to promote and demote their own blog entries and the blog entries of registered users simply by editing the option.
• Registered users have the ability to vote on the blog entries of all authors, except their own.
• Anonymous users currently have the ability to vote on the blog entries of all authors.
• The vote thresholds for promotion and deletion will be subject to an initial adjustment period.
• The vote threshold for promotion will always remain significantly lower than the vote threshold for deletion.
• Voting is only allowed for seven days after published. Beyond that, the post will almost certainly have dropped off the front page anyway.
• Voting is a new feature, and is a work in progress. Please feel free to make suggestions for the most effective, fair implementation.

• Search
• Blogroll
• Recent blog posts (both those promoted and not-yet-promoted to the front page)
• Recent comments (but not blog entries with recent comments) with time stamps
• Tracker (with content updated recently)
• RSS
  
  • Individual author feeds
  • Individual category feeds
  • Complete comments feed
  • All content feeds
• A listing of blogs by author
• Archives by date