tips for newbie on writing articles?

[brynn]

Link to my forum: http://www.forum.inkscapecommunity.com
SMF version: 2.04
TP version: 1.107
Default Forum Language: english
Theme name and version: Aqua Style
Browser Name and Version: Firefox 20.0.1
Mods installed: Simple Colorizer, Stop Spammer, Sorted Pkg Mgr Listing, Fancy Posts, Extended Help, No Temp Dir Removal, Integration Hooks Report, Dev Center, Forum Firewall, More Spiders, Enhanced Dropdown
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Hi Friends,
I'm a very green newbie, and trying to write an article.  I have a few to write, to teach members how to write articles, and then a few to write for the site (tutorials).  (The forum will provide support for the Inkscape community (open source vector graphics editor) and the articles will be Inkscape tutorials.)  But I'm having such a hard time with it myself, I"m thinking it may be a lost cause.

I've tried using the wysiwyg for both HTML and BBC.  And no offense, but they have a really lot of "quirks" if not outright bugs.  So then I thought I'd just code out the articles, and forget the wysiwygs.  Well, it turns out that the only kind of HTML I know, which is the very most basic kind, is not really recognized by TP.   I paste in my code, but after I save it, it's gets changed to some weird, wacky hybrid, apparently of what I wrote and what TP recognizes.

So my first question -- What kind of HTML does TP use?  I don't have any problems learning a more advanced version of HTML.  I just need to know what kind it is, so I learn the right kind.

And then, my forray into BBC has been mostly a disaster.  Since I don't know much about BBC, and I haven't been able to find any instructions about it, other than very general info (such as what the tags look like) I started out by writing part of the content of the article in the formatted mode (of the wysiwyg), then I would click Toggle View button, to switch to the code view, to see how the code is written.  The problem with that, is that Toggle View doesn't truly JUST toggle the view.  In several situations, it changes the code I have written.  So then I need to fix it, before I can continue.

I managed to get half an article written, just straight coding it out, not using wysiwyg, and wanted to save that much (a couple hours' work) and take a break.  Well, when I saved it, it just went wacky.  The only thing I can salvage is the text itself.  But I''ll have to recode it completely!

I'm hoping that somewhere, someone has written a tutorial.  None of this has been intuitive.  And if it's this hard to do, surely there must be tutorials somewhere.  Unfortunately, I haven't been able to find any.

So 2nd question -- Can you refer me to any info about how to write BBC code for TP?

3rd question -- Are there any tutorials for writing articles in TP at all?

And yes, I've seen http://www.tinyportal.net/docs/.  What minimal documentation there is, only instructs how to configure the articles, to function on the forum/site.  I haven't seen anything about how to actually write the articles.

Thanks for your help 

PS -- Especially I need to be able to use tables, and/or lists.  Is there any way to have a table with borders?  It appears not.  Thanks again 

[lurkalot]

OK, here's something for you to try.  Go to Tinyportal admin > Click the settings icon for the articles, (The pen icon)  On the page that comes up, set "Use the WYSIWYG editor?" to No. and save. 

Now add a new html article and enter (or paste) your desired html code. See if that works. It should. 

As for BBCode, click your help button in your main menu, and you'll see a link in the list called

"Bulletin Board Code (BBC) - Posts can be spiced up with a little BBC"

Click that link and it'll show you all the BBCode that you can use. Or just click here,
http://wiki.simplemachines.org/smf/Basic_bulletin_board_codes or here, http://wiki.simplemachines.org/smf/Alphabetical_list_of_all_bulletin_board_codes

Hope this helps.

[IchBin]

Sounds like you are trying  to save code when using the editor. Some people don't realize when you actually paste code into the editor, you have to be in the code edit mode. There's a little icon in the wysiwig editor that allows you to toggle between wysiwig mode, and code mode basically. You cannot be in wysiwig mode when you paste html code into the editor.

As far as BBC, TP should handle it the same way that SMF does when you create a topic or reply. If it doesn't, there could be a bug in it.

[sangham.net]

Great topic,

I guess I am as well a more then newbie. Maybe you give a concrete sample as it's easy to misunderstand as well as we mostly learn with concrete undertakings.

As far as I had seen, as soon as you save it, some html codes will be cut of such as <body> ... So I too, do not know exactly the function and how to integrate "header"s for example.

...to teach members how to write articles

That sounds to be a great undertaking, maybe we could develop a general guideline here together which could be provided in the TP-DOC as well (I made such in a simply way for our forum already, but not very extensive)

Dear lurkalot,

if you have already some html articles and you use ""Use the WYSIWYG editor?" to No.", would cause that all html codes would not been put into action and the display would be simply plain text.
It's not so clear how it really works, or better, not so easy to understand for newbies.

[lurkalot]

Dear lurkalot,

if you have already some html articles and you use ""Use the WYSIWYG editor?" to No.", would cause that all html codes would not been put into action and the display would be simply plain text.
It's not so clear how it really works, or better, not so easy to understand for newbies.

Thing is, like IchBin said, when you use the WYSIWYG editor you then have to click the Toggle code button to add your html.  What I found is the code kept changing and even disappeared completely at times when you go back and try and edit the article.  I just find it easier to turn off the WYSIWYG editor all together, no messing about.  No turning off the WYSIWYG shouldn't affect your existing articles.

One thing I would highly recommend to anyone.  Build a test site, either on your hosting, or better still a local one on your PC using something like Xampp.  That way you can try stuff out without messing up your live site.  Also handy for writing code and articles etc, and then pasting to your live site once all's working.  I have both, hosted and local test sites, here's my hosted one, http://cctestsite.info  for example. (yes it's a mess). lol..

[sangham.net]

Dear lurkalot,

Looks like a typical old rocker website ...living in the backstage. Long time not heard "The Who", so lets twist and shout.

Yes of course, I also saw that it is a little safer with just using the html codes. Nevertheless, it's good to find out how and why.

I also do not understand the "Import" function yet. It simply shows "text is not available" if i would import a link. It would be also interesting if the import is really an import or just a "frame" work.

I am up to integrate some 10.000 of articles, so its really interesting to know as much as possible before starting.

Thanks for the share of your hints!



Add: Tested a little with class... seems to be HTML5 -> css (but that is a newbie comment)
""Use the WYSIWYG editor?" to No." is 

[brynn]

Thanks lurkalot.  Yes, I've seen all of those -- lists of the BBC tags.  But integrating into an article, is often another story entirely.

IchBin, I'm not sure how the SMF forum handles this following....oh ok, since this is an SMF forum, I''ll just try it here.  But even if it is the same, it should be a called a bug, imo.

If you make a numbered list from the code mode/view of the TP article editor (using BBC), i.e.

Code Select Expand

[list=decimal]
[li] the first item[/li]
[li] the 2nd item[/li]
[li] the 3rd item[/li]
[/list]

Now I'll switching to code mode to write the above code (actually I'll just paste it).

[list=decimal]

• the first item
• the 2nd item
• the 3rd item

Hhmmm.....ok yes, this is behaving differently from my forum.  In my forum, if I click the numbered list button, it actually starts making the list.  When you click the button, it puts "1. ", so you're ready to write the list.  And  you can only see the code if you switch to the code mode.  But here, I see the same code in both modes.  So I guess something about this forum is different.  In anycase, it does not exhibit the problem.

When you put that code while in code mode, and click Toggle View, it does show the numbered list.  The problem is that when you switch back to code mode, the "=decimal" has been removed.  So that whenever I toggle the view, I have to fix that code.  So that if I'm writing tutorials (i.e. numbered lists), I'll go crazy with that. 

And the same kind of thing happens with the HTML editor, only much worse.  I''ll put in my code in the code view, then switch to regular mode, to see how it looks.  But when I come back to the code view mode, it's changed to entirely different tags, that I don't know how to use.  For example, often the paragraph tag (<p>) gets changes to <div something> or <span something> etc.

Well, for html, I can solve the problem by using some other text editor (I have Notepad++).  But for the BBC code, it doesn't seem to have that as one of the available languages.

If anyone wants to test that specific BBC issue on my forum, we'll have to do it later, tonight or maybe tomorrow, because I'm just leaving for an appointment right now.  But leave a reply, and when I come back, I'll take the forum out of Maintenance Mode and get you registered.

Thanks again for your help 

PS -- Oh, well switching Toggle View button does seem to have messed with the BBC table code.  See how it left out the "=decimal" and put bullets instead?

[lurkalot]

Like I said, I turn the WYSIWYG editor off and leave it that way.  It sucks quite frankly, and always did. lol.. 

Put some example codes in your next post, and I'll try them on my testsite.  Post an example of some BBCode, and another in html.  Also please remember to post them between [code][/code] tags please.

[brynn]

Ok, I've taken my forum out of Maintenance Mode, so you can check the BBC decimal list code that I posted in my last message there.  I think the same problem occurs whether in a message or a TP article.

1 - paste the code into the code view/mode of a BBC wysiwyg
2 - Toggle View button once
3 - Toggle View button again
4 - note how "=decimal" has disappeared from the original code

I don't have an HTML example handy, since I managed to loose whatever I was working on.  But I'll make up another quick example asap, and post here (for you to test in my forum).

(I might add that you aren't the only person who has suggested not to use the wysiwyg, because they don't work very well.  I have to wonder, why not fix them?  (duh, right?)  Unless you only ever intend "power users" or people with coding skills to use it, you're making it really hard for not-so-advanced users (like me) to be successful with it.  I see comments all the time about how brilliant TP is, as a portal mod.  Apparently I'm not advanced enough to see or understand the brilliance, because I'm finding it.....well, as I said originally, if it's going to be this hard to use, I might be better off not using it at all.  And if TP simply "borrows" the wysiwygs from SMF, couldn't you "impose on" them, or help them to fix it?  I would certainly be glad to commit to even a long and drawn out testing period, to help get them all slick and working reliably.  After all, I want my new forum members to have a successfull experience as well.)

I'll be back shortly with some HTML code for you to test 

[lurkalot]

Ok, I've taken my forum out of Maintenance Mode, so you can check the BBC decimal list code that I posted in my last message there.  I think the same problem occurs whether in a message or a TP article.

1 - paste the code into the code view/mode of a BBC wysiwyg
2 - Toggle View button once
3 - Toggle View button again
4 - note how "=decimal" has disappeared from the original code

This does the same for me, but the code still works as expected when you view the article. 

I've no idea how wysiwyg editors work, that's IchBin's department lol..  All I can say is all wysiwyg editors, or at least all the ones I've used have their quirks.  I've just learnt to not use them at all, this stems right back to TP 0.9.8.  Once you decide what type of article (html / bbc ) etc, then just write them manually. More people swear at wysiwyg editors that swear by them.