To use all of the features of The Economic Populist, you must be registered and logged in. Author accounts are individually approved after registration and at least 3 comments are contributed.
Blog Your Brains Out
To write a forum or blog post, go to create content menu, right hand column. New Blog posts will be listed on the front page and should be original writings, in depth articles. The Instapopulist, or forums are used for economic report overviews, short news posts, short discussion threads and site administration.
Posts use full XHTML in your post, which is the default mode. A WYSIWYG (What you See is What you Get) editor is also available. Menu icons in the rich-text editor (WYSIWYG) allow users to format their writings without having to understand the underlying XHTML tags. To use the WYSIWYG editor, click on the rich text editor link below the body area where you compose your post. Hover your mouse over the buttons in the rich text editor to see what each icon in the toolbar does.
A Democratic Community Blog
Users decide what will be on the front page. Arrows next to posts move content to the front page or off of the site. Here are the details on how the Content Promotion/Demotion System works.
Cross Posting or Reposting from or to The Economic Populist
Many people like to post their writings on more than one site and that's fine by us. After all, the goal is to generate more awareness, involvement and discussion on U.S. trade, economic, labor policy. The problem is Google and other aggregators don't like copies. To fake out RSS aggregators, Google, etc. please change your post title and also change the first line or two of your post. Please help alert more people about EP when cross posting.
This is a REQUIREMENT for cross posting from The Economic Populist. Copy the below and paste in the top or bottom of your writing on the other sites if you wrote first on The Economic Populist. If the post is from your own blog or site, replace the Below URL and name, text with your own URL, name and text. Again, this is required. It doesn't matter what you say in this line of XHTML code, as long as you clearly identify the post is a copy and point to the original authoring site URL.
<sup><em>Cross posted on <a href="http://www.economicpopulist.org">
The Economic Populist</a> -
A Community Site for Economics Freaks and Geeks</em></sup>
That will look like this:
Cross posted on The Economic Populist - A Community Site for Economics Freaks and Geeks
Some XHTML formatting tags when in the plain text editor
To quote another source:
<blockquote>This is the text you are quoting</blockquote>
Displays:
This is the text you are quoting
To create a link:
<a href="http://www.exampleURL.com">Text Describing the Example URL</a>
Displays:
Text Describing the Example URL
To highlight some words:
<strong>bold</strong>
Displays:
bold
Images
To put images in your blog, it is recommended to use the image upload feature below the blog edit body form. Click on the insert image link below the post body edit form. This site hosts images and page load is much faster if you use this feature.
If you must use image hosting sites such as Photobucket or Flickr, format your images correctly. It is key to do this as improperly formatted images dramatically slow page load. See below for the correct formatting. It is best to edit your image to the right size before upload. Resizing large images to small ones in XHTML slows down page load.
The XHTML code to insert an image is:
<img src="http://i108.photobucket.com/albums/n4/RobertOak/23257693.jpg"
alt="text describing image" width="250px" height="250px" />
To align the image right, create a space margin and resize:
<img src="http://i108.photobucket.com/albums/n4/RobertOak/23257693.jpg"
alt="text describing image" align="right" width="90px" height="100px"
style="margin:5px;" />
You can also use the rich text editor. Click on the image button to insert images into your writings.
Images can also be attached to the end of your blog post as well as spreadsheets, pdfs (files).
To embed videos, most video hosting sites,such as youtube, have the embedded code available. While in the plain-text editor, Copy and Paste into the body of your post the embed code provided.
Lists
The rich text editor has two buttons for lists. Here is the correct XHTML syntax to format lists:
<ul>
<li>A point</li>
<li>Another point</li>
<li>Pontificate a third time </li>
</ul>
Displays:
- A point
- Another point
- Pontificate a third time
<ol>
<li>Some like to innumerate </li>
<li>Some number their kids</li>
<li>Some others write numbers in underwear</li>
</ol>Displays:
- Some like to innumerate
- Some number their kids
- Some others write numbers in underwear
Tables
The rich text editor does have a tables button. Here are a few tables tags.
<table border="1">
<caption>Caption for Table</caption>
<tr>
<th>Heading 1</th> <th>Heading 2</th> <th>Heading 3</th>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> row 1, column 1</td> <td>row 1, column 2</td> <td>row 1, colunm 3</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> row 2, column 1</td> <td>row 2, column 2</td> <td>row 2, colunm 3</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> row 3, column 1</td> <td>row 3, column 2</td> <td>row 3, colunm 3</td>
</tr>
</table>Displays:
| Heading 1 | Heading 2 | Heading 3 |
|---|---|---|
| row 1, column 1 | row 1, column 2 | row 1, colunm 3 |
| row 2, column 1 | row 2, column 2 | row 2, colunm 3 |
| row 3, column 1 | row 3, column 2 | row 3, colunm 3 |
Tables are the hard and one can easily miss a XHMTL tag. For more formatting of tables see this guide.
More XHTML Compose Tips. Here is information to write & format posts using Microsoft Live Writer.
Submitting Content
Once you have submitted content it is published. Please check to make sure the post is displayed the way you want. Blogs and forums can be edited for updates and mistakes. To save your post as an unpublished draft for later editing, check the private box before clicking the submit button.
Conversations
To see who has responded to your comments and forums, go to My account in the right hand column. Listed below will be your comment and forum history. My blog has your blog posts with comments.
Other Bloggers
To view the list of register users on the site, click here.
Your Blog
Each contributor has their own blog with their own news feed. To access the RSS news feed of an individual writer, click on the user's blog link at the bottom of a post. In your browser address bar, append at the end of the URL:
/feed
Click here for an example.
Account Features
We moved to a new server, so new features are being added. It's possible we can change the site look, just for you. You have a workspace, where you can track your comments, your own blog and your own account. Signatures are available via the account settings.
Friendly Reminders
Please stay on topic, this is an economics blog, we love statistics here, be good to each other and make your posts pretty. Pretty posts use XHTML tags and just get all the attention.
For Advanced Users
This site allows advanced CSS formatting, full XHTML, LaTex, video hosting and graphs, including generated graphs. Email us for more details.
For more Hints from blogger Heloise, check out the EP admin forum.
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