How To Publish
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Contents
- Logging In & Author Profile
- Meta Links
- Open-Source Blogging Software
- English First
- Freedom Of Speech
- Copyright
- Code Of Conduct & Terms Of Use
- Authors’ Privileges
- Midas Oracle Authors & Authors’ Archives
- Anonymity Of Some Authors
- Disclosure
- How To Appear Under Your Full Name
- How To Have Your Face Picture Published
- Web Usability Principles
- How To Assess The Readability Of Your Post Or Page
- Visual Editor Vs. Plain Editor
- How To Write A Page
- How To Write A Post
- Post Footer
- How To Paste HTML Code
- How To Insert A Visual Representation
- How To Embed A Chart Widget
- How To Embed A Video Widget
- How To Write Math
- Cross-Posting Policy
- Comment Policy
- E-Mailing Of Comments Made On Your Posts
- How To Comment
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Logging In & Author Profile
- You need to be registered as a post/page author in the WordPress system powering Midas Oracle to be able to publish posts and pages. Come to us, we are an open club.
- Registered members of Midas Oracle will receive a mass e-mail once in a while —only when important circumstances warrant. (There are e-mail options on your profile page, inside the Midas Oracle system, which allows you to opt out of mass e-mails, if you really need to.)
- To have your name removed from Midas Oracle, send your resignation to the blog administrator (Chris Masse), and he will delete your profile from the blog database.
- Once you are registered as a post/page author, you can login for the session, and ask your browser to remember your username and password —just after you have personalized your password. If you prefer, you can use your OpenID to log in on Midas Oracle. (An OpenID is a unique username that lets you login to any website that accepts an OpenID.)
- If you are not able to log in with your username and password, just contact Chris Masse and he will reset your password, which will do the repair.
- You can modify the content of your profile, including the URL of your website, blog or home page, which will be published on your author page (created just after your first post).
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Meta Links
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Open-Source Blogging Software
- The software packages that power Midas Oracle:
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English First
- American English is the official language of Midas Oracle.
- That said, we aim at diversity in all angles: geography, nationality, gender, religion, philosophy, culture, politics, education, background and interest.
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Freedom Of Speech
- Your freedom of speech is total, providing that you understand the spirit of the group blog and that you respect the Western jurisdictions’ limitations on free speech (e.g., anti-defamation laws).
- You should write either for the general public or for a vertical public —or both. In all cases, whichever audience you aim at, don’t be boring.
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Copyright
- Copyright is retained by each author.
- Each blog author is free to specify looser copyright rules for his/her own posts/pages in his/her Midas Oracle profile. (For more info, see: Creative Commons.)
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Code Of Conduct & Terms Of Use
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Authors’ Privileges
- Blog Authors can publish posts, and/or pages, and/or comments.
- There are 2 kinds of Blog Authors. Post/Page Authors can publish posts, pages, and comments, while Comment Authors can only publish comments.
- Almost all of the Post/Page Authors can publish immediately, while a few of them get their writings assessed before publication.
- All Post/Page Authors are also de facto Comment Authors. Additionally, other Comment Authors are self-recruited in the blog audience.
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Midas Oracle Authors & Authors’ Archives
- Blog Frontpage
- Site Map
- The List Of All The Post/Page Authors
- The List Of All The Midas Oracle Posters
- The List Of The Last Posts By All The Midas Oracle Authors
- The List Of The Guest Authors’ Posts - (that is, excluding Chris Masse’s ones)
- All Guest Authors’ Posts - (that is, excluding Chris Masse’s ones)
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Anonymity Of Some Authors
- The Midas Oracle blog authors should appear under their real name. Request for anonymity may be granted in two cases:
- Blogging speculators who trade on illegal, offshore prediction exchanges, and who are under special, personal or professional circumstances;
- Blogging exchange managers or money managers whose freedom of speech is restricted by overzealous regulators.
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Disclosure
- Please, do disclose any business relationship(s) –if any– to our readers. A line at the bottom of the text is more than enough. You’re, of course, welcome to have any consensual business relationship(s) —that’s the capitalism at work.
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How To Appear Under Your Full Name
- Login to Midas Oracle.
- Go to “Users” and then to “Your Profile”.
- Type your full name in the “nickname” box —first name, middle name or its initial, last name.
- Update your profile.
- In the “display name publicly as” menu, choose your full name.
- Update your profile —yeah, for the second time.
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How To Have Your Face Picture Published
- You go on the Gravatar website and upload your face pic (or whatever image);
- You associate it with the e-mail address you use as a registered Midas Oracle member;
- Each time you publish a post, a page or a comment on Midas Oracle, the readers will see your “gravatar”, at the upper left of your text. Smile, you’re on Midas Oracle.
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Web Usability Principles
- One idea = one blog post. If you have other ideas, publish each of them individually.
- Write casually.
- Put your most important sentence(s) in bold. Remember: The Internet citizens do not read on the Web; they scan. Help them scanning your text.
- Link to the outside world, if possible.
- Craft a short but informative blog title, using the keyword(s) you’re using in the body of your blog post. Be precise and elliptic; no puns (keep them for the text body).
- For more information on Internet usability, see Jakob Nielsen. In particular, see: Blog Usability: Top Ten Design Mistakes in Weblogs.
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How To Assess The Readability Of Your Post Or Page
- Spot the metrics, above the title. Go there to read the explanation.
- Here’s what you’ll see:
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Visual Editor Vs. Plain Editor
- In your user profile page, you will spot this option, “Use the visual editor when writing“. You can have this option checked, or not. The “visual editor” is a user-friendly editor with a graphical user interface, which hides the code, a bit like FrontPage, DreamWeaver and Nvu. The alternative is a plain, simple editor where the code is apparent. You choose!… but we recommend that you use the visual editor. (Note that, if you want to insert either an Inkling Markets widget or a YouTube widget, you have to turn off the visual editor, temporarily.)
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How To Write A Page
- Same as when writing a post, except that a page has no category, no tag, and no feed.
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How To Write A Post
- Click on “Write” in the menu, and you’ll be directed to the “Write Post” area (see the screen shot just below).
- You fill in the body text. You do so in the “Write Post” area. Don’t use the “Split post with the More tag” function or the “Optional Except” zone.
- Put your most important stuff in the first paragraph (that’s called the inverted pyramid), and put your most important sentence(s) in bold.
- Write a descriptive post title.
- Above the writing area, you’ll see that you can shorten the permanent link (a.k.a. “permalink”). Use a series of keywords, each separated by a hyphen (”-”).
- To insert a link, select the anchor text, click on the “Chain” icon (”Insert / Edit Link”), paste the URL, do not change the default “Open Link In The Same Window”, and write a short link title (which helps readers predict where they are going to go if they click).
- Under “Categories”, you can select the appropriate category(ies).
- Below the writing area, type your tag(s).
- Spot the “All In One SEO Pack” box, just below the writing zone. In the description box, paste your most important sentence, or make up a good log line that describes your content. In the keyword box, paste there your list of tags (which you have copied from the tags box).
- Under “Discussion”, you can allow or disallow comments and/or pings —you’re asked not to change the default options (”yes” for comments and “no” for trackbacks) unless you wish to disallow the comments.
- You can either publish right away (”Publish“), or save your text as a draft (”Save“) for a publication at a later date.
- For more information about how to write a post, please read the documentation of WordPress: Writing Posts.
- For more information about WordPress 2.5 specifically, see this screencast.
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Post Footer
- You can end up your blog post with a footnote, stating your full name, your social status, the name of your organization, your site RL, and the ways to contact you (your e-mail address, made non-clickable to avoid the spammers, and/or your business phone number).
- Of course, all these details are also published on each author’s page, but that would require the readers to click on the link embedded under your name at the bottom of your blog post, which they seldom do, alas.
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How To Paste HTML Code
- Copy the source code (i.e., the HTML code lines) from your outside source.
- In Midas Oracle, click on the “HTML” tab (at the right of the “Visual” tab, in the “Write Post” area), paste the code lines there, and then return to the “Visual” mode.
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How To Insert A Visual Representation
- Insert a static chart or a picture already posted somewhere on the Web (including on Midas Oracle): Put your cursor where you want the image to be implemented, and click on the “Tree” icon (”Insert / Edit Image”). Insert the URL and write up a short image description. Click on “Insert”.
- Insert a static chart or a picture located on your local computer: You can upload your image by using the image uploader located just below the “Write Post” area. Click on “Browse”, locate your image file, give it a title, and click on “Upload”. As soon as the uploading process is finished, WordPress automatically goes to the “Browse” tab. From there, in “Show”, select “Full Size”, in “Link To”, select “None”, and click on “Send to Editor”. The image will be placed where your cursor is.
- Insert a static chart or a picture already uploaded to the Midas Oracle system: Put your cursor where you want the image to be placed, go to the image uploader, select “Browse All”, and click “Next” to see the previous images. Once you have selected your image, perform the same operations as in step #2 —in “Show”, select “Full Size”, in “Link To”, select “None”, and click on “Send to Editor”. The chart or picture will be placed where your cursor is.
- Once a static image is inserted in the “Visual” writing area, then you can click on it to select it, click on the “insert/Edit Link”, and add an external URL referring to this picture or chart.
- More information, from the WordPress documentation: - Using Images - Using Image and File Attachments -
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How To Embed A Chart Widget
- Insert a dynamic chart (i.e., a chart that will update itself in future): You have to implement a bunch of code lines provided by your chosen prediction exchange. Click on the “Code” tab, paste the code lines there, and then return to the “Visual” tab. The chart will be placed where your cursor is in the “Visual” tab, and it will update itself in the near future each time a reader loads the blog post (a.k.a. webpage). Beware, though, that after two months or so after the contract expiry, the prediction exchange will likely drop support for that dynamic chart.
- It’s better to add a static chart, in addition to a dynamic chart, to any blog post, for the reason that the dynamic chart won’t be supported by the exchange server soon after the contract expiry.
- For InTrade-TradeSports, you have to suppress the return lines at the end of the three first code lines.
- For NewsFutures, you can paste the code lines as they are.
- Before inserting an Inkling Markets widget, you have to uncheck temporarily the visual editor in your profile. (See the “Visual Editor Vs. Plain Editor” and “How To Embed A Video Widget” explainers, above and below.)
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How To Embed A Video Widget
- Go inside the WordPress system, in “Users”, “Your Profile”; uncheck temporarily the “Visual Editor”;
- Go writing your blog post in the “Visual” writing area, and paste the YouTube code line in the “Code” area;
- Publish your blog post;
- Return to your profile, and re-install the visual editor (if you like to use it for writing your regular blog posts).
- Be careful: the visual editor should be turned off when you create a blog post embedding a widget and also when you edit that blog post (in case you update it, later on).
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How To Write Math
- Not yet available for WordPress.org (which powers Midas Oracle).
- Math for the Masses [WordPress.com]
- Can I put Math of Equations in my Post? [WordPress.com]
- Using Latex in WordPress
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Cross-Posting Policy
- Each Post Author is free to do whatever he/she wants —i.e., cross-posting the full text on Midas Oracle, or posting a summary with a link to his/her original blog post on his/her own website.
- Our readers prefer to have the duplicated blog post published in its entirety on Midas Oracle —i.e., cross-posted. Once you have pasted your text, add a line saying that it has been cross-posted from your blog, with the deep link to your original blog post —as opposed to a link to the root of your blog. Follow this piece of advice from the Google Webmaster Central blog: “If you syndicate your content on other sites, make sure they include a link back to the original article on each syndicated article.”
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Comment Policy
- The consensus is that opening comments helps the blog, both in terms of content and audience.
- That said, under some circumstances, you might be willing to close the comments. As a Post Author, it’s your call.
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E-Mailing Of Comments Made On Your Posts
- You will automatically receive by e-mail the comments made on that blog post(s) that you authored. (Thus, logically, you won’t be able to check the “notify me” box, located under the comment area, since you are already subscribed to these comments, by default.)
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How To Comment
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