(A lot of you have been asking for this for some time, so we asked David Poms, our new intern and an OpenLefter himself, to put it together. He did a great job. If you have any useful tips to add, feel free to leave a comment.
I also added a link to this in the red header at the top of the page, next to "about & contact". If you're ever working on a new diary/comment and need some help, click on it and it will open in a new tab so you can use it as a reference without closing your diary/comment window. - promoted by Adam Bink)
You asked. We answered. A user's guide to commenting at Open Left using HTML commands!
Open Left is powered by Soapblox, a blog platform that allows community members to easily participate and publish on the site. Anyone familiar with blogs, especially of the lefty variety, should find the layout of the site fairly intuitive. However, not everyone is quite as familiar with creating content as reading it. A simple block of text is fine for getting a point across, but Soapblox provides an array of extras that allow you to communicate with highly readable posts or comments. The best way to learn how to do this is to learn basic HTML commands. To help everyone learn the basic tricks of the trade for creating excellent posts, I have provided a list of HTML commands that are commonly found in posts. If anyone can think of other commands that work in Soapblox and are useful for posting, please leave them in comments below.
Full list of useful commands in the extended entry.
First, our request for $17,400 to secure Soapblox was met:
While the thermometer shows the fundraiser at slightly under the $17,400 goal, that total does not tell the whole story. More sources chipped in, too, including:
Over $200 raised directly for Soapblox by non-US citizens via PayPal
So, the fundraiser is actually over $20,000 at this point, well past our goal. Thank you, thank you, thank you! All of the money raised beyond the $17,400 goal will be used to continue upgrading Soapblox. Here is what the money from this fundraiser has already accomplished (more in the extended entry):
This is amazing. You guys are amazing. Earlier this week, when we unveiled our Better Democrats 2010 page, it quickly shot up to over 100 contributors, and more than $5,700. Now, in less than seven hours today, the Save Soapblox campaign has reached over 60% of it's goal, hitting $10,978 already!
For a time just after the holidays, just after an exhausting and expensive campaign, and during an economic downturn, this is a remarkable effort. Thank you, thank you, thank you to everyone who has contributed, and everyone who has helped out so far! You can help us get over the top here.
The efforts of the netroots over the last six years have been a remarkable testament to what a group of dedicated grassroots activists can do. Right now, it is hard not to feel excited, and hopeful for the future. We have the organizing energy. We have the growing numbers. We are making change happen, and turning the country bluer. The remarkable efforts of this community over the past week are just another example. In a time of great need for 100 progressive blogs around the country, you are coming through. Again, thanks to all, and let's keep it going!
You know how some politicians are fond of saying "you can't solve a problem by just throwing money at it." Well, here is a problem you can solve by throwing money at it. Send in a contribution to save Soapblox now!.
To continue an almost comic run of bad luck, following my broken arm, Matt's departure from the site, and the Soapblox crash, last night my glasses broke. As it is impossible for me to function without my glasses, in uber-geek fashion, they are now taped together:
I take is as a symbol both of how much of progressive infrastructure is truly run on a shoestring, and of how we continue to press forward no matter what happens.
Together with Paul Preston and several Soapblox-dependent state blogs, BlogPac is finalizing a plan to save, secure, and improve Soapblox over both the short and long-term. For us, Soapblox is simply too big to fail, and we will not allow it to happen. The plan, along with an action alert, will be presented tomorrow. In the meantime, the situation has improved dramatically, as a new press release from Saopblox indicates. We are going to fix this problem, and continue to build a vibrant progressive movement.
For more information on why Soapblox matters, read this diary. For Paul's full press release, check out the extended entry.
In case you have not heard by now, Open Left's service provider, Soapblox, is currently in serious trouble. Given that Open Left is the largest website on Soapblox, and that BlogPac has given more money to Soapblox than any other organization (for the past two years, we have paid the hosting fees for almost all of the fifty-state blogs, and also invested money to improve server security), this had me in a near state of panic for a while. Fortunately, the crisis seems to be temporarily receding--for now.
This is a reminder of how much progressive infrastructure is operated on a shoestring. Soapblox was run by a single person as a part-time job even though, collectively, Soapblox websites--including most local blogs, Open Left, Pam's House Blend, Swing State Project, My Left Wing--had more than 100,000 readers a day. As Matt Glazer writes at Burnt Orange Report, another Soapblox dependant site:
Our site, along with nearly 100 others, are run on the SoapBlox platform. That is hundreds of thousands of eyes across the nation who use SoapBlox and never knew it.(...)
Again, Burnt Orange Report and our data seem to be in working order and intact. But if SoapBlox is down and fails to return, nearly 90% of the statewide blog infrastructure must reorganize. Nationally that means state and local sites are no longer able to cover their state legislative sessions or city, state, or statewide races.
In the long run, this outage (temporary or permanent) directly hurts all of us.
Paul developed and maintained SoapBlox for little money and no fame. In fact, SoapBlox is just a part time job for Paul, and like many of us that do this, we are required to have paid full time jobs in order to maintain and run our online projects. Today highlight why this systemic problem must be fixed long term.
While everything is in flux right now, later today BlogPac will start a "Save Soapblox" campaign to make sure that this never happens again, and to generally improving progressive blogosphere infrastructure. I will have more details when they are available, but for right now, BlogPac is on the new Better Democrats 2010 page. I know we are in a recession, but any contribution you can give in this time of crisis will be used to help keep Soapblox operational.
Live in Missouri? Used to live in Missouri? Never lived in Missouri, but are for some reason fascinated by Missouri politics? Well, come on down to Show Me Progress, Missouri's new Soapblox-based progressive community blog. (We've actually been up and running for a couple of weeks now, working out the glitches.) Like our cousin, Fired Up Missouri, we'll hammer the state GOP, but we will also provide a platform for progressives around Missouri to talk about issues, candidates, electeds, and what's going on in your neck of the woods. So join us this week as we follow the special session and hear directly from the Democratic candidates for Attorney General.
If you've tried to post a comment recently, you probably noticed something new: AJAX comments!
SoapBlox is proud to roll out AJAX comments for OpenLeft and all it's community blogs.
If things aren't looking quite right when you hit "post a comment", make sure you do a "hard refresh" of your browser. On a PC this is ctrl+f5. It's command+r on a Mac.
If the new feature is just not working at all, you can turn it off by coming to your Profile page, then Comment Prefs. If you're currently logged in, click here, uncheck "use AJAX comments" and click Save.
Also, if it doesn't work, let us know!
We're hoping this new feature will help enhance your blogging experience on OpenLeft and all the SoapBlox blogs.
STATE BLOGS
