What's With This Weird Formatting? 📝 Blogging With HTML 💻
So far I'm seeing one of the biggest problems for people jumping into Steemit is that they are confused by the way the blogging format is all set up. Anyone who has ever used Wordpress, Linkedin, Facebook notes, Minds, Medium, or pretty much any blog generally has a toolbar and will write on a slightly higher level of code where the software will worry about the technical side of doing your formatting. On Steemit, originally when you start out you have to actually write things like this:
Header
"<center><h1>Header</h1></center>"
And just to write that so you could see it, I had to actually write
People coming into this for the first time have no idea what is going on. Well that is HTML, the basic code used on websites. Steemit strips away that extra layer and you have to do a little bit of the work yourself.....
OR use an addon / alternative which I'm sure you'd rather do so I'll cover that first then briefly go over HTML and some resources for that if you still just stick with regular Steemit.
Alternatives
I'm sure there are very many, but I found the easy place to post is through @Busy.org on https://busy.org/
It has a very simple easy to understand interface that may be much better received for new users. Keep in mind they take a portion of your rewards, but they do tend to upvote posts made on their platform that are quality. You are paying a bit to help support the platform and for the convenience it provides.
There isn't a lot to it and I don't know of any "better" alternatives so we will just say THE alternative is using Busy unless you decide you are going to use maybe some add-on or browser extension.
Addons / Extensions
One solution is Steemplus which I have wrote about and shared in detail before here: https://steemit.com/steemit/@scottcbusiness/steemplus-most-epic-interface-browser-extension-ever
It has an improved UI when it comes to everything on Steemit with more functionality like for example right now it puts my post preview beside my writing so it's much easier to compare
You may also notice in that picture you can add beneficiaries when you are posting using SteemPlus too if you want to pay out a percentage to someone or what have you. This is the direct link to get it from the chrome store: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/steemplus/mjbkjgcplmaneajhcbegoffkedeankaj
To my knowledge it's also on Firefox and can be acquired on Opera as well.
The other addon that I found would be useful is a wordpress / medium autoposter. So for example if you still prefer posting on medium or wordpress because you don't like change or don't want to learn you can use an add-on to automatically transcribe your posts from your blogs and post them here! It won't be as good as manually doing it, but better than not doing it!
HTML Formatting
Editor vs. Markdown
There is a very long winded explanation as to how it works, but I will start off by saying that you can just use the base editor which does some of the markup for you.
If you click the editor it will switch from the regular formatting to this below with a toolbar. It is pretty much self explanatory so I will only go a bit into how to use the basic markdown as that is what you will see when you first go to write a post.
Basics Of Markdown
It's not as hard as you might think. The basic concept is that you have the functions of a normal toolbar like you see above that you can add using "tags" represented by the greater than and less than symbols "<" and ">"
For example to add a header you would use <"h3"> at the beginning of the header and then <"/h3"> after it without the quotations around them.
Most people prefer to see articles with them aligned center especially images that appear aligned right with a bit of white space on the other side making it look less aesthetically pleasing. Like the previous example you would write the word "center" within the < and > and use the "/" backslash in the ending tag to end the tag's usage. You can see below is how I placed the image above centered.
If I were to really dive into everything about this I would have to write a whole other article and if you really struggling you may want to use one of the much easier alternatives I listed above. As long as you can search up what the tags are that you need you should have no issue moving forward with reference to this and the two guides below.
In-depth Guides On How To Use It
- https://steemit.com/steemit/@jonrhythmic/formatting-your-steemit-posts-using-html-markup-text-formatting-guide
- https://steemit.com/steemit/@belovebelight/step-up-your-posts-with-html-formatting-and-markdown-fun
I also wrote about formatting before however it was more so related to graphics and such like dividers and having an awesome signature. Anyways you can check that here: https://steemit.com/steemit/@scottcbusiness/how-to-have-awesome-blog-formatting
So that's it, let me know if you found this useful or if there is anything you felt I missed! Share your experience with everyone else who checks this out in the comments below!
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good to have this alternatives - I came along with the Markdown commands so far... 😊 @peekbit
Nice :)
😊
I did not know about Steemplus! Thanks for this informative article.
yeah for sure :) cheers
Thanks for sharing... another post I can share with newbies.. hell I'll just ask them to follow you and read your posts.. hehe
haha ey thanks so much for the support! I'm doing what I can to help :)
Very good information, I really like your post. Yeah .. Thank you yesterday have appreciated me by giving upvote 0001SBD
Cheers :) I payout monthly to my followers
Thank you so much for your informative post.. since I'm new to steemit , it will u helping me a lot..
Resteemed it so more steemians like me can learn to blog
Glad it helped!! Keep checking in :)
Sure mate
I swear I think you are spying on me. How funny is it that I was looking for something to help me with formatting my posts and making them look good...and BAM here's some help!! Thanks @scottcbusiness!! 🤘🤘
haha that's what I do :P On that note actually feel free on any posts to comment stuff you want to know about. I'd love to be writing about what people need the most help with!
Hmmmm, actually, I think I'd like to know more about witnesses and what all of that means. I'm getting formatting down pretty well, know about voting and SBD and Steem and all of that. Oh wait, here's one, is there a way to add a video without having to use youtube?... so, if you would like to expand on any one of those...that's all I can think of right now. Thanks!
DTube is the main platform I use for Steemit, I'll look into any alternatives though! I will be going into witnesses soon :)
good night ^^
Cheers
OMG!!! Thank you my Friend, im new on this and all this information its really help!!
Grettings!
Just doing what I can! :)
Thank you!! keep doing it pls!!
I wasn't actually aware that you could use HTML on steemit, I'd always just been relying on Markdown.
It seems like you can mix HTML and Markdown at different parts in a post, which is really nice as a tool for posting when you want to do both simple things and complex things side-by-side. Does anyone know if there's any downside to doing so?
I don't think there is any downside as far as I know
Thank you very much! God have mercy on us all!
Cheers