Blog posting by Members at BillWhittle.com has gained a feature, but lost one as well…at least for the moment.
GAIN: You can now easily embed YouTube video by pasting part of the URL into a box on our blog posting form.
LOSS: While you can edit your post by going to Connect > My Content > My Posts , formatting gets stripped in the process. This is frustrating for those who want to go back and fix a typo, but wind up losing their paragraph breaks, and even video embed.
WORK-AROUND: The not-quite ideal solution, is to use the Save Draft button on the blog post page and review your post before clicking the Create Post button.This, however, does not give you a WYSIWYG view of the post as it will appear, but merely gives you a chance for another read-through to catch mistakes.
ROAD-MAP: I’m working with the developer of the blog-posting gizmo to restore a feature it used to offer (one I was led to believe it currently offers) to edit blog posts from the front-end. Because this is entirely outside of my control, I’m also researching a way to create that functionality…despite being “a bear of very little brain.”
YOUR IDEAS: In the meantime, I do have the power to return to the old way, without easy YouTube embedding, but with the ability to edit and retain formatting. Eager to hear your ideas.
7 replies on “Gain and Loss: Growing the New Blog-Posting Gizmo”
This has probably been asked and answered already, but perhaps you could direct me to where. (I’ve been away for a while.) What happened to the forums?
Keep the new format, man!
I am FINALLY able to independently embed my own videos. FeelsGoodMan.
AS far as not being able to go back and fix typos because I’ll lose embedding, well, that’s what the admin is for.
From someone who has been frustrated by this issue every week for months, believe me. KEEP THE NEW SYSTEM.
I like ya, Scott, but I’ll be very happy to lose our weekly meetups. 😉
Personally I prefer the option to edit without losing formatting, but then I haven’t really had problems with embedding videos after the first couple of posts.
Hm…. Since it looks like the blogging form on our personal profiles still works the same, maybe it does make sense to have the “public” blogging link feature the simpler YouTube embed option.
I take it back! Formatting doesn’t work there anymore either. Not good. 🙁
Lydia, what do you mean by doesn’t work there?
The page that the gizmo goes to is different than the one you get to through the menu (Connect->{user}’s content-Add post) with a different editor. Presumably she assumed her formatting had survived in her post made with the menu version but when she went back to check she discovered it hadn’t.