HyperNews: Instructions: How to Add Messages

How to Add a Message

Use the

button to add messages, both top-level messages in a forum and replies to other messages.

Please do NOT add your message to this forum, unless you are writing about how to add messages, the subject of this forum. Inappropriate postings will simply be deleted from here.

First find the right forum to post your message. If you found this instruction page by following a "Help" link, you probably need to back up (using your browser Back button) to the forum you started in.

Please do NOT add test messages here. Use the Test Forum for testing.

The site providing these HyperNews help forums may be a different site than the HyperNews server where you first pressed the Help button: . First make sure you are viewing the correct forum or the message that you want to reply to. Then click on the "Add Message" button.
You may need to register as a member of the correct site before you are allowed to post to a forum at that site (depending on how HyperNews was configured at that particular site).

The "Edit Message" form asks for a Title, which should say something distinctive and succinct about your message. Any HTML tags in the title will be converted to plain text. If left empty, the article will be given the title "Untitled".

There is a space to type in your message, but you should first choose a format for your text. Here are the options:

"Smart Text" means that several automatic formatting changes will be done for you.
- Long or short lines of paragraphs will be wrapped and filled.
- A paragraph is all consecutive lines separated from the next paragraph by a blank line. Multiple blank lines are contracted into a single blank line.
- A paragraph will be left unformatted if any line starts with spaces or tabs. You can start the first line of a multi-line paragraph with indentation, however.
- If more than one line starts with the same prefix, they will be left unformatted.
- Anything that looks like a URL or email address will be made into an anchor. HTML tags are converted into plain text.
"Word Processor" (new with 1.9.3) means HyperNews will wrap long lines, break lines at hard Returns, preserve leading blanks and tabs, and use a fixed-width font. This is useful if you copy/paste your text from a word processor, or if you just want it to format like your word processor does. URLs and email addresses will be made into links.
"Plain Text" means you can type anything in the box and it should come out looking that way, whitespace preserved. Please note that if your browser wraps lines for you in the text box, you still need to insert line breaks yourself where appropriate.

"HTML" means you have the full power of the HyperText Markup Language. This, for example, is how you get images embedded in your message. But you must at least separate paragraphs with <p> or they will look like one big paragraph. Please try to generate correct HTML since otherwise you could mess up the display of the appended message outline. However, don't include the <head> or <body> tags, these are automatically added by HyperNews.

"URL" means you only need to enter the URL of the document containing your message in the box. (Disabled after 1.9.7.)

Other options:

Fill in your Email address, if there is a space for it. HyperNews may not know your correct address ahead of time.
Uncheck the "Notify me..." box if you do not want to be emailed when someone replies to your message.
You may specify the kind of message with an icon that will be displayed with your message.
There is a spot to include your name and homepage as well. Your name would then appear with your message instead of your user ID.

When you are done editing your message, push the "Preview Message" button at the bottom. The next page will show your formatted message as it will appear to readers (using your browser). If everything looks OK, go ahead and push the "Post your Message" button at the top of the preview page. If you decide to not submit your message, just don't push that button - you will have to back up with your browser Back button.

If you want to edit your message some more, use your browser to back up to the Edit Message form. (If it is empty, you may need to increase your in-memory cache size, or try a different browser. Alternatively, copy the text of your message *before* you preview it.) Reloading the message editing page will clear out all the entries. You can't reload the preview page, and please don't post twice for the same message (neither will do the right thing).

Instead of first previewing, you may be able to Post directly from the form. (New in version 1.9.3, as a configuration option.) If you do this, be careful that you are done editing because once you post, you cannot edit the posted message and it will have been sent out to subscribers.

After submitting the message, you will get an acknowledgement page with a link to the page you added your message to. Click on that link to see it and notice that your message has been added to the end. You may need to reload the page if your browser uses a cached copy of the page instead of reloading it for you. (Older versions of HyperNews would automatically display the page that you added your message to.)

Please do NOT post your message in this forum . . .
unless you have a question or comment about the topic of adding a message. To post about a certain topic, such as Windows '95 or a music group, first go to that HyperNews forum. This forum only explains how to add messages. Unrelated posts will simply be deleted. Thanks for your cooperation.