I have just been asked a question by our user Zigmas Bigelis that I thought I should share with all our users.

How do I write a new post when I am viewing my own Profy blog?

Unfortunately, right now it is impossible to start writing a new blog post right within your own blog when you view it. For the time being, writing a new blog post takes going to http://alpha.profy.com, logging in (if you are logged out), going to the Blog section and clicking the ‘Write a new post’ button.

But at the moment we are working on modification of the upper toolbar (the grey one you can see above all the content of my blog right now if you are not reading this in a feed reader). This toolbar will give you more control of the blog. For example, the toolbar will have a special ‘Write a new post’ link – clicking it will take you directly to the blog editor to write a new post.

Besides, we will add links for any reader of any blog (no matter if the reader is a registered Profy user or not) to be able to report a spam blog or a blog with some illegal or objectionable content. After all, we all know how quickly free blogging platforms start to attract spammers, sploggers and various creators of pornographic blogs.

So in addition to the link that sends you to your dashboard, the toolbar will help any logging in user to access more functionality right from the Profy blog he or she is browsing at the moment. And we will also simplify logging in process from this same toolbar as well so stay tuned for the new toolbar to make your Profy experience smoother. 

When typing in the WYSIWYG editor then switching to code view, via the HTML button, it is very messy.  There are no line breaks

Why don't you just type in code then???

Uhh, because the WYSIWYG is set to default and a button is, usually, faster than typing in <pwqijefpoeijf>whatever</pwqijefpoeijf>

 
Surely, we never expect people to use code view by default. After all, even if you are the best HTML expert ever, clicking a button is definitely easier than typing lengthy lines of code.

You are absolutely right about the line breaks in the code view – but this is true for many other blogging platforms. So when I edit posts in Wordpress and I need to use code view, I first find the line breaks and separate them and only then I do the editing I need.  Of course, I do not suggest you doing the same – certainly, writing in WYSIWYG is a better option and I will have our guys see if it is possible to make the code view less messy for you and other users facing similar problem.

Leaving the site while writing a new post by accidentally pressing the back/forward/bookmark/home/any button key completely gets rid of post.

Why don't you just Save as draft

Well, you see (presses Save as draft)... it takes you OUT of the post.  And don't even tell me about the Save button... a.k.a. PUBLISH.

I am not a developer myself but as far as I know these back and forward buttons are the most difficult problem for AJAX applications. You can see that whenever you are on Profy (except when viewing your own blog or blogs by other users) the URL in your browser address bar never changes (it is constantly http://alpha.profy.com). So whenever you do something with your browser buttons, you will be taken away from the product completely – which is bad but can not be fixed with the existing technologies.

I will definitely see to it that we have automatic saving on our roadmap for the future releases. But there is one thing about the writing process that you may not have noticed but that may be a nice surprise for you. You may have noticed that when you start writing a new post a new tab is opened (it is named ‘Write’) and unless you close the Profy tab completely you can do whatever you want inside the product and your post will stay intact in this tab. For example, you can go and browse some of your other posts or you can even go to feed reader or answer some new comments – the post you are editing will remain as it is. So saving your posts as drafts is only necessary if you want to close the browser tab or window or log out of the product – otherwise you can resume editing from where you leave it any time you want. I hope this can sugar-coat a bitter truth for you a little!

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You are absolutely right with this suggestion. The blogroll widget is on our roadmap to be implemented and added ASAP. It will also be a default widget that any user will be able to grab easily from the list of blog elements on the Layout tab. This will make it easier for people to link to their favorite blogs outside of Profy.

Right now it is still possible to use a custom code widget (as you have done yourself) to add any text, including links to your favorite blogs.

And I would love to insert a smiley every now and then but right now I am trying to be more eloquent until we add this small (but oh so necessary) feature. I often wonder how people used to write without smileys?