📢 What up, what up? 📢

So I just got back on HIVE after a pretty hefty hiatus. I've noticed a lot of posts lack basic formatting, still. IMO, you have to do anything, and everything, in your power to make your post stand out. Slapping a picture and writing one paragraph is not good enough. Not if you want to get noticed that is.

In this blog post I will give you all the tools needed to make your blog stand out from the pack.

PS - This is a re-hash of a post I made 4 years ago. I've updated the text considerably and adapted it to fit Hive. Hope you find it helpful. 😙

🤔 The Formatting Mentality 🤔

Before we dive into the tips and tricks, let me give you a few pointers on what your mentality should be. For me personally, the cost of learning barely any coding was well worth the small time investment. I wanted my blogs to look nice; not for anyone in particular. ➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖ For me, I wanted my posts to look cool for the sake of looking cool. Once you know the basic coding (and trust me it takes no time to learn) the oppertunity cost is definitely worth it. In no time, the coding will become second nature. Trust. 😉 ➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖ ✨ This is your platform, you project yourself through it. It's only logical to make your projection as shiny and polished as possible. ✨ ➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖

At any rate, you should always try to improve your work. 💯 💯 💯

⌨️ The Editor vs Coding ⌨️

The blog editor on Hive (as with most text-editors out there nowadays) support two coding languages: Markdown and HTML. You can't use any CSS functionalities (yet). And you can mix and match Markdown and HTML in most cases.

For Markdown support, you could always look at the ❔ Markdown guide ❔ found at the top right of your editor. ↗️

This tutorial is bare-bones, however, as are most Markdown cheat sheets out there (for some reason 😅 not sure why you have to delve in the internet's underbelly to find some of this stuff).

I know some people recoil at the word "coding", but the coding you actually have to do is pretty minimal and fun to use (for me at least 😂). On top of that, it's really simple - I truly believe anyone can use it. 💪

💁 Basic Formatting 💁

Enormous walls of text don't impress anyone (quite the opposite ❌). When you're done expressing your thoughts, press ENTER. Make every paragraph chain to the next one - and you'll have an easily understandable article. This alone will make a tremendous difference in your readability. ✔️

You can always use emotes when the occasion arises. 😎 They're fun and pretty and who doesn't like emotes? I mean really? 😁

Now for the most basic of coding. Keep in mind that every HTML tag requires you to close it with an "/" before the closing tag (Markdown simply requires you to repeat the same tag). HTML also requires that your closing tags be in the opposite order of the opening ones. And all letters and symbols must be combined (same for Markdown).

Formatting	Markdown	HTML
Bold	**	`<b>`
Italic	*	`<i>`
~~Strikethrough~~	~~	`<s>`
Link	`[TEXT](LINK)`	`<ahref=LINK>TEXT</a>"`

As for headers ↔️ there are six header sizes in both Markdown and HTML. The ones I'm using on this post are H1, the biggest ones. For markdown you simply use "#SPACEtitle", the more "#" you use, the smaller the title. HTML's tags go from <h1> to <h6>. And they work the same way as Markdown's.

📸 Images and Video 🎥

Ok, so, using images, and occasionally videos, is vital. And it's made really easy on HIVE. Simply copy and paste your link and it should work.

You can also upload images directly from your PC ➖ If you are having problems (because this sometimes doesn't work). Download your desired image and use an image uploader (like this one), to upload the image again and copy that URL.

I should also say that it's good practice to always credit the picture source (if needed that is, if the picture is of your own making however, mention that to not cause any confusion). Leaving pictures uncredited is unethical, as well as plagiarism.

📜 Additional Coding 📜

❗️ How did I make the image above align in the center? <center>

❗️ You wanna type in a smaller font? Something to put under an image? Try out <sub>

Lists

Using lists is much simpler in Markdown than HTML.

For Markdown, it's a simple "*" or "-" for unordered lists, and 1.(or any number you want) for ordered lists. Like I said - simple. The tags have to be used on a new line with SPACE separating them.

Horizontal Lime

You've seen these everywhere:

To achieve this it's a simple --- or *** on a new line.

Floating Images

This is some relatively new tech for HIVE, and really makes your blog look pretty. And you can achieve it using HTML.

To achieve the effect simply use this code:

<p>
<div class="pull-left/right">
(img link)
</div>
(your text)
</P>

📣 One thing to note when using this: the text that you enter will not support markdown! (so if you want to make something bold you will have to use the HTML tag < b >, rather then the ** that markdown uses) 📣

Text Justify

This is for anyone that wants their text to look all neat and well structured, like in a newspaper. It aligns your article on both sides of the page. You need to use the "justify class" to achieve this.

<div class="text-justify">
(your text)
</div>

Blockquotes

Quoting something is also really easy using Markdown. Simply use an ">" in a new line and type out your quote.

🤙 Conclusion 🤙

I can only advise you to try your hardest. If you want to make your post look a specific way, go to google and try and figure it out (it's easy! you can do it!). Just remember that HIVE only supports Markdown and HTML.

Everyone on here had to learn this basic coding at some point, and none had too hard a time doing it. So don't fear the code! It is a precious tool that will help you reach the audience you want.

🌟 The goal of this blog is to make the entire HIVE community better. Every post should be spick, and span, and beautiful. 🌟

headers copy.png