• Introduction
• What is Live Blog?
• Using Live Blog
• The Live Blog interface
• Creating and publishing a live blog
• Creating content and using sources
• Using the timeline
• Configuring your live blog
• Users and collaborators
• Managing feeds
• Media archive
• Appendix
• Getting help
• About this manual

Using the timeline

The timeline, in the right-hand pane of the journalist's view of Live Blog, is where live content is published. In a nutshell, to publish an item you just click on it in the left-hand pane, drag it over to the right-hand pane, and drop it into position in the timeline. But there are a few extra details that are worth knowing.

Publishing and re-ordering items

When you're writing a post in the Edit tab, the buttons below the text box offer you the choice to Save or Save & post.

 

If you choose Save & post, your item will be inserted at the top of the timeline on the right, and will be immediately visible to readers on your website.

If you choose Save only, as you might do if you are preparing an item for later insertion, it will appear in the list of items in the Edit tab, but not in the timeline.

When you move your pointer over an unpublished item in the left pane, a grab bar will appear on its left side, indicating that you can move it.

When you're ready to publish your item, go ahead and drag it over to the timeline. It will be immediately published to the live blog, at the top of the timeline.

Once posts have been published, you can drag them up and down to change their position in the timeline.

Tip: The Edit tab is different from the other source tabs in that, when you drag an item to the timeline in the right pane, it disappears from the left pane. In the other source tabs, a copy of the item remains in the left pane even when it has been dragged to the timeline.

Publishing items from external sources

When you drag items originating from external sources, i.e. from the Google, Instagram, Soundcloud, YouTube, Flickr, Twitter, and Facebook tabs, into the timeline, they are not immediately published. You get the chance to check them over one more time, and also to add your own comment, if you wish, by clicking into the empty text field below the item. If you do so, a formatting toolbar will appear offering you basic text formatting functions plus the ability to add web links and HTML code.

 

When you've added any comment you wish to, and are sure that you want the item to appear in your live blog, click the blue Publish button. Alternatively, if you've had second thoughts about posting that dubious hot tip, click the Cancel button, which will remove the item from the timeline.

Editing published items

You can make corrections and additions to your posts even after they have been published in the timeline. Click into the text of the post, and it will become editable. To save your changes, either click the blue Publish button or simply click away from the post.

Unpublishing and deleting published items

When you move your mouse pointer over a item which has been posted to the timeline, two symbols will appear in the top-right corner: a circle with a diagonal line through it, and an 'X'.

If you click the circle, your post will be unpublished.

 
 

This means that it will be sent back to the left-hand pane. Note that, whichever tab it originated in, a post which has been unpublished from the timeline will always appear in the Edit tab.

If you click on the 'X', the item will be deleted from the live blog.

If the deleted item originated from an external source tab, you can retrieve it from that tab if you decide you want to republish it.

However, if the item was a post written in the Edit tab, deleting it is permanent. It will not reappear in the list of items in the Edit tab.

Pinning and filtering your view of the timeline

If content is being added to the timeline quickly by your fellow contributors, but you want some extra time to read a post before it gets buried under an avalanche of new items, you can click the Pin button at the top of the timeline. This will 'pin' the timeline as it was at that moment, with no new posts visible until you click the button again to 'unpin' it.

To remind you that new items in the timeline are being hidden, the Pin button will remain grey until you unpin it.

You can filter your view of items in the timeline by clicking on the Filter button to the right of the Pin button at the top of the timeline. By default the filter is set to show all posts. From the drop-down menu you can opt to show just advertisement posts, image posts, link posts, normal posts, quote posts, or wrapup posts. To remove the filter and see all posts, select All posts.