How to use a telegraph article to view public Telegram channel posts



ctwl



🔄 Last updated: 4 Aug 2018

🔗 https://t.me/chuen1/128

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💡 This article is also available on www.telegramguides.com



Hi all,

This article shows how to make use of a telegraph article to organise and view posts of a public Telegram channel.

🚀 The telegram desktop client for linux (1.2.14 alpha) is used in this how-to.

Contents

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0 Introduction

Here are some reasons why you may want to put public Telegram channel posts onto a telegraph article.

0.1 Make content accessible via an URL and web browser

By putting your Telegram posts on a telegraph article, it is easily accessible for people without a Telegram account. You can create a public online profile, post blog entries, photo albums, podcasts, or any kind of messages on a single website and share them with friends and family.

0.2 Organise and filter channel content

Because a telegraph article is an editable website, you can hand-pick posts from your channel and re-group them in any way you want. The posts don't have to be chronological. You can group them by topic, importance or message type.

0.3 Use as a pinned message in public telegram channel

The telegraph article can be used as a pinned message in your channel to serve as a welcome message, or a message that contains a collection of selected important posts.

📱 Although telegraph articles are supported by Telegram's Instant View feature for mobile devices, there are some bugs with the Instant View page when embedding certain contents. See section 6 on Mobile Instant View Bugs.

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1 Create a public Telegram channel

First of all, you need a public telegram channel, where you have broadcasted some messages.

ℹ️ For the purpose of this how-to I have created Mr. T's Channel.

Example Public Channel

💡 Please refer to the official Telegram Channels F.A.Q. if you want to know more about Telegram Channels.

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2 Create Telegraph article with Telegraph bot

2.1 Log in with Telegraph bot

Next, find the telegraph bot by typing in "telegraph" in the search field or by following the link https://t.me/telegraph.

Start the bot and press "Log in as ... on this device".

Telegraph bot

A blank telegraph article page is loaded on your web-browser.

ℹ️ The telegraph bot ensures that you are logged in with your telegram account, so you have permission to edit the telegraph article even if you log in from a different device.

💡 To view existing articles click on "My Posts". Once you open an article in the browser you can edit it by clicking on the Edit button.

📱 For Android users there is an app called Telegraph X to manage and edit telegraph articles on the phone. Get it via Google's play store or get the apk-file here.

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2.2 Enter the title of the article

Enter a title for the article. Once you publish the article, the URL of the article is created from the title and the creation date. Note that spaces are converted to single dashes "-" and special characters are dropped.

Title becomes URL

ℹ️ For the purpose of this how-to I created the telegraph article http://telegra.ph/Mr-Ts-Channel-04-09.

💡 Publishing the article saves your work, so make sure to publish it while editing to avoid losing your work.

ℹ️ Changing the article title after it has been published doesn't change the URL of the article.

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2.3 Formatting options

When highlighting a text on the page a small formatting menu appears.

Formatting options

Make bold text with B,

with write italic with i,

create an URL link with 🔗,

create a title header format with the big T,

create a subtitle header format with the small T,

click the quotes " to cycle through a number of predefined formatting options for quotes.

💡 Title and subtitle headers can be directly linked to by adding a hashtag at the end of the URL. Similar to the main URL, all spaces in titles and subtitles are converted to dashes "-".

e.g.: http://telegra.ph/Mr-Ts-Channel-04-09#My-Posts

❗️ Changing titles or subtitles in the article after it has been published will also change the hashtag link to the section in the URL.

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2.4 Table of Contents

In order to create a table of contents at the top, you have to create URL links for each title and subtitle, that you want to link to.

Example Table of Content with My Posts title

In this example there is a "My Posts" title and the non-formatted "My Posts" entry under the "Content" title, which will link to the "My Posts" title section.

Highlight "My Posts" and press the link button 🔗. A text field appears. Enter the URL of the article and add the hashtag with the title section at the end of the URL (i.e.: http://telegra.ph/Mr-Ts-Channel-04-09#My-Posts).

Inserting an URL link with additional hashtag #Title at the end of the URL.

Showing Table of Content link to My Posts title.

Once published, the link under Content will focus of the page to the My Posts title section.

❗️ Editing titles or subtitles in the article does change the hashtag link to the section in the URL.

ℹ️ The Android app Telegraph X can insert dots and numbers for listed items for the table of contents. On the web-browser unnumbered lists can be created by starting a line with an asterisk and a space "* "; and numbered lists can be created by starting a line with "1. ". Thanks for JS (@jswindr) for pointing this out!

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3 Copy post link to Telegraph

To insert posts from your telegram channel, right click the message and select "Copy Post Link".

Copy Post Link of a message in a public Telegram channel

Paste the link directly into the telegraph page.

Paste Post Link to telegraph article

Hit the Enter-key to let the page render the post.

Rendered Post from a Public Telegram channel.

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3.1 Copy Photo album post

Messages in Telegram can collect up to 10 photos in a single album post.

The photo album can also be copied to the telegraph article.

Copy Post Link of photo album

Telegraph renders the album nicely with all pictures in it.

Embedded photo album in Telegraph.

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3.2 Copy embedded video post

When copying a post with an embedded video to the telegraph article,

it can be directly played from the telegraph website, without leaving the article.

Playing embedded video within Telegraph

🤔 However, the video cannot be played in full-screen mode, when clicking the full-screen button in the embedded video.

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3.3 Copy audio post

Audio messages will also be embedded in the telegraph article with an integrated player.

Copying Audio Message post

Embedded audio message

❗️ Unfortunately, there is a bug with Instant View page on mobile devices when a link to an audio message is inserted in a telegraph article. To keep the telegraph article compatible with Telegram's Instant View on mobile devices it is not recommended to post and embed audio messages on the telegraph article.

💡 Check out section 6.1 Not embedding content on how-to prevent links from being embedded on the telegraph page.

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3.4 Copy Video Post

Posts containing a video will be rendered in telegraph as well and can be played in an embedded player.

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3.5 Copy Round Video messages

When copying the post link of a round video message, it will link to the domain https://telesco.pe/.

ℹ️ This is a dedicated website for round video messages of a public channel launched in May 2017. See https://telegram.org/blog/video-messages-and-telescope.

Copy post link of a round video message

❗️ It is recommend to keep the telesco.pe link and don't embed the round video messages on the telegraph web-site as there is a bug with the Instant View page on mobile devices when posting embedded round video messages.

However, if you don't think your article is viewed on a mobile device with Instant View, you can embed round video messages into the telegraph article by changing the domain to https://t.me/ and press the enter-key.

Change domain to https://t.me/ to embed round video message in Telegraph website.

💡 To keep the https://t.me/ domain link without embedding the round video message check out section 6.1 Not embedding content.

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To enable comments on your posts you can make use of Comments Bot. Search for "commentsbot" or follow the link http://t.me/commentsbot to find it.

Once started, you can send him a post that you want to attach a comments page to.

Send your post to the bot and it will return you the message with a menu.

Click on "Publish" and select the public channel you want to publish it to.

You will see a message starting with "@CommentsBot ..." in the field where you type a message. A pop-up menu should come up showing your original message with a "Post with comments" label.

Click on the pop-up menu to post your original message with an "Open Comments" button, that leads to the comments page of the specific post.

When clicking on "Open Comments", a web site is loaded with the post and a comments section.

ℹ️ Only users with a Telegram account are able to post new comments, but the comments page can be viewed by everybody.

💡 Make sure you subscribe to the comments page to receive notifications when someone has left a comment.

Subscribe to comments page for notifications

Replies to comments will also trigger a notification to the sender of the original comment.

ℹ️ The Comments bot can only add a comments page to text and photo messages.

🔗 Unfortunately, link previews are not supported when posting with Comments bot.

💡 Controller bot, a bot for managing channels, supports link previews and has Comments bot integrated in its features. Explaining how to use Controller bot is out of the scope of this how-to. For interested people, please check out https://controllerbot.me/ and the F.A.Q. page.

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To add the comments page of a post to the telegraph article, right click on the "Open Comments" button and select "Copy Link".

In your telegraph website you can create an "Open Comment" link next to the post and set the link to the copied comments page URL.

People visiting the telegraph article can open the comment section of a post via the custom "Open Comment" link.

ℹ️ To get a centre-aligned text cycle through the different quote formats by clicking on the double quotes ".

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4.2 Workaround for photo albums

Unfortunately, when trying to post a whole photo album with Comments bot the pictures are separated into single messages.

A nasty, but valid work-around is to take a screenshot of the photo album and use it as a single message for the comments page.

Take a screenshot of your photo album.

Capturing Screenshot of the photo album

Send it as a single photo to Comments bot.

Pasting the screenshot as a single photo to Comments bot

Then, the published message will look like below. The photos above the Open comments button are not the actual photos but only a screenshot.

Copying Comments page link to screen shot

However this comments page link can be used for the actual photo album post in the telegraph article. In the telegraph article, it looks like the comments page is associated to the photo album.

Photo album with Open Comments link on telegraph article

But actually, when opening the comments page a screenshot of the photo album is shown instead of the actual photo album.

Comments page with screenshot of photo album.

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5 Pin Telegraph article

To pin the telegraph article in the telegram channel, send a message with the URL of the article to the channel. Right click on the message and select "Pin Message".

Message with telegraph article URL

A link to the pinned message will appear at the top of the channel.

Pinned message

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6 Mobile Instant View Bugs

For people viewing the channel on a mobile device, Instant View will be available for the telegraph article.

Instant View of telegraph article on a mobile device

❗️ However, there are two bugs with the Instant View website of the telegraph article. If the telegraph article has a post of an embedded audio message or an embedded round video message, the Instant View page will not update the content anymore.

So to keep the telegraph article compatible with Instant View on mobile devices, avoid embedding audio messages and round video messages on your telegraph article.

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6.1 Not embedding content

To keep the telegraph article compatible with the Instant View feature links to audio messages and round video messages shouldn't be embedded into the page.

After pasting the link, don't hit the enter-key, but click on publish to keep the link as it is.

For web browser users the content will load in a new tab or window. In mobile devices the link takes the user to the message in the telegram channel.

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