How to Submit an article

Tuesday, 08 September 2009 19:05

This website is for you - a member of the UK Stand Up Paddling community. We want you to be able to join in with as much of the community activity as possible. The following guide walks you through a step by step process of how to upload a news story to the home page of the website. It's really simple and allows you to go beyond the basic nature of the discussion forums.

First off here are a few guidelines:

Why post on the home page?

Posting on the home page allows you to make a direct contribution to the community. While the Forums allow you to start topics for discussion, the home page is more of a blog, allowing you to tell a story or post a useful piece of information. You can easily add pictures and videos to your post and other members of the community can leave comments.

What type of story is suitable?

Almost anything goes but here are a few ideas:

A story of a great session with at least 1 picture
A useful piece of advice like "Check this out I've found a way to make a 2 piece paddle easily"
A report from an event
A press release about an up coming event. You can also add these to the calendar

What is not suitable?:

Blatant product press releases - Please contact us if you want to post a press release

All article submissions will be checked out by the Admin Crew before they are added to the home page blog so our advice would be to go ahead and write something and submit it. If you are unsure if it is suitable then just send us a quick email to ask and we can let you know before you spend the best part of the day writing something that may get rejected.

Over time it will be obvious which articles are suitable. We're pretty sure you can work it out. If you think it will be of interest to others then chances are we'll be happy to print it.

So how do you post an article?

We have made it as easy to post an article as we can whilst keeping as many options available as possible. Just follow the instructions and after just a few goes you will be posting like a pro. To post an article you must be registered and you must be logged in. Then...

Click on the submit an article link in the drop down menu of The Community
This will then open up a Submit Article window with a standard page editor across the top. Before we go any further let's just identify the tools you have in front of you:
1. B is to make the text BOLD
2. I is to make the text Italic
3. U will underline the test
4. ABC is to strike through the text
5. aligns the text to the centre
6. aligns the text to the left
7. aligns the text to the right
8. Indent right
9. Move left
10. Create a numbered list
11. Create a bullet point list
12. Check spelling
13. Insert a ruled line
14. Undo last command
15. Redo last command
16. Cut highlighted item
17. Copy highlighted item
18. Paste item on clipboard
19. Link the highlighted item (image or text) to an external URL
20. Insert a picture (more of that in a moment)
21. Preview your article to see how it will lay out.
If you want to use an image in your article you can do this in one of two ways
1. You can link to one uploaded to an image story site such as Photobucket to do this you should:
  1. Find the URL or link to the image and copy this
  2. Click the Image Manager icon (No20 above)
  3. This brings up a new window called Image Manager
  4. Paste the URL into the box marked URL
  5. Fill in the alt tag with a description of the image (this is what appears in the box when you roll over the image)
  6. Click insert and the image should appear in your article
2. Or you can use our image folder by using the same Image Manager Images must be less that 100k in size, images over that will be removed)
  1. Use the lower part of the pop up window
  2. There are 3 icons/buttons on the right hand side you will usually use the first two - a folder that creates a folder for you, an arrow pointing upwards and a question mark in a circle which has some help information.
  3. If the image is already visible in a folder on the site then just highlight the image and it should auto complete the information in the top window, you can make adjustment in this window.
  4. Add an alt tag .
  5. Click insert and the image will appear in the article.
3. If you want your text to wrap around the image you need to set the Alignment for the image to "left" in the drop down in the image manager, then give the image a margin of 2 all around, this will allow the article text to wrap around the image and it is show in the preview pane at the top of the image manager.
You can link video from a video hosting site such as YouTube, to do this click the AVR Media button at the bottom of the page, complete the form and click the button marked insert and the video will embed into the article.
If you are writing a long article it would be really helpful if you could write a couple of short paragraphs and then insert a Read More link by clicking the button at the bottom of the page called Read More... this will pu these paragraphs on the home page and insert a read more link which, when clicked, will open up the full article.
Once you are happy with the content of your article you then need to scroll down the page and make a few key selections
From the drop down called Section - choose News, the category will auto fill Latest News
Click Show on Front Page - Yes
You can leave Author Alias and Start Publishing
You need to select a date to stop publishing, we suggest three months after the start, mainly because old news will be archived anyway to save space
Make sure access is Public or no one will be able to read your hard work
You can help with out search engine ranking by inserting a sentence about the article in the Description window and a few keywords in Keywords.
Scroll up and click the Save button and you article will be saved
We will then check your article and publish as soon as possible

You have now contributed to Stand Up Paddlesurf in the UK, thanks.