How to Submit a Blog or News Item.

[Alun]

How to Submit a Blog or News Item.

Adventure Bike Rider has been set up as a members site and all site members are encouraged to submit blogs or news stories. It's easy enough to upload a story but with a little attention to detail you can present it in a way which is easy for readers to find and read. Below you'll find all the instructions for submitting and I can tell you from personal experience once you've entered a couple of entries you'll be whipping through a new submissions in a matter of minutes.

What's a Blog?
A 'blog' is short for 'Web Log'. Basically a blog is an on-line journal where people can post diary entries about their personal experiences and hobbies.

What's News?
Information about recent,important and relevant events. News has two priorities: it must be current, and it must mean something to the people reading it. In the case of news for Adventure Bike Rider that means it must contain references to motorcycles and/or bikers and/or travel. A report about new touring accessories, motorcycles or clothing or a story about bikers setting off on a tour are all newsworthy.

How to submit a Blog or News Story
Only registered members of the site can submit a blog or news story.

First Steps
Log in
Select 'Write a New Blog or News Story' which appears in the 'Members Menu' in the left column of the home page.
On the 'My Entries' page click the 'Write New Entry' tab and you will be presented with a new submit/edit screen.

The Story

Heading
Type the heading of your story in the topmost bar marked up 'Blog Title (click to edit)'

Story
Copy and paste your story into the text area or alternatively type it in. There are some basic formatting tools but it's best to use them sparingly and keep the style clear and simple. Most of the time just paragraph breaks is all the formatting needed. Tip – keep paragraphs short big blocks of text are difficult to read.
Before you press the 'Save' button you will need to enter basic publishing details to help catalogue the story and make it easy for readers (and you) to find it. It's also here that you can add images.

Publishing Options
You will find all the 'Publishing Options' to the right of the text area.

General Tab
The 'general' tab will be highlighted and allows you to select a pre-set category for your story. I.e. you can select the 'News' or other most relevant category for your story.

Meta Info
Click the 'meta info' tab next to the general tab to gain access to the 'keywords' and 'description' boxes. Both of these help search engines find the features. If the story is about a new BMW 1200 GS Adventure, then the keywords would be...BMW, 1200GS, adventure, motorcycle, BMW 1200 GS Adventure (all the words or groups of words need to be comma separated)
The 'description' would simply be...new BMW 1200 GS Adventure

Tags
Click the 'tags' tab and you can assign one or many tags to a story. Tags help catalogue the story. For example sticking with the new BMW GS 1200 Adventure story then the tags could include 'Motorcycle' 'BMW' 'News'. Start by browsing for existing tabs and if none exist you can add a new tag.

Images and Documents
Here you upload, store and assign images to a blog or news story. To position the image in the story place the cursor where you want it – you can then drag the image to a better position if you so wish or delete it and reposition the cursor to place it again. You can edit the image by selecting the image edit button in the editor panel above the text area and apply positional formatting. I.e. you can select it be be positioned on the right with text flowing down the left. Images have to be re-sized before uploading. Stories can contain one or many images.

Search Older Posts
Click this tab and you can search through old blogs and news items to link them to the current one. This is useful if you are entering a sequence of related stories.

Embed Videos
As the name suggests click this tab and enter the URL of the video you want to embed.

When you've finished all the above click the 'Save' button and it's published for the world to see.

What Now?
Best now to check the story as readers would see it and by clicking the heading you will find an 'edit' option to go back into the edit screen should you wish to change anything.

Any questions, post them on this thread.