Checklist of Things to Check before publishing an article

I updated the categories for the frontpage just now and dived into the posts themselves, and there's just some things I noticed. I was going to do a similar post, but I guess a quick bulletpoint checklist will work just as well for now. I'll write a proper article if I have some extra free time later.

Things to Check Before Publishing an Article:

* Did you check the spelling?
It doesn't really matter much if your post gets aired five minutes later - re-read your post and check for spelling and grammar inconsistencies. Fill up short paragraphs and introductions with extra information if required. Also, use a browser that has a built-in spellchecker, like Anything But Internet Explorer - Firefox, Opera, Chrome, and a bunch of others all have one. If you're forced to use IE, use Word to copypasta stuff - it'll check for grammar too.

* Did you check the textual layout?
Don't use too short or too long paragraphs. Make sure there's a line in between two paragraphs. Make sure the introduction for threads that have a lot of content isn't too short (it's what appears on the frontpage and should lure people into the post proper).

* Did you tag / label your images?
We've got hundreds of images on our servers by now, so you'll need to give your images proper descriptions. If it's a picture that contains Sephiroth, add Sephiroth to the image's title and description. If it's Seph in ACC, add Advent Children Complete to the title. If it's an action figure, add the series' name. If it's an article scan or picture, add the magazine name and issue (i.e. April or whatever) to the title.

This is good for both search engine optimization (in specific Google's image search and similar services) and for our own people, so they can relocate an image and whatnot.

* Do your images have the proper layout?

Images should look neat and whatnot.

* Did you set a Gallery?

For all posts with more than three images (rough guess), you should include a Gallery at the end of the post. Open the Add Image window and go to the Gallery, then press the Add Gallery to Post button (or whatever it's called - I can't read the button texts anymore, asdf).

* Did you set the right Category?

Posts about ACC should be in the ACC category - and only that, not the FFVII category as well, as has occurred a few times. Multiple categories only apply if it really does concern multiple categories, and FFVII and ACC are not considered to belong in the same category, in this particular case.

By default, new posts are put into the FFVII category, but sometimes that doesn't apply.

* Did you set the right tags?

Tags can be the same as the category, but should (more importantly) give a few keywords about the article - if it concerns Square's news on piracy, add Piracy as a tag, if it concerns Tifa's boobs, add Tifa and Boobs as tags. Only use multi-word tags if those words belong with each other - Advent Children Complete is one tag, Cthulhu Fhtagn is one tag, but 'additions of ACC' isn't - use the Advent Children Complete tag and an Additions tag. Avoid using abbreviations in tags as much as possible (unless the word is only known by its abbreviated form), and avoid merging tags - such as Advent Children Complete Screenshots - these should be two separate tags.

Also don't spam too much with these, just highlight the most important tags / keywords for the article. I should get to updating the layout to position an article's tags more neatly and whatnot.

* Did you cite / link to the source?

Always do this.

* Did you add relevant links in the right places?

(See also this post)

You should link in the right places, the right words, to:

* Related articles (earlier reports, background articles, additional information, etc)
* Related external sites (the source, sites with stuff we don't have)
* The shop (if you want to shamelessly plug ACC's pre-order at times).
* Lemon party

* Did you proofread your post again?

See above

* Did you not use & instead of 'and'?

Applies to X only atm, .

That's about all I can think of right now, anyone have anything to add to this one?

Also, I should start making a collective topic with links to similar topics wicba.

Setting a Featured Image

Featured Images are the images that will show up as the preview image for your article on the Front Page.

• If you do not set this image, the site will look through any attached images for your post and chose one of those. If you haven't uploaded any images, a random image will be set.
• It is preferred that you set this image yourself. You can change it at any time.
• When you look for pictures, it's nice if it's at least 500 pixels wide in natural size, to make sure the resolution is nice when your article is the Top Story.
• Even if you've already uploaded and inserted the image you want as your preview into your article, do upload it again to use as your Featured Image. This due to the fact that you will most likely have to crop the image (if you didn't before uploading it). In the future we might change this, but it requires messing with the WordPress Admin code.

When editing your post, there is a "Featured Image" box to the right of where you edit your post, right under "Publish":



Click "Set featured image". (If one is already set, click the image itself.)



You can chose a picture you've already uploaded to the Media Library, click the tab "Media Library". This is nice if you prefer uploading all images into the Library before writing your post.

Most people will probably want to upload their images straight from the computer, so click "Select Files".

Find your image and upload it. You will now see this:



If you want to proceed to cropping your image, click "Edit Image". The image editor now shows up:



Here you can do several things, like rotating, scaling, and cropping. You shouldn't have to scale your image, however if you want to anyway, you can use "Scale Image" (this has no practical use for the Front Page really). The help features are quite good, so read those if you're having problems.

To crop your image, put in the ratio we want into "Aspect ratio", in this case we want 2 and 1. Now comes the tricky part.

To trigger the 2:1 ratio you just set, hold down the Shift key and the mouse pointer over the image. (If you don't hold down Shift, you can chose whichever ratio you want with the mouse.) Shift is the key above ctrl and below caps lock on a PC keyboard. (Waiting for input on Macs :3)

You will now select parts of the picture:



If you use the little squares to change the size of the picture, make sure you hold down Shift.

When you're happy with the result, click the Cropping tool image:



Your edited image will now show up. To cancel, click "Cancel" or "Restore original image", and repeat the process.

When you're done, click "Save":



You're now back to the screen you saw when you first uploaded the picture:



Note that if you scaled or cropped your image, the pixels next to the radio buttons on the bottom will not have changed. (This is a WordPress bug I'd say, probably due for correction later.) So please just ignore that.

To set your image as Featured Image, click "Use as featured image". Then click "Save all changes".

If you want to go back in and edit your image some more, click the image that you now see in the Featured Image box:



To set an entirely different picture, do the same process again - either uploading an image from your computer or getting one from the Media Library, cropping it and 'Use as featured image'.

If you're having problems, PM me or go to the chat. Thanks!