News Posting Tips

[Clackling]

Hey everyone, I just wanted to post some pointers for posting news on the site. Feel free to add your own tips.

1. ALWAYS reread what you've written. Of course it's good to spellcheck, but I mean this mainly for reading your tone. A lot of times you may think something's funny, but if you reread it you'll realize it could be taken another way and could be viewed as offensive. I do this all the time. There's nothing wrong with having a not-funny post. Not everything has to be comedic gold. Only joke when it's appropriate, and if you're sure that it'll read well.

2. Read the latest news posts first. Make sure what you're writing about hasn't already been reported. We now have lots of news posters, as well as myself, Mai, and Fujiko, who sometimes post news as well. No need to spend time making a beautiful news post if we can't post it in the end anyway.

3. Ask questions! I'm almost always accessible by email, because if I'm not in my room at school, I'll have my laptop with me. Always shoot me an email, and you'll usually have a reply within seconds.

4. Check your facts! Make sure when you write news, it's actually true. Like, make sure if you state an item does something, or a change affects certain people, that it actually does that.

5. After I let you know that you've been flagged, click the "Submit News" link on the left pane of Coldfront. The editor takes a while to get used to, so play around with it, and I'll just point out the important things.

- Links: Because of the template on the Coldfront site, links don't naturally look good. to counteract that, we made it so all links made are automatically bolded. To make a link, highlight the word you've typed in the article which you would like to use as your link, and click the chain icon (up top, on the right side). A window will appear, where you can add in your URL, then click Insert. If you make a mistake and want to remove the link, highlight the broken link, and click the broken link (next to the other icon).

-Intro Text vs. Main Text: You'll see two large textboxes on the editor page. The top one is what will always show up on the front page, the bottom one requires people to click "Read More" in order to see it. Don't use the bottom box unless you're adding in something super-spoilery that not everyone will want to see. In that case, make sure you add to your intro text that people need to click "Read More" in order to continue.

- Publishing: When you write an article and submit it, it gets sent to me. I then have to go and make it public. Typically, it doesn't take long, since I'm almost always near my email, and it takes one second to publish an article. But that's why you won't see it on the front page immediately.

-Locking Articles: When you go to edit an article that already exists, that file becomes "locked", which means no one else (even myself) can edit it until you're done. This prevents obvious issues if two people were editing the same thing at once, but also leads to a problem. In order to unlock an article, you need to click one of the three buttons at the top or bottom of the page. These are Save, Apply, and Cancel. Save will Save and Close the page, Apply will save it but keep you in the editor, and Cancel will cancel all changes. If you want to cancel changes you made, DO NOT CLOSE THE BROWSER WINDOW. You MUST click the Cancel button, or else no one can touch that file. I will send you an email if you keep an article locked that I need to get into, but just try your best not to do it in the first place.

6. Join IRC! We use IRC as our main means of communication (besides email). If you don't have a client, I highly recommend downloading mIRC. Connect to irc.coldfront.net, and register your nickname there with ChanServ. If you have no clue what I'm talking about, email me and I'll give you more detailed instructions. Hang out in #kol as much as you can/like. I leave mIRC up 24/7, so you can always bug me even if I'm not around.