Online Tech

One of the best editorial practices I know is to have a checklist for yourself. I enjoy writing Reality TV articles, and so have created this list of suggestions for making your article as usable as possible. I assume you already know how to write! These guidelines are to help you get your articles picked up more easily by newsfeeds, and by other publications such as Reality TV Calendar.
This page is open for comments! If you have questions or suggestions, please add a comment below, so that I can improve this guide!
Bold and Italics

I use boldface type for the headings within the article. I do NOT use the h1, h2, h3 heading labels - because those can get mangled in syndication. If you stick to only using boldface and italics (use either the i or em tag in html to get italics), you should be fine. By using as little formatting as possible, neither the editor nor the search engine will be able to ruin your writing very easily.
Here’s a rule of thumb: If your article was converted to plain text with no formatting at all, would it be as readable? If the answer’s yes, you have a good clean style!
Long paragraphs are harder to read than short paragraphs. See if you can break your longer paragraphs into two shorter paragraphs. Each time you’re making a fresh statement (such as this paragraph and the preceding paragraph), it’s probably a good place to start the new paragraph. When your article is posted on the Web, it will be far easier to read that way! (These three paragraphs could have been a single paragraph, but it would have been “heavier going” for you the reader. Picture them all three together as a single paragraph. Do you see what I mean?)
Article Title and Opening Sentence

I’m sure you’ve seen how a newsreader shows you the title of an article and the first few words. It’s up to you to get the subject into a standard form so that google and the other newsfeed search engines can understand how to best categorize your article.
If you’re doing a Reality TV article, you should:

• Include the name of the show in the article title or headline. For example the recap of America’s Top Model titled Cracks are Beginning to Show could be Cracks Are Beginning to Show on America’s Next Top Model.
• The lead sentence (the first text after the title) should also include the title of the show. For example the recap of Survivor could have the opening sentence In this week’s episode of Survivor Panama: Exile Island Terry, Sally, and Austin face discouraging odds.
• When you’re intermixing blow-by-blow recap with your own running commentary, there is no need to distinguish the two with different type face, italics, whatever. The whole recap is your commentary and observation - so the whole thing can be plain text.

Proof Read

If you’re going to write an article that you want other people to read - after all, that’s why you wrote it - proof read it before you post it, and check it again as you post it! Spell check, or whatever works for you.
There is a reason that commercial airline pilots use check lists. We don’t want them to overlook or forget something important! This page is my article checklist. I check here to make sure I have things right. Whenever I get feedback from the editor, I add it to the checklist, so I’ll remember to have it right the next time.
Reality TV Article Check List

My current check list:

1. Is the TV show’s name in the article title? Am I consistently naming the show the same way?
2. Does the lead sentence also include the name of the show?
3. Are section titles in bold (not h2)? Is anything else bold? If so, why? You might need to add that reason to this checklist!
4. Do you use italics for emphasis only? If you use italics for anything else, add that to this style guide.
5. Did you proof read the posted version?
6. Have you adjusted for any editing feedback received on prior articles?

Additional check list items for my Blog edition of the article:

1. Have I marked where to split between the teaser and the rest of the body?
2. Have I marked or appended Technorati keywords?

That’s all! If you have suggestions or questions, please contact me or add a comment below! I’d like this to be applicable to all Reality TV Calendar writers.

by VikingBear, 15 April 2006 OnSurvivor.com

Permalink to this Syndication Style Guide: http://www.onsurvivor.com/syndication-style-guide/

[tags]business blogging, best practices, editing, blogs, blogging, style guide, online style guide, writing, syndication, rss syndication, newsfeeds[/tags]

I changed TNG so that I can write out text that’s intended to introduce the person or family. I use event type ‘Introduction’, and type the text into that event’s notes.

I edited the style sheet to add class .introduction.

I edited getperson.php to catch and display the event.

I edited personlib.php to add function buildIntroduction, which is a clone of buildGenNotes.

The ‘note’ portion of the Introduction event, when collected inside TNG, is made a list item. I strip off the first four characters to remove the LI tag.

TNG chokes on a family where the parents are unknown and unknown, RID of 0 and 0. mkdesc.pl reports the problem, so clean it up and re-import the gedcom file into TNG.

It’s pretty easy to add a new function. I added desc_toc.php, and linked it in index.php and topmenu.html. To be done properly, I should have added the menu text to English/text.php.

In this case I’m simply including an html page which will be generated by an outside perl script. I miss the ability to generate a table of contents by “ancestral endpoint,” so I’ll be adding that back in. Probably be safest to generate the info from the gedcom sitting in the import directory. I’ll make it 400 permissions rather than 000.

In TNG, you can browse the ‘photos’ subfolder on the server, to pick up the photo and thumbnail of interest. A symbolic link to the coppermine/albums folder works nicely. When the time comes, a symlink to the albums/genealogy/headstones folder should work for headstones.

The result is that the original import into the coppermine gallery creates the thumbnail etc., and then all becomes accessible to TNG.

See the writeup on the output buffer function here:

Buffering output

in the wordpress wiki. In my case, I have pages which are basically “table of contents pages” for the subpages. So, I’m enhancing the general page template to collect the list of subpages (if any). And then, if there ARE any (i.e., it’s a non-empty string), I can do my print thing.

The file ads.php needs to have the variable burninr changed to revvedup so that the top sidebar ads display. I’ve notified the author.

This technote shows you how to add another RSS (syndication) feed to your WordPress site. We begin by reorganizing your categories to take advantage of the new feed. We then set up the new feed in such a way that this feed’s material can be moved to an entirely new site later on. Read the rest of this entry »

I tend to write technotes which have nothing to do with the main purpose of the site. There are times that, for someone watching my main syndication feed, these technical notes push the main content out of view! Thanks to FeedBurner.com, I can create a quick interim solution, and be already set up for a painless full solution later.

This problem applies to more than just tech notes, of course! If you’re writing posts that aren’t really part of your site’s main purpose, but you do want to write them, you might want to take a look at my approach. Read the rest of this entry »

For most sites, a single syndication (RSS) feed makes the most sense. WordPress makes syndication literally a snap, and Feedburner adds tremendous value. In fact, Feedburner makes it even easier! Of course you already know this, or you wouldn’t be reading this article.

For some sites, it makes more sense to have multiple syndication feeds. It’s not difficult to set up multiple feeds. The problem, for me, was that I couldn’t find any instructions for doing so. So… here’s how I did it. Hopefully this will save someone else a few hours!

Here are the steps I took in setting up OnSurvivor.com. Part B will explain each step in detail:

1. Understand your site’s purpose. Understand your purpose in creating the site, and understand your site’s purpose. For example, your site’s purpose might be to help people express their creativity by making blogging easier for them, whereas your purpose might be to achieve fame, respect, and cash flow. This article is not about designing your site. It’s about organizing your syndication feeds, but to organize them, you must first understand your purpose!
2. Lay out your syndication strategy. What is it that justifies setting up multiple feeds? What is the distinctive characteristic that delineates one from another? What disaster would befall you if you consolidated everything into a single feed?
3. Organize your content to match your syndication strategy. With WordPress, any category can become a syndication feed. However, to the best of my knowledge, only a category (or the site as a whole) can become a feed. You must therefore organize your site content (your blog entries) so that your posts feed the right feeds.
4. Work around a WordPress limitation. In the current (version 2.0.2) WordPress release, WordPress refuses to display your categories the way you so carefully organized them. I figured out that the fix is to use a parameter in your theme template, that the WordPress documentation says you shouldn’t use!
5. Prepare your areas for editing as you register each feed. Set up the following areas, so that you can fill them in as you register each feed:
• Set up a subscription page. Because you have several feeds, a simple “click here to subscribe to this syndication feed” link won’t be too useful. Therefore, set up a blank page, and fill it in as you register each feed.
• Set up a stats button area in the dashboard area of your WordPress admin login. Feedburner provides a graphic that shows how many people are currently subscribed to that syndication feed. When you first register the feed, you’ll have 0 subscribers. Since nobody wants to subscribe to an unwanted feed, keep that number to yourself inside your admin area. Create the space for it now, and fill it in as you register each feed.
• Make a place for your feed validation links. You’ll want an easy way to verify that your feed still works - trust me on this.
• Copy your auto discovery tags off to the side. You’ll be adding several lines for each feed, and I found this easier to do (meaning fewer screwups) in a text file off to the side.
6. Populate your content. Wordpress doesn’t show a category unless it and its parent category contains at least one blog entry. Your comments feed won’t show any comments unless you have comments.
7. Register your main feed. You’ll be adding most of those extra Feedburner features to this first feed, so it will take the longest. Update the above files for this registered feed.
8. Register your second feed. This one requires fewer steps, and will go much quicker.
9. Add your feeds to your news aggregator. I added mine to My Google, and sure enough, they worked! The reason for this step is to make sure they do work, before you go any further.
10. Check the feed validator. Assuming all is well, add the validation link for each feed, as suggested above.
11. Register your remaining feeds one by one, updating the above files as you go.
12. Promote your feeds, and update your ping list. As you go around registering your feeds, take note of each aggregator’s ping instructions, and update your update-ping list accordingly.
13. Take a last look around before you go. Make sure your files did in fact get updated the way you think they did. Make sure you clicked Save in all the windows. If you updated your admin area dashboard, leave yourself a reminder to re-insert that change after each WordPress software update. If you changed theme files, make sure the changes are in all themes (if you use more than one theme).

If you’re setting up your site from scratch, you don’t have any “old” feeds. Therefore, there’s nobody out there who has your “old” feed urls bookmarked. And, therefore, you don’t need to worry about .htaccess changes, url rewriting, or anything like that.

On the other hand, if you do have old feed urls out there, you will need to figure out a way to keep those old feed users happy. I don’t cover that issue in this article, because I’m lucky enough to be setting things up from scratch.

Don’t mess with a category once it becomes a syndicated feed. You’ll be sorry. Trust me on this too.

Whew… that’s the short version. And in fact, that’s all there is to it! If the above instructions were sufficient, you can stop here. I have nothing more for you.

For the rest of us, Part B begins explaining each of the above steps in detail.

Part B… coming soon! With pictures! I hope…

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