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Getting Started - Read First

A place for word press editors & contributors to learn, discuss, and hang out.
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mdvaldosta
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Getting Started - Read First

#1 Post by mdvaldosta » Sat Jan 14, 2017 11:15 am

Welcome, new editor! Well, you're technically a contributor for now, and we'll explain that shortly. This is a brief explanation of how our setup works, and who you can navigate it to write awesome content and get get your name out on the web. In the future, we'll continue to expand this with more details, but for now this will have to do. If you're tech savvy, have good writing skills, and have patience, you'll have no problem getting your content posted. Here's how it works:

Overview of Workflow
  1. Write article according using our recommended format
  2. If you're a contributor, an editor will review that you meet the writing guidelines
  3. Yay! Your article is live!
Role (Usergroup) Permissions
  • Contributors - can write articles, but must be approved by an editor.
  • Authors - can publish/edit their own articles without review.
  • Editors - can publish their own articles, and also publish/edit author and contributor articles.
All new writers are considered "Contributors" until it's obvious they have the writing quality and follow our writing guidelines. The guidelines are mainly there for formatting, so that every article doesn't look completely different. It pertains to content length, pictures, category choice, etc. and there is a section on that below. Once you've demonstrated mastery of our formatting, which may be as soon as your first article, you'll be promoted to an author.

Before You Begin
You must be registered on the front end. Registration is currently disabled, so we will create your account manually. Be sure you've been in contact with Bill and he has your username and email address, and he's sent you a password to login. You login at https://thinkpads.com/admin

How To Write An Article
  1. After logging in, navigate to Posts -> Add new
  2. Write Your Title With The First Letter of Each Major Word Capitalized Like This
  3. Choose an appropriate category and subcategory, more than one if appropriate. For example, if you're doing a review of a gaming laptop, you'd select the category "Laptops" and it's subcategory "Gaming" and also the category "Reviews"
  4. Set a featured image! The image should be large, at least 900px wide but really 1200+ is better. Be sure it has a descriptive title and alt description.
  5. When adding other photos for use in your post (use the Media button in the post editor), use the same guidelines. Be sure to also set the picture size to "full" so that our responsive design can use the best picture size possible to fill the screen when putting them between paragraphs. You can also float them (left/right align) if you like. DO NOT USE A COPYRIGHTED IMAGE. You can go to google and do an image search, hit "tools" and use the usage rights dropdown menu to choose something that's labeled for reuse. You can also use images from product pages on Amazon if you're doing a review. There are many other ways to get images you can use without copyright worries, but don't simply google search something and steal it.
  6. Liberally use heading (H2, H3) tags throughout your post, especially with good keyword choices that describe your next paragraph/section.
  7. If adding a review, try to format it the similarly as the review that we have here: https://thinkpads.com/66/lenovo-thinkpa ... on-4th-gen
  8. You can write about anything you want. It doesn't have to be a review. It can be your strong opinion about something, or a how-to, or news, or whatever.
  9. Article length should be at least 300+ words, but IDEALLY they're much longer. Longer articles rank better in search engines and provide a better user experience. Articles that are 800, 1200, or even 2000 words are the ones usually ranking #1 for competitive search terms.
  10. Try to link fairly liberally to other parts of the thinkpads.com website, including the forum. It's also great to link to other resources that you don't want to spend a ton of time explaining.
  11. Feel free to experiment with shortcodes and other fancy things, and don't be afraid to have a strong opinion and be yourself! But, we do want all our articles to have a certain flow to them, so keep the guidelines above in mind.
Tips and Caveats
  • There is a lot of things I didn't talk about, and some things are vague. It's not on purpose, but then again you have a lot of room to be yourself. Just don't get frustrated if your articles get sent back to be modified even though you thought you followed all these guidelines. Let's have an open discussion about it. I'm not a professional copywriter, maybe some of you are. We can learn and grow together. That's what this forum is for.
  • If you have suggestions or get upset about something, let's talk about it! These rules aren't set it stone, they're more of a guideline so we can all write articles together that look and feel somewhat similar.
  • Things like how-tos and other useful stuff that's normally posted in the forum are really best off posted on the front part of the website, due to it being easier to format and present that information.
  • Article idea generator: this is my favorite link to send writers to get ideas for writing. Type in your keyword (like thinkpads) and generate the list of ideas. You can't go wrong with article titles like these.
  • Preview often to see how your article looks!

mikemex
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Location: Coyoacan, Mexico

Re: Getting Started - Read First

#2 Post by mikemex » Sun Aug 29, 2021 10:24 am

I'd like to contribute an article on how the Thinkpad brand has evolved over the years and the direction it is taking.
X301: SU9600 | 8GB | 1TB | WXGA+
X1C9: 1185G7 | 32GB | 1TB | WUXGA | WWAN
X1Y8: 1365U | 32GB | 1TB | WUXGA
For the sake of ecology I donated all my classic Thinkpads.

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