So what is an article? In simple terms, an article is a document that contains formatted text and graphics for the purpose of conveying information. That’s it! It’s not some specialist document, its just information.
What makes an article interesting is also quite simple; well written text and an eye catching layout. There are 3 main steps in publishing an article; determining what to put in your article, composing and formatting and publishing.
Note: In order to write or edit an article, you must first login.
What Do I Put In My Article
Text Content
Laying out an article
The Title
The Introduction
The Body of the Article
Images or other Media
Composing and formatting
Structure
Formatting
Publishing
Here we look at what type of content we will put in the article and consider how to best make it desirable to read.
What you put in an article is ultimately what readers will judge the value of article by. Keep the content in line with the topic. If you need to put in disclaimers, qualifiers or other such information, try and put it at the bottom of the article rather than at the beginning. Web based articles show up in search engines listed, usually, by their title and the first line or two of the article itself. So your title and opening sentence is what people searching the net will see first; and it is this that will make them either want to read the article, or move on to another site.
An article comprises 5 main components: the title, the introduction, the body of the article and images or other media and formatting.
The title is important for 2 reasons: 1. It is what people see first, this is what will make people want to read your article. 2. It sets the focus for the article content.
Introductions speak for themselves, usually. On the web, the first 2 lines will determine wether people will say "yes, that’s what I’m looking for" or they will simply move on. Keep the introduction short, don’t use complex sentences or big words, people searching the net don’t want to waste time deciphering a magnificent work of scientific research, they want a quick, straight forward statement.
The body of the article is simple, it’s all yours!! Use lots of paragraphs; keep to the topic as described in the title and the introduction and let the creative process flow.
Definitions: Images are pictures; other media can be movies, podcasts, slideshows etc. Once again we follow the simple rule. Use when needed, keep them small and, unless your article is on a topic such as photography, keep the number of images or other media used to a minimum.
Once you have determined what to put in your article, we can then look at how to structure the article and how to format. Web based articles differ from traditional print media in some very important areas: web based articles are dynamic, they can be read, searched, played, saved and shard via other web sites or email. Therefore our approach to structure and formatting must reflect this.
Normally the natural flow of the article will determine its structure without to much fuss. Being a web based article, there are a few considerations to bear in mind.
The first paragraph usually contains an introduction to the article. When the article is displayed on the front page of the web site, only the Heading and first paragraph should be displayed. To do this, you add a "Read More" break after the first couple of lines. There is a button at the bottom of the editor box for this. If this is not added then the entire article will be displayed and completely consume the front page. As this is also the first part of the article to be seen, it is also a good idea to insert a relevant image at the beginning of the paragraph.
But, if you are using any form of media, then consider the following simple guidelines.
- Use media sparingly or you will run the risk of readers spending all their time looking at the picture, and not reading your content.
- Keep the media small, both in terms dimensions (the amount of space taken up on the screen) as well in kilobytes; readers will not want to wait for an eternity for an article to download.
Formatting the article (use of fonts, colours, bullets etc) is something that you will determine for yourself as you feel best suits the purpose of the article. However, it is recommended that you use the article editor on the web site to do the formatting. Popular word processors are great for getting the text down, but, if you copy and paste the contents from MS Word to the editor a lot of weird and disturbing things will happen to your layout; in addition MS Word puts down about 5 times more code for formatting that the web editor will, making your article large and slow to download).
Images cannot be copied and pasted from a word processor or other text editing program on your pc, into the web editor. If you try this, you will notice that the image will appear in the editor, but will not be saved. To get the image into your article, you must use the web editors "Insert/Edit Image" button to upload and insert. This located on the toolobar or can be accessed by right clicking in the editor and selct from the menu that pops up.
Tip: If you need to spend time composing your article prior to formatting it, use a text editor like Notepad. This editor does not carry any extra formatting code, and copied and pasted straight into the web editor without any problems.
Once you are happy with your article you need to add some information that tells the web editor where to publish the article, and how it should show the article to search engines.
The fields in the "Publishing" options in the image are fairly straight forward;
- Section and category are how the article will be classified; select the relevant section first, the select the category for the section next.
- Select Published as "Yes" and Front Page as "No", every new article will go on the front page, but this needs to be done in rotation.
- Ignore Start and Finish Publishing.
- Set "Access Level" to "Public" unless you prefer only registered members to view the article.
- "Metadata" - this is what search engines will see and use for search criteria. I always insert the words "astronomy" and "townsville" in both the description and the keywords as these will always relate to all types of content on the site. Other words chosen should be very specific and should relate directly to what you think people will search for.
And that’s it!
Other related articles to come: Linking to Forum entries: Linking to other articles.
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