Tuesday 23 October 2012

The Bible (How to correctly put your written stories on the website)

Here is a basic step by step guide to uploading your written stories onto the new WordPress website.

1. Go to www.winchesterjournalism.co.uk/winol/wordpress/wp-login.php

2. Your username should be your first and last name, separated by a space, e.g Sam Ashton. Your password has been sent to you by Jason. It's been sent to the email that you registered to Joomla with, if you don't know this, ask me or Jason.

3.  Once logged in, you should realise that the layout is fairly similar to that of Blogger. On the left sidebar, select 'Posts - Add New'.  This is a pretty good place to write your story, but if you have written it elsewhere, paste it as Plain Text (option in the inventory above text box)

4. At the start of your story, you should write the date in bold, followed by a Full stop, and then your name and job role in italics followed by a colon. Like this:
  23/10/2012. By Sam Ashton, Web Editor: 

5. Make sure that your headline doesn't 'bust'. The style at the moment allows the headline to run over two lines, to ensure that you don't go over this, give your headlines a 35 character limit. Between 25 and 35 is usually a good length. Headlines should be in capitals,

6. The first sentence of your piece should summarise the story, and entice readers into reading more (much like the link to your story in the bulletin. After writing this first sentence, select the 'Insert More Tag' button from the inventory above your text box (this looks like two rectangles separated by a dotted line). After selecting this, a dotted line should appear underneath your introductory sentence.

7. With the format of the new site, pictures are extremely important. All written stories need a picture with them, ideally take these yourself, if this is not possible, take an appropriate screen-grab from your package, or find something using creative commons.

8. Before uploading your pictures, please make sure that they are 200x200. (Will take 2 minutes in Photoshop, fireworks etc.)

9. To upload the picture, select 'upload/insert' above the text box. Select your image and make sure that 'alignment' is set to left. The picture can sit next to your opening sentence.

10. Scroll to the bottom of the page, and select 'Set featured image' on the right hand side. Once again choose your picture, this is to create a thumbnail with your story on the homepage.

11. Also on the right hand side, make sure that the 'category' is set to 'news', and the 'format' to 'standard'. Feel free to add some tags.

12. Preview your piece, make sure it all looks right and reads well. Make sure that the status is set to 'pending review' so that it can be subbed. Then you can select publish.

That's how to upload a written news story, sorry if any of it seems obvious, just trying to make sure I've covered all bases. If you're unsure of anything, please ask me, and if I've forgotten anything, remind me.

Thanks!