Information for New Writers
Before you Begin Writing New Articles for Automoblog.net, there are a few things you’ll need to know. Overall, you’ll have complete creative freedom on your articles, but there are some specifics we need to cover first.
Getting Started
If you aren’t familiar with the WordPress Content Management System or you just want a refresher, please take a look at the brief video tutorials below that will walk you though most of what you need to know to post articles. Some of the information in them you will not need to know, but the basics are basic navigation, and everything involved with posting a new article.
Article Requirements
The Article Itself
As I said, you have complete creative freedom here. However, it’s important to understand that on this site, I’m not looking for a newspaper-like writing style. It’s important that we stand out and really show our personalities and opinions in these articles. Be casual, be honest, if you think something sucks then say it sucks, swear…whatever! We have personalities and we care about cars – prove it! The only requirement is that the articles are at least 300 words long, preferably more – that’s a requirement carried over from Google News. There is a Word Count on the lower-left of your editor window to help out with that.
Get creative! Remember, we’re members of the media. If you see a car event you want to go to and cover, contact them as media and request press access. If you want to review a car, ask! Heck, if you want a free GPS or racing video game to review for an article, ask! Any iffy situations or need help? Don’t hesitate to drop me an email.
Oh, and please spellcheck and read over the article once before submitting it 
Images
We are a visually-heavy site, as the auto industry tends to be, so there needs to be an appropriate number of images per article. At the very minimum, there should be one image per two or three standard paragraphs, or if you’re doing a featured or list article, one per section. Each image needs to be 623px wide, and center-aligned (just select “center” in the WordPress dashboard when inserting the image.) You can upload images larger than this and WordPress will resize it, but be sure to insert the 623px image (called “large” in the image library) or 600px (Medium) if you want to add a caption. If the image is taller than it is wide, it should be resized to between 250 and 300px wide so we can wrap the text around it instead. In terms of image usage rights, you can typically use anything in Google Images, anything in Flickr with a Creative Commons license, or anything from the manufacturers (please let me know if you need help accessing media sites to grab info or images.) You normally don’t have to worry about grabbing images from other sites either, unless it’s obvious that they personally took those images and don’t state that it’s OK to use them for (non-commercial) republication. If that’s the case, then just ask and most people are cool, especially if you link to them in the credits at the bottom of the article. Please don’t use anything with obvious watermarks – they’re ugly.
Finally, many articles will require more images than there’s room for in the article. In this case, upload them, insert your favorites at the large 623px or medium 600px within the text, then put a [gallery] tag at the end. This will automatically insert a thumbnail gallery. Just take a look at a few articles on the site already to get an idea of how we do it.
One more thing: the first image you upload will be cropped and used as the thumbnail on the front page. If you need to change that to one you feel better represents the article (or just looks better,) click “Use as Featured Image” in the editor.
Categories
Each article should have at least one category but usually more. If it’s anything related to car news, please select the Car News category along with any manufacturers related. There are three parent categories – Manufacturers, Events, and Modified Cars. Each have self-explanatory “child” categories. You can take a look through the categories available and figure it out, it’s fairly obvious. Here are a few fictitious article examples and what categories that should be selected for them:
“Details on the New Lamborghini LP900-6″ – Car News, Lamborghini
“How to Change Your Car Stereo” – How-To, Car Tech
“Video: How Nissan Builds a 370Z” – Car Tech, Nissan, Video
“Five Best Racing Tracks in America” – List, Car Opinions, Driving, Racing
If you have any questions please ask. Categories are very important in organizing the website.
Tags
As much as I hate the redundant tag system, it’s also fairly important. This shouldn’t take you much time at all to do. Here are the same three fictitious articles and the tags involved:
“Details on the New Lamborghini Gallardo LP900-6″ – Lamborghini, Lambo, Gallardo, LP900-6, V12
“How to Change Your Car Stereo” – car audio, audio, how-to, install, Scosche, Alpine, Rockford Fosgate
“Video: How Nissan Builds a 370Z” – Nissan, 370Z, Z-Car, factory, manufacturing, video
“Five Best Racing Tracks in America” – driving, America, track racing, racing, Laguna Seca, Spring Mountain, [...etc]
Ads
I hate ads, banners, and anything distracting from the content. But as a necessary evil, we need to insert them within the article each time. There are two standard ads we insert – a 468×60 banner and a 300×250 block. Most articles will have one of each, some with two blocks. There should always be at least one block. To insert a 468×60 banner, simply add “[ad]” (without the quotes) after an image or click the “Insert Ad…” dropdown in the editor toolbar and select “Default Ad.”
For the block ad, we need to insert the following code before the first sentence:
“<div class=”alignright”>[adblock]</div>” – just copy & paste. This will make the ad block float to the right and wrap the text around it as to not be overly distracting, as you can see in the example to the right. Please note: there must be enough text for it to wrap around the entire ad like this, or it will look awful.
To get an idea of how this will look, here’s a quick example of a typical article layout: Scion FR-S Concept
Other
Any other questions or something I forgot to mention?
Take a look below for the videos concerning how to do just about anything in WordPress: