Standards Guide for Creating Posts of This Website

The purpose of this Standards Guide is to provide guidelines for anyone who authors a post on this website. It is our hope that, as authors follow these guidelines, the site will maintain a high standard of excellence many years into the future.

Creating a New Post

  1. Immediately name your post using capital letters for each word (except for conjunctions or prepositions) and lower case letters for the rest. Example: “This is the Title of My Article”.
  2. Add a feature image (in the bottom right of the Admin screen on the post). This image should be a rectangular in shape, not a square. The image should be at last 500 pix wide and no more than 1000 pix wide. Google images will tell you the sizes when you do an image search.
  3. Add all appropriate categories and subcategories to the post.
  4. Add as many tags as you can to make the article searchable.
  5. Make sure all events are categorized as “events”.
  6. Title example: “Title of the Event – Tues, August 12, 2003 – City”

Formatting

  1. Start each post with “By Author Name.” in bold.
  2. If you paste content into your post from Word, use the past from Word tool in the toolbar. This strips away bad formatting. If you still have formatting problems, delete the content from the post and paste it in again using the text past tool in the WordPress formatting tools bar.
  3. After a few lines, insert a “More” tag using the WordPress format controls. This will limit the amount of text that is visible in the summary. Readers will click the “More” button to read the rest of the post.
  4. Use H1 , H2, and H3 headers to break up the content, use plain text for everything else.
  5. NEVER USE ALL CAPS!
  6. Do not underline.
  7. Do not indent.
  8. Do not double space between sentences.
  9. Do not center text.

Review and Correct Old Posts

It is a good idea to review old posts regularly and make sure they are formatted correctly. Here is what to look for…

  1. Correct all of the dates on old posts.
  2. Add feature images to posts with no feature image.
  3. Add ALL appropriate categories – remove all posts from “uncategorized”.
  4. Clean up categories.
  5. Clean up tags.