Post Your Own Articles

Registration

** UPDATED ***

You can no longer register on this site through the registration form. There will no longer be any "subscriber only" registrations. In order to register as a contributor, you must use the contact form and provide a user name, a display name and your e-mail address (you need to do it individually for each "pen name", if you want to use more than one – e-mail addresses must be unique).

Contributors are not allowed to publish posts. All posts created by contributors will be published after they are reviewed for compliance to the instructions which follow this section. Minor changes to your post will be done by the administrator. Minor changes may include adding or changing a relevant "lead-in" image, fixing tags that are added incorrectly, paragraph spacing and things of that nature. You will be notified if major changes are required.

Spelling and Grammar

English, of any American or British form, is the required language for posting articles. If English is your second language, you should have your articles proofread by someone who uses it as a first language.

Perfect English is not required, but it has to be understandable and obvious that you're writing something you know about. Automatic content generators and article spinners are prohibited. Poorly written articles will be rejected, regardless of English spelling and grammar.

Keyword Requirements

Your keyword (or keyword phrase) must appear in the post title and at least two times with the post content (words that use the same root word are acceptable). If you write naturally about the topic at hand, the keyword should appear naturally without any real work involved.

You are cautioned on using strong or bold tags within a post to emphasize your keyword or keywords, unless it or they appear as part of a subheading. Like too many links, too many words in bold looks like web spam.

Exceptions to the keyword requirements will be made on articles which clearly do not target keywords at all, such as articles that appear somewhat personal in nature.

Formatting Requirements

The first paragraph should contain a kind of summary of what the article will be about, if at all possible. The reason for this is because the meta description uses the first 150 characters of the post. This can be changed via the HeadSpace description available below the page editor.

The "more" tag (available from the editor options) must be used after the first or second introductory paragraph. This is used to create a break for the excerpts of the author, category, date and tag author archive pages. If you do not include the "more" tag, it will be included for you.

The post title is considered the heading and all other headings within a post are considered subheadings. Use the strong or H3 tag sets to make a subheading bold.

Use the em tag set for italic text. It is designed for emphasis, like strong or bold text, but should be used when the meaning of something could be ambiguous. You may use strong or bold text for anything other than keywords as another method of emphasis. Whether you use bold or italic text is a matter of preference.

Post Length Requirement, External Links, and Internal Links

The post length requirement is a minimum of 300 words. Posts longer than 300 words are encouraged, but not required. You can include one external link per 150 words, regardless of the distance between them, provided the linking looks natural. The maximum number of external links to the same domain should be limited to three, no matter how long the article happens to be. External links should include the target="_blank" link attribute. The post length requirement can be waived by the administrator when the linking pattern doesn't look unnatural.

You can link from post to post (an internal link) as many times as necessary to ensure cross-link referencing is accomplished. You can create internal links from your post to your other post(s) or you can create internal links to posts belonging to someone else, as long as they are on this site. Internal linking is a good thing, so don't be afraid to do it.

Up to 10 related posts are listed, by category, at the end of every post. This is used to maximize internal linking, even for those who choose not to do it on their own.

External links to commercial websites are not prohibited, but will be checked to make sure they won't be construed as paid links and are relevant to the article in question. External links to known SEO sites (those that manipulate links or content or provide software for such) ARE prohibited.

Resource Box

You are encouraged to put a resource box at the end of your post. This not only reinforces you as the author, it lets you include another external link, separate from the post content. The resource box is simply a paragraph surrounded by the blockquote tag set.

Trusted and Untrusted Links and the "nofollow" Attribute

The link attribute of rel="nofollow" should be added to any links to sites which are untrusted and sites that use nofollow links exclusively, such as Wikipedia, IMDB and others.

Other links, targeted internally or externally, should not include a "rel" tag of any kind.

Categories and Tags

Categories are sorted in the same fashion as most website directories, including DMOZ. If you assign an inappropriate category to a post, it will be changed or removed as a category. Multiple categories are allowed, but discouraged. A post should be assigned to the most appropriate category. Doing a search for the topic at DMOZ will suggest the best category to use. If the correct category doesn't exist on this site yet, please send a contact page message to have it added.

Tags should be selected using "Yahoo Suggested Tags" available on the editor screen. If you assign an inappropriate tag to a post, it will be removed, even if it is a suggested tag. You are limited to 10 tags because the tags are also used as the meta keywords.

Advertising

You are allowed to place advertising at the top and bottom of your posts immediately after they're published. I recommend Google AdSense, Amazon or even eBay. Until you place your own ads in a post, my own default ads will appear. My own ads will always appear in the sidebar.

The primary advertising hotspot is the top ad on the post, followed by the bottom ad on the post. The ad manager will not show the default ads – it will only show blank spots until you ad your own. Your ads will override mine, if you actually place ads.