Author Guidelines

Want to become an author, or are you currently an author? Check out the content below to make sure you are either a good author, or you get approved to become one!

The benefits of being an author

Why apply to increase your status?

  • Free posting – post when you choose, not when a higher user determines you post
  • Authors are allowed a link on the sidebar of the blog (under the ‘Authors’ title) to their site, if they choose to have one
  • You become a higher status member of the community, giving you more control and helping you interact more with others
  • You can advance your writing skills for use elsewhere in the blogosphere and in your life generally
  • You get promoted higher up the our writers page’s hierarchy of writers
  • It can look pretty impressive to have on your record that you are an author for Technology Bloggers – a rapidly growing, friendly, dofollow, community blog :-)

For applicants

Make sure you have at least three published articles before you apply.

For authors

The same guidelines apply to you as all other writers. But authors must also make sure:

Scheduling

  • They only post on (or schedule posts to launch on) days when there are no other posts – so check the admin consoles ‘Posts’ page, to see if there has already been a post that day, or if there is going to be one
  • We don’t post on Sundays and we work to GMT, so please avoid scheduling your posts to launch on a Sunday

Images

  • All articles must have at least one image of at least 75×75 pixels, it must be relevant to the post and not rude or offensive
  • Images must have a title tag, and should have an ‘alt’ tag, captions are optional – if an image needs explaining, explain it! Use the ‘title’ to give a basic name to the image, e.g. iPhone 4S; then use the ‘alt’ tag to describe the image, e.g. A White Apple iPhone 4S; the caption can then be used to explain in more detail e.g. This is what Apple’s latest iPhone, the 4S looks like.

Links

  • All text links should have a description – AKA fill in a relevant description in the ‘Title’ box underneath the URL box when adding a hyperlink in the ‘Visual’ WordPress writing/text box
  • All external links (text and image) must open in a new window
  • Excessive linking must not be used, however, do feel free to link to relevant resources – this is encouraged

Titles

  • Titles should be a minimum of around 10 characters, and a maximum of around 50 characters – make sure it fits on one line

Tags

  • Try an enter at least 4 or 5 tags for each post, if a similar tag exists, use them (where appropriate) – too many tags can also be an issue, but anywhere between 5 and 20 tags are perfectly acceptable

Excerpts

  • All posts must have an ‘excerpt’ which should be roughly a 5-30 word summary of the article (if you can’t see the excerpt box underneath the article writing area, click ‘Screen Options’ at the top and then tick the box that says ‘Excerpt’ – check out our how to show more screen options in WordPress article for more info)

Categories

  • In the WordPress admin console, ‘Post Types’ and ‘Topics’ are both grouped together in the ‘Categories’ box, if you are confused about what is a ‘Post Types’ and what is a ‘Topic’ check the sidebar
  • Every post must be assigned to at least one ‘Topic’ but don’t be excessive – 5 is probably too many
  • If a post is a review, how to, news etc. then it should be placed in a ‘Post Types’ category too, although if it is just a general article, it does not need to be in a ‘Post Types’ category – e.g. news on browsers should be placed in ‘News’ and ‘Browsers’ – again, check the sidebar for the different ‘Post Types’ that your article may be

Formatting

  • For subheadings within a post, try to use Heading 3 tags, rather than bold text or Heading 2 text etc.
  • Quotes should be put into blockquotes – this can be done by clicking the quotes (“) button, or by adding the HTML code <blockquote> before your quote and </blockquote> after your quote – also, don’t forget the quotation marks
  • Authors must have good spelling, and must check their spelling and grammar manually and with a spell checker – reading an article before publishing always helps!

Anything you are unsure on, don’t guess at, email an administrator who will be happy to help :-)

Finally, an important message:

If you abuse your author rights, they will be removed! Note that promotion possibilities exist for extremely good authors.

Click here to apply to become an author.

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