Publishing Article - The African Exponent

Video Tutorial

The video above is based on publishing for bloggers, the staff writers also follow a similar procedure with minor differences referenced by using bloggers or staff writers before specific instructions.

To get started:

  • Log into your account.

  • Click Manage on the top right corner of the screen.

  • Bloggers: Once you are logged in, go to the navigation bar and click on Blogging, assuming you have already created your blog.

  • Staff writers: Once you are logged in, go to the navigation bar and click on Publishing.

  • Click on New Article on the navigation bar.

  • Staff writers: Select Article and click Submit on the bottom right corner of the screen.

You will be redirected to the article posting page

  • Fill in the article details
  • Article Heading
  • Article Subtitle
  • Article Image
  • Article Body
  • Article Summary

For consistency all The African Exponent articles have to follow this format:

  • Heading and Subtitle: We Request That the First Letter of Each Word Should be in Uppercase (except for words such as “the” “in” “on” “of” for example).
  • The heading should be less than 100 characters. Click here to learn about strategies for making an effective heading.
  • In Article Body, the sub-heading texts should be H2.
  • The header image (and other images) should be less than 300K. This website is useful for resizing pictures for free: http://www169.lunapic.com/editor/. If you still fail to resize your image, email the image to [email protected] and we will resize it for you or you can find a different image.
  • Include header image credit at the end of the article and link to the website where the image is taken from. The common credit format we use can be found here: Adding credits.
  • Once you have filled in all these fields, navigate to the top and click Metadata on the top left.
  • Select Category: Choose the category that best fits the article.
  • Select Region: Choose the region that article addresses. If the article is not associated with one specific country leave the default as General.
  • Select Authors: This will typical be you, except for a co-owned blog.
  • Select Tags: Tags are used to group articles that have something in common and make it easy to search the article.The tags should ideally be 5 and not less than 3 or more than 7.
  • Click Google News on the top left corner.
  • Select Allow, you do not have to fill in Keywords and Genre, Google has deactivated their use.

  • Bloggers: you can manage whether you want to have ads in your article by clicking Advertising and selecting the appropriate option.

  • Staff Writers: you do not have to click Advertising, the default is show ads, since we show ads on all articles written by our staff writers.

Note that you can switch between this page and the main article page by clicking Core and Metadata, Google News, Advertising, without losing any information.

The article information is instantly saved in drafts.

Click Submit once you have filled all details. The Submit tab is at the bottom of both the Core page and the Metadata page.

  • Staff Writers: notify the editor that you have an article for review. Once approved your article will be live on The African Exponent.

  • Bloggers: once you click submit, your article will be live on The African Exponent.

Stylistic features

Like any text editor, The African Exponent’s editor allows functionalities like italics, bold, underline, hyperlink and many more. Highlight the text you want to add stylistic features to, and a menu bar with various options will appear. As you hover over the different fields, there will be a text indicating what that field does.

Insert a picture and/or video

Press enter/return and an enclosed + will appear on the left margin of the text editor, click that and insert the video and/or picture you want to include. Once inserted, click on the file to add a caption.

Please note that only pictures with names less than 20 characters will be uploaded, that is a picture named “theafricanexponentblog.jpg” will not upload, but one named “TAEblog.jpg” will upload.

Once the file is inserted, click on the image/video you’ll get the layout displayed below. You can choose the positioning of your image, either centered, left, right, or tile view. You should also type the relevant context of the image to the article and insert citation in the caption field.

Drafts

To access Drafts click on Active on the navigation bar.

Edit article

To edit an article that you have published:

  • Click Active on the navigation bar.
  • Click on the Edit tab that corresponds to the article you want to edit.
  • Depending on the action you want to take.
  • Publish new changes, or.
  • Save changes as draft.

Delete an article

If you want to delete an article you have published:

  • Login to your account.
  • Click on Active on the navigation bar.
  • Click on the Trash tab that corresponds to the article you want to delete.

The article will be moved to trash.

Restore deleted article

If you want to restore a deleted article:

Click on Trash on the navigation bar. Click Restore or Permanent Delete respectively depending on the action you want to take.

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